“Certainly for me, the very best type of music often comes from that tension between wanting to rein something in and be incredibly structured but [have] an improvisational element. I think there’s a real great sweet spot that you can hit somewhere in the middle there, getting the best of both worlds,” says Diagonal’s saxophonist Nicholas Whittaker. The British band have just released their fourth album, simply titled 4, which offers a mind-expanding mix of Canterbury-style prog, krautrock, space rock and jazz.
4 is the group’s second release of 2021 and follows their ‘official bootleg’, Live In Leeds 2012. The live album came about when a fan contacted the band to tell them he had some bootleg recordings of past gigs. The 2012 Leeds show was a pivotal moment in Diagonal’s evolution, marking the group’s transition from a septet to a quintet. “That period was the making of me as a musician because being a sax player in a seven-piece I could hide slightly,” says Whittaker. “That first show as a five-piece was terrifying – ‘Oh shit, I can’t hide anymore.’ There was a very cool intensity to it, very aggressive. There was a nice, weird nostalgia there because there’s barely been any live music for ages. We haven’t played live music for years now.”