{"id":5766,"date":"2012-11-23T11:04:06","date_gmt":"2012-11-23T17:04:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stylusmagazine.ca\/?p=5766"},"modified":"2012-11-23T11:04:06","modified_gmt":"2012-11-23T17:04:06","slug":"diamond-rings-im-just-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/2012\/11\/23\/diamond-rings-im-just-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Diamond Rings :: I’m Just Me"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By Adrienne Yeung<\/strong><\/p>\n

Everything about Diamond Rings (aka Toronto native John O\u2019Regan) dazzles these days, especially when every facet of the platinum-mohawked, bejewelled musician throws back an image of the musical and visual changes that have taken place over the past two years. His second album, Free Dimensional<\/em> (released Oct. 23) is obviously grown up out of Special Affections<\/em>‘ (2010) sparkly DIY-esque pop: It\u2019s polished, deliberate, and endlessly catchy. \u00a0While a phone interview sadly failed (the recorded interview is literally five minutes of mumbling, crackling, and my repeating \u201cHello? Hello?\u201d into the Stylus<\/em> phone), we managed to finally connect via trusty e-mail to find out what he\u2019s got to say about his changing presence and sound.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’m also not interested in the presentation of ideas,\u201d explains O\u2019Regan. \u201cI’m interested in the expression of feelings. I don’t speak to the world. I speak to the self.\u201d<\/p>\n

This comes through in pretty much every song on Free Dimensional<\/em>, where O\u2019Regan\u2019s trademark baritone combined with constantly energetic backbeats seem to \u00a0produce the sounds of various emotions. Personally, I hear the sound of how you feel when you throw yourself into a new relationship (\u201cRunaway Love<\/a>\u201d), realise you own your identity (\u201cI\u2019m Just Me<\/a>\u201d), and feel like you\u2019re finally on the right track (\u201cStand My Ground\u201d), among others. This is obviously different for everyone, but the optimism displayed throughout is universal.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’ve always attempted to make my music accessible. That’s the whole point of being an artist,\u201d says O\u2019Regan. \u201cPerhaps I’m just getting better at what I do and it’s becoming more readily apparent that I treat accessibility as an end in itself, rather than simply a means to something more vapid like fame or fortune.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bottom line for O’Regan, it seems, is that Free Dimensional<\/em> connects with its listeners. It’s not necessarily best experienced “sitting at home with virgin vinyl, headphones, and a hi-fi,\u201d but possibly also with \u201ca poorly dubbed cassette tape in a used car or on cheap earbud headphones at the gymnasium.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is instantly apparent when Diamond Rings plays live shows now, too. O\u2019Regan explained that travelling with the addition of a band \u201creally allows me to engage with the audience and perform to the full extent. After touring for a while, it was something that I [realised I was] really missing: to be able to look people in the eye instead of staring into the computer screen.\u201d<\/p>\n

A conscious effort to experiment and keep things fresh are what guided Free Dimensional<\/em> out of the place that 2010\u2019s Special Affections<\/em> tour had carved for itself. He mentions at one point that he\u2019s already working on new material. However, \u201cthe final version is never what anyone has in mind at the very outset of the creative process.\u201d He notes that the title of the album is its own manifestation to his creative process, choosing it because \u201cI wanted to allow myself the room to experiment with different styles and sonic textures without the fear of having to conform to what I feel are often narrow genre categorizations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed. For example, this time around you can hear O\u2019Regan rapping on several tracks, which is something he hasn\u2019t tried before. He actually wrote \u201cDay and Night\u201d in one morning, but hesitated to add in the R&B hook that his producer had pushed for. Eventually, he \u201cdecided to just go for it. I’m definitely most proud of that song.\u201d<\/p>\n

The recently released music video for “I’m Just Me” is stunning in its production quality. Space themes and avant-garde outfits abound, which visually augment O’Regan’s confidence in his career and deliberate steps towards creating the Diamond Rings presence. However, he says as a reminder, “You can find a bit of me in every facet of Diamond Rings. No one part of me takes precedent.”<\/p>\n

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Friday night\u2019s concert at the Pyramid promises a good mood, super danceable beats, and a super time. But what\u2019ll he be doing during the day? \u201c[I\u2019ll be] sleeping and stretching,\u201d O\u2019Reagan says, \u201cin that order.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Adrienne Yeung Everything about Diamond Rings (aka Toronto native John O\u2019Regan) dazzles these days, especially when every facet of the platinum-mohawked, bejewelled musician throws back an image of the musical and visual changes that have taken place over the past two years. His second album, Free Dimensional (released Oct. 23) is obviously grown up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[161,229,262,453,1029],"class_list":["post-5766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","tag-canadian","tag-dance","tag-diamond-rings","tag-indie","tag-toronto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5766\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}