Audiopile Review: Always a pleasure to make a local release album of the week. Not something we’d do from the goodness of our hearts. Record store people. We’re simply not that nice. When will you learn? But ‘Imerro’, the latest LP from Caton Diab, is more than deserving of its place front-and-centre in our newsletter. C. Diab is a maker of textured, emotive drones. He’s renowned for his extraordinary, cello-like bowed acoustic guitar technique. Those cello-like tones are present here. ‘Lunar Barge’ sounds like it could be something from Arthur Russell’s ‘World of Echo’. But there’s a lot more going on with ‘Imerro’. It’s certainly in line with Diab’s familiar dust-in-the-corners ambiance, but it also carries the unmistakable mark of an artist setting out to make a major statement. And the statement comes through loud and clear. These tracks lay slowly orbiting chord cycles over stark, pulsing rhythms in a way that clearly means business. The varied instrumentation, including everything from analogue synth to banjo, is perfectly arranged and balanced. But the results never seem overly slick or cerebral. That dust is still very much in the corners and those drones are as emotive as ever. More emotive than ever, in fact. This is not just C. Diab’s most impressive album to date, it’s also his most beautiful and moving. Attempts to make a major work do not always land. This one sticks the landing with aplomb and throws in a couple of celebratory backflips, just for good measure. If you’re a fan of Godspeed-style post-rock bands, it should hit particularly hard for you. But it has none of the bombast and, frankly, better tunes than that implies. Which makes sense, because Diab is an alumnus of the excellent post-rock band Nam Shub (whose album ‘Cascadia’ is worth seeking out). It was his guitar playing in that band which first drew him to our attention. We’ve been following his work ever since and, this week, it seems like he’s arrived at an important milestone. That’s not to say this is the end of his journey. It’s easy to picture Caton taking a moment to drink in the view before heading off into even stormier territory. We’ll keep following along. We’d love it if you joined us.

Caton Diab creates soundscapes that evoke the spectacular wilderness of his childhood home in northern Vancouver Island. Incorporating experimental textures, folk overtones and tape manipulations, C. Diab uniquely finds the unseen spaces in-between, and fittingly dubs his creations “post-classical grunge”. Imerro explores new sonic realms and is the culmination of a sound world that Diab has built up since the critically acclaimed No Perfect Wave (2016) and subsequent releases Exit Rumination (2018), White Whale (2020) and In Love & Fracture (2021). The Wire calls it “ambient music in the best sense—music for living, which can be both non-invasive and immersive… epic” Imerro was recorded in late July and August of 2021 at Risque Disque Studio in Cedar, BC, during the summer’s unprecedented second “heat dome”, which saw temperatures soaring to over 40 degrees. Recorded with regular collaborator and engineer Jonathan Paul Stewart, the pair journeyed by boat to the studio to a place with minimal distraction with a plan of “simple ecstatic improvisation.” Diab explains: “I wanted to place myself in a space for creation with little thematic pretence, with the belief that music ‘shows its face’ as you move along. I would pick up an instrument, whether I had experience playing it or not, and make a sound. If it wanted to be played, it would play.”