Diagonale des Yeux Debut Album 'Madeleine' Blends Multilingual Whimsy with Post-Punk Edge
The French musical duo Diagonale des Yeux, comprised of Laurène Exposito and Théo Delaunay, has unveiled their debut album Madeleine, a topsy-turvy exploration of outsider pop that weaves together French, German, English, and Spanish lyrics with a charmingly lo-fi aesthetic. The album, released on the Knekelhuis label, showcases a whimsical approach rooted in 1980s European post-punk, featuring discordant instrumentation and disaffected vocals across twelve tracks.
Exquisite Corpse Lyrics and Home-Recorded Soundscapes
The lyrics for Madeleine were crafted using an exquisite corpse game technique, with Exposito and Delaunay taking turns to patch together ephemeral thoughts and themes in a multilingual mix. This method results in bizarre, story-like narratives that perfectly complement the duo's ramshackle, home-recorded sound. The album is peppered with unconventional elements, including toybox percussion, farmyard sound effects, and rudimentary synth and guitar melodies that often careen into strange, unexpected directions.
Musical highlights include:
- Acolytes, which jumps from a frenetic punk jam to a swooning breakdown and back within just ninety seconds.
- Le Rayon Orchidée, which stumbles groggily to a halt like a malfunctioning music box.
- The duo's vocal theatrics, ranging from pitch-shifted, kitten-like miaows to macho groans, enhanced by playful effects.
Balancing Wackiness with Quieter Moments
While the album's wackiness can feel cloying at times, as in the rickety opening track Tie Game or the giddy Baby Buddha, it is redeemed by quieter, less gimmicky moments. Tracks such as Hills of Love and Paradies stand out for their simple, almost melancholy wooziness, while Nana Niña evokes the mechanical duets of minimal synth group Deux. The duo also channels influences like Martin Rev in the drum-machine crooner Cherry Ann and the Korgis on Change Your Heart, where they twist the 1980 hit Everybody's Got to Learn Sometime into tough, glitchy cold wave. These references are delivered with a knowing grin rather than pretension, adding to the album's playful charm.
Other Notable Releases This Month
In addition to Madeleine, several other experimental albums are making waves this month. Nicaraguan-American musician Dagmar Zuniga's self-released debut Filth Your Mystery Is Kingdom / Far Smile Peasant in Yellow Music receives a high-profile reissue on AD 93, offering a gorgeous, rough-around-the-edges set with soft vocals and plucky guitars reminiscent of Grouper and Vashti Bunyan. Laurel Halo presents the soundtrack to Midnight Zone, a film by French-Swiss artist Julian Charrière, featuring dense, epic droning compositions that explore deep-sea mining themes. Valencia-based electronics group Mecánica Clásica releases Una Teoría del Ritmo on Abstrakce, with nine textural downtempo tracks blending bubbling synths and trickling percussion.
