Based out of Tuscon, Arizona, Dimitriam is the latest musical endeavour of “prolific home-taper and DIY lifer”, Dimitri Manos. Heavily involved in the Arizona music scene since the early 2000s, Dimitri was a co-founder of Golden Boots, the brains behind American Minoxide and a collaborator with the likes of Dr Dog, AJJ and many more. Last Summer, Dimitri set out on a series of recording experiments with a four-track recorder, before deciding to compile everything, “that felt playful, hazy, experimental and low(er) fidelity”. The result is his new EP, Amphora, due out in February via Moone Records, and previewed here today via his new single, Rug.

Fittingly Rug is a song inspired by the calming nature of, well, rugs, as Dimitri explains, “Rug’s a little pop song about finding a tool close at hand to focus on when life around you is overwhelming”. In Dimitri’s own life, he finds that tool, in his favourite floor coverings, “I love rugs, the more ornately pattered the better. In times of feeling overwhelmed, I have tuned in to the abstract private worlds in the weave of a carpet, where images and stories appear in the shapes. It grounds me and brings me back to myself“.

Musically, Rug is Dimitriam’s take on a classic-pop song, with its shuffling beat and chiming keyboards, it feels like the middle ground of Beatlesian-pop and the lo-fi fuzz of Sparklehorse or Grandaddy. While the song in many ways deals with escapism and wanting to withdraw, it ends instead with noise, as the song gives way to squealing electronics and chaotic tumbling keys, a reminder you can’t always live in isolation, as Dimitri explains, “the noise chaos at the end of the song recognizes that the world you retreated from is still there, and remains to be dealt with when you jump back in”. As the Dude says in The Big Lebowski, “the rug really tied the the room together”, as for Dimitriam his Rug is the glue that sticks Amphora together, a scene-stealing moment in a record that contains an array of ideas just waiting to burst out.

Amphora is out February 23rd via Moone Records. For more information on Dimitriam visit https://linktr.ee/dimitriam.