While 2018 has already yielded an enormous amount of new musical discoveries here at Stone in Focus, the one that I'm arguably most excited about at the moment is that of the mysterious Copenhagen based tape label, Janushoved. From what some might view as an archaic ordering process (an actual exchange of words is required, how rare is that?) in a time of instant point-and-click gratification, to the breathtakingly gorgeous and yet vaguely threatening visual artworks that thoughtfully adorn each tape, appearing as if excavated from another world altogether, each release from Janushoved feels like something of a rare artifact — a clear example of art rewarding those who are willing to seek it out, and more importantly, to truly engage with it. Such is the case with Yuri's Diamene, a record that makes no attempt to coddle the listener with easy sounds or a comfortable experience, opting instead for the much more rewarding approach of brutal, unfiltered honesty.
Opening with the electric charge of a thousand bottled lightning bugs, dry wings buzzing against glass and forming a disturbingly sweet melody sung from a choir both heavenly and grotesque, Fugue, Pt. I sets the tone for an album of extreme beauty told through unexpected means, harmony and dissonance, beauty and ugliness intersecting in a place of malleability, revealing the complexities of things when viewed truly, wholly, and without the filter of compromise — the world is not just trees and grass and the the changing colours of the seasons. It is also death, rot, and the changing colours of slow decay. This is an album that denies none of these aspects, instead accepting their symbiotic natures for what they are, and in doing so embracing an infinitely more broad and evocative sonic palette to work with.
With the raw tone of distant, empty husks shaking in the night, title track Diamene beckons like the call of some twisted forest witch, an eerily enticing song of sacrifice calling the listeners name from somewhere inescapable, while a growing wash of industrial static pours through the trees, two opposing, ancient forces clashing in the ether of unreality. Weep employs a colder, more synthetic approach with it's enormous, sweeping synth arpeggios that sound as if they were designed to fill entire stadiums. Except these stadiums are empty, abandoned — and have been for many, many years. Towering arpeggios twist and spiral infinitely in open space to create something spectral as opposed to celebratory — a Top 40's hook for the haunted spirits of venues past, refusing to let go of the last remnants of their humanity.
Vessels in White closes things off with the painful nostalgia of times lost and never retrieved, a John Hughes VHS left out in the sun for too long and caused to warp and twist into something unrecognizable, and yet somehow no less affecting. On the contrary, it is these moments of degradation that Diamene offers it's most profound glimpses of integrity and vulnerability. The speaker might be blown, and the receiver smashed to pieces, but despite all of this, Yuri still stands outside your window in the pouring rain — boombox on shoulders, heart on sleeve — soaked and searching for love. If that's not worth a chance, then what is?