This Wednesday, DIAMON is coming to the Knitting Factory Brooklyn. This brand new, totally unique project from Dopapod bassist Chuck Jones features Eli Winderman (Dopapod), Danny Mayer (On The Spot Trio), Adrian Tramontano (Kung Fu), Shane Allen (Danke), and Mr. Rourke (Club D’Elf) exploring Trip Hop and the music of Portishead, Radiohead, Bjork, and more. We chatted with Chuck about why fans should get excited about this new project, and what makes it different from anything he’s done before.
[Get tickets to DIAMON this Wednesday 2/3 HERE]

Live for Live Music: What’s DIAMON all about? What styles of music will the new band be exploring?

Chuck Jones: A lot of these side projects I’ve done (besides Mom and Dad, which is my actual side project) involve us  learning a bunch of songs, playing the melody, and improvising and jamming the whole time. Which is fun, but the whole genre of Trip Hop never really gets touched on anymore. It’s kind of a forgotten thing. It was really popular in the mid-late 90s and then sort of died out, but it’s something I’ve really been into over the last couple of years. I had the idea of doing this project for a year or two but never saw the opportunity to do it, and then once we had this chunk of time off from Dopapod I was able to book some shows and get everyone together who I thought would make a great band.

L4LM: What do you think is going to be really different and unique about DIAMON?

CJ: The goal of the music is to do something a little less typical than the standard jam scene supergroup that gets a little predictable. I love doing those, I love listening to them. But I wanted to do something a little different. So we’re gonna kind of organize the music, stick a little closer to the form, and when we do open it up it’s not going to be completely open, it’s still going to be kind of structured.

L4LM: Where’d the inspiration for the project come from?

CJ: I love Portishead, I love the vibe and the feel and the voice. Everybody has certain bands that make them feel a certain way, and that was very much one of those bands for me. That and Radiohead are very important to me. So I wanted to pay homage and just play some of the songs for people, because I don’t think people are that well-versed in that anymore. Hopefully we’ll get some new younger ears and Dopapod fans that have never really been exposed to this kind of music and hopefully become fans.

Get tickets to DIAMON at the Knitting Factory 2/3 here!Â