Temjiin -- Diamond Scattered Jet Black Curtain
9/10
"Wut if u cud put your favrite song on yur Twitter profile, so it wud play when people visit it? That would be (fire emoji)." Sure enough, some kid tweets this every now and then, and some older person retweets it with the message "Kid, let me tell you about Myspace..."
I never had a personal account during Myspace's heyday, the only decade it could exist, the 00's, but I did create a Myspace for one of my solo musical acts. That particular act of mine never played any official shows, but sure as hell had some nice live jams when I found some folks to play with. Myspace was a pretty great resource for bands, not only giving them a place to share their music, but a great web in which to network. In late 2006 and throughout 2007, bands who'd found me on Myspace asked if I wanted to be their opener on Baton Rouge legs of their tours. Considering I'd just gotten married, just finally pulled down a consistent full time job, had just moved, and didn't have the time or resources to put a live band together to play all the parts of my songs (though I tried), I had to turn all of these bands down. This hurt, especially considering the quality of some of the bands who asked, but at least I met some cool folks. Some just wanted to inquire about the state of playing music in Louisiana or to chat, which is how I was introduced to the music of Temjiin. Temjiin, if I remember correctly, were from the U.K. They released one E.P., the nearly half-hour length, Diamond Scattered Jet Black Curtain. It is excellent, and should not be lost to time.
The band played dreamy, mostly instrumental electric guitar and electronics-based music, with some ambient touches. If I remember correctly, their concept for Diamond Scattered Jet Black Curtain was essentially, what if you were scuba diving in the ocean, realized while deep down in the beautiful sea that you didn't have enough air to surface, looked up to see sea life gliding gracefully before a clear night sky, and suddenly found peace in this moment? While that may sound morbid, it sounds like quite a way to go to me. It sure beats croaking in a hospital bed years after you've lost control of your faculties.
The resulting E.P. is absolutely beautiful, the exact musical equivalent of the above concept: restful, mysterious, mystical, ethereal, peaceful, gorgeous. However, there's one thing music like this can often be, that Diamond Scattered Jet Black Curtain is not: boring. Whether it's the big, hypnotic beat that sounds like a scuba tank breathing pattern in "Tracers," the distant percussion crashes of "Moth Clouds Chased Me Indoors," or the acoustic guitar, piano, and angelic vocals on the lovely "Reverie," Temjiin manage to stay diverse within the cohesive, well-designed aural palette they've selected for this E.P. It's great stuff--personally, probably the best thing that I ever gained from Myspace.
You can listen to the E.P. in its entirety on SoundCloud. While this review is of the version released on Apple Music, this slightly altered SoundCloud version is still excellent, and there's no way your ears have something better to do with the next 30 minutes.
2007 9.12 Records
1. Slept in the Snow 2:45
2. Tracers 8:04
3. Moth Clouds Chased Me Indoors 4:46
4. Reverie 3:26
5. Eidolon 8:23
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