On the eve of the release of DIORAMA’s seventh record Cubed (March 19) its single Child Of Entertainment surprisingly crossed my desk.
With 7 tracks and a running time of 36 minutes you get good value for your money. From the qualitative side of things you get the albums opener Child Of Entertainment in 5 different versions, plus 2 additional tracks from the 2001 album Her Liquid Arms; the title track in a new version and Advance live.
Child Of Entertainment as album version perfectly reflects the typical sound of DIORAMA. It is an enchanting and hauntingly beautiful track and I’m sure that the new album Cubed will exactly sound like this, making it to another gem of music.
As for this I find the other four versions unnecessary, since they are too close to the original. There is only a touch of other influences, no matter if it is a whiff of Dance’n’Trance as in the “clubbed” version, unobtrusive percussions and Rhodes tones for a world music feeling in the “trapped” version, followed by a pure piano version, which in fact is great but again too obvious for DIORAMA and a Industrial tinged version, which at least a bit unusual. I wish DIORAMA would have been gutsier. What about a dark Jazz version, pure ethnic influences, Folk Noir, Chanson maybe? Or a real Industrial version, Trip Hop, some brutal Metal-like? There are countless possibilities; used means on this single are too diffident, while HLA and Advance in between are a nice variety.