The following is a series of reviews of my band Diminished Men From a diverse group of writers including Vice Magazine, Alan Bishop (Sun City Girls, Sublime Frequencies) Dave Segal, (staff writer for the Stranger) The Quietus UK.

To the right is a collection of songs, fan videos, and misc YouTube uploads.

Review no.1

By distorting hard boiled film and classic instrumental music through a dark, overcast lens, Diminished Men refocus their influences into something entirely unique.  Their jagged, hard-charging approach evokes images of slit jugulars and accelerated heart rates, all the while swathing you in a blissful claustrophobia.  Drawing elements of Link Wray, Morricone's dissonant horror scores, gritty noir and Joe Meek's sickly productions, as well as the provocative imagery of filmmakers like Wim Wenders and Jean-Pierre Melville, synthesizing them into something truly organic and original. 

Review no.2

"Capnomancy" (Jan 2013), their second release on Abduction Records, run by Alan Bishop of the legendary Sun City Girls and the Sublime Frequencies label, is a collection of stark instrumentals, full of high tension energy and infected terror. Cloaked in a supernatural fog and electrical storms, chiaroscuro landscapes read like a sci-fi postcard with a Giallo ransom note attached.  One of the last albums to be recorded at his now defunct Aleph Studio, producer Randall Dunn (Sunn O))), Earth, Wolves in the Throne Room, etc.) contributes greatly with his visceral, heavy production, making this album their darkest offering yet.  

Review no.3

Their first full length "Names of the Dead" from 2005 introduced the bands cinema obscura ethos.   A bizarre series of cassettes 2006-2008 "American Volume Swells" and the more recent 2012 "Six O' Clock Baby" album revealed a raw and unchecked side of the band through live recordings, improvisations and collage.   It was their 2009 "Shadow Instrumentals" record on the Abduction label that got the band wider recognition for their creative and distinctive sound. A superbly crafted mosaic of speakeasy hallucinations and haunted geography, full of lush production and ambitious arrangements. Besides the Italian western overtones, Khorshid Egyptian guitar passages, murder-blues drama and flipped out electronic space psych, are perhaps the best surf inspired tracks in years.  A shape-shifting set of music, opening yet another wormhole to the groups varied influences. 

Review no.4

Formed in 2005 by guitarist Steve Schmitt and drummer Dave Abramson, Diminished Men are an integral part of Seattle's unique and prolific underground music scene.  Abramson, also a member of Master Musicians of Bukkake, has done time in Climax Golden Twins and has collaborated with Secret Chiefs 3, Eyvind Kang, Six Organs of Admittance, Grails, etc.  Multi-instrumentalist Simon Henneman has released two solo records and plays guitar in the free jazz duo WA with iconic Northwest drummer Gregg Keplinger.    

Review no.5

SHADOW INSTRUMENTALS LP (Abduction, 2009): 

**If current instrumental music was always as majestic and as compelling as this, I'd hang up my Retro-Italian Soundtrack collector's boots for good. What we have here is the first definitive document from Seattle's Diminished Men. From the explosive drum rolls of the opening track, the only cover on the record, "L'appel du Vere", from Roman Polanski's "The Tenant" (composed by Phillipe Sarde) to the darkly exotic finale "A Housewife's Dram", this record is a superbly crafted mosaic of whip-cracking vengeance, speakeasy hallucinations, and haunted geography. Besides the Italian western overtones, carnivalesque freak show backdrops, Khorshid Egyptian guitar passages, and flipped-out electronic space psych, are perhaps the best surf-inspired tracks I've heard in years. A thick damp fog must have been rolling in from the creek behind Randall Dunn's West Seattle studio when these recordings were made. Its spine-chilling how Dunn managed to make this record sound like the ultimate mid-60's Surf-Vampire-Western revival soundtrack. Elements of Joe Meek's best Moontrekkers productions cross with a dash of Badalamentian murder blues drama setting the stage for Steve Schmitt's cobra-twilight guitar work and Dave Abramson's drum kit outlaw splatter to leave their indelible stains across this 41-minute epic journey." 
-ALAN BISHOP (Sun City Girls, Sublime Frequencies) 

Review no.6

Imagine the encounter between the universe of the original bands of Angelo Badalamenti and of Ennio Morricone, surfing music, the jazz and the psychedelic music. If I say you that what's more, their last disc, "instrumental shadow", is produced by Randall Dunn (that already did its proofs with Sun City Girls, Secret Chiefs 3, Earth, Jesse Sykes, Suno) )), Eyvind Kang. ..). Does Ca put you the water to the not mouth? And you have reason for this "instrumental shadow" is a small wonder! This American quartet (guitar, low, battery, saxophone), coming from the scene of Seattle, did not realize beforehand that a single disc, "names of the dead", put to leaves the two volumes of the "american volume swells", go out only in cassette. Completely instrumental, "instrumental shadow" is a timeless, epic album and to the force évocatrice undisputable. To the listens of this disc, one imagines oneself turn to turn in the "red room" of Twin Peaks, or then to wander to horse in the middle of the Far West. Thanks to of superb arrangements, the Diminished Men have therefore shorn a disc to the delectable film mood. Besides, the disc opens by a return of the theme of the film "the tenant" of Novel Polanski, "the glass call" (composed by Sardinian Phillipe). What's more already quoted artists, one thinks equally sometimes to Secret Chiefs 3 in its moments the more "morriconiens". They have besides turned with the latter as well as with the Master Musicians Of Bukkake (of which I strongly counsel you their last album "totem 1", gone out in the spring last).  
ALTERNATIVE SOUND -France 

Review no.7

I usually refuse to listen to music without lyrics made after 1976, but producer Randall Dunn (who's worked with Sun City Girls, Sunn O))), Earth, etc.) made this album sound like it was recorded in a time vacuum. It falls under some tangential, unclassifiable genre that combines surf rock, space psych, weird Egyptian modal shit, and music that ghosts like. The only bad part is that they only made 500 vinyl copies, so you better figure out how to get it quickly or you won't be able to show your limp-wristed post-rock buds why Mogwai is for toddlers. 
-Dilbert Mugabe, VICE MAGAZINE 

Review no.8

Diminished Men are grand theater, psychedelic, spaghetti-eastern music, presented under the tonalities of surf rock. Explodo-free jazz-groove drumming, deceivingly insane electric guitar, and swanky sax from your wildest Reeperbahn dreams. 
-Jared Nelson, NORTHWEST MUSIC BLOG 

Review no.9

Music journalists often find themselves looking around for silver nuggets (in song lyrics, press releases or a stray, indulgent melody) that, while retaining the core vision of the artist, require literary embellishment, so that the ideas embedded within them convince the hesitant public to invest their time in the record. But what if an artist becomes acutely aware that building environments is akin to dominating their art form and begins to resist exterior embellishments? What if the artist actually builds these environments and invites us to inhabit them? 

Formed in 2005 by guitarist Steve Schmitt and drummer Dave Abramson, Diminished Men are no strangers to the underground music scene of the Pacific Northwest. (Abramson, especially, can claim to have done time with Master Musicians of Bukkake, Secret Chiefs 3 and Six Organs Of Admittance.) Vision In Crime is the group's third record for Alan Bishop's Abduction Records, but their seventh overall, if you count the numerous cassette and CD releases they put out on Bowels Of Lunacy. Joined, this time round, on Bass VI by multi-instrumentalist Simon Henneman, Vision In Crime sees the Seattle trio distil their trademark affinities for the stage and screen into a fully fledged sonic narrative, itself divorced from a concrete visual body. 

Much like Philip K. Dick's Man In The High Castle, Vision In Crime leaks from the present-familiar into the present of a parallel alien world. In this world, it is never daylight and the smog rises thick and fast from exposed ventilation shafts in the street. So far so noir, but there is more to this record than clichéd evocations of downtown dirt and fedora hats. With the introductory whining frequencies of 'Chamber', Diminished Men set the tone for a tense, inter-war milieu. With this relatively brief, opening statement, the group throws a loose thread in the listener's direction. If followed carefully, this thread will unravel, revealing images, sounds and situations hidden behind the surface-fabric of the music.(to continue review, see Quietus) 

The Quietus, UK.

Review no.10

Diminished Men's new album, Shadow Instrumentals (Abduction Records), partially draws on the fantastical Italian horror-flick genre known as giallo for sonic inspiration. The band's jagged, hard-charging, reverbed riffing evokes images of slit jugulars and accelerated heart rates, all the while swathing you in a velvety claustrophobia. If soundtrack maestro Ennio Morricone became possessed by guitarists Duane Eddy and Cliff Richard, and then the three cut a record in a Roma mansion spattered with ectoplasm, it would sound like the new Diminished Men opus. 
-Dave Segal, THE STRANGER, Seattle