Love Letter To A Record: Timi Temple On Silverchair’s ‘Diorama’

August 27, 2019

Many of us can link a certain album to pivotal moments in our lives. Whether it’s the first record you bought with your own money, the chord you first learnt to play on guitar, the song that soundtracked your first kiss, the album that got you those awkward and painful pubescent years or the one that set off light bulbs in your brain and inspired you to take a big leap of faith into the unknown – music is often the catalyst for change in our lives and can even help shape who we become.

In this series, Music Feeds asks artists to reflect on their relationship with music and share with us stories about the effect music has had on their lives.

Timi Temple – Diorama by Silverchair (2002)

This album was bloody everything for my late primary school early high school years. It was the first time I had dug deep into a band and their full album, I got a discman for my 10th birthday and needed to buy a CD and to be honest the only reason I bought it was the crazy rainbow-like cover art and then it opened up into a two-disc ‘diorama’ of sorts!!

The first song came on… ‘Across the Night’… and I wasn’t convinced… then… ‘The Greatest View’ started and my world, in literal ‘Dorothy and The World of Oz’ style, came to colour for the first time!! I was instantly hooked!

Bit of background, back when I was a kid, my Dad played country/Australiana music and I played violin and piano (Asian mother, go figure), so I thought it was only classical music, Aussie outback tracks & ‘Blue’ by Eiffel 65 that existed haha.

Back in discman days, people had a bunch of favourite CD’s on rotation. But I only had Diorama, so it got whipped on my walk to school, home from school and probably anytime my teacher left the classroom.

Retrospectively, this album represents to me a beautifully crafted story and soundscape. To my young self, it had the newness of ‘rock and electric guitar’ combined with something familiar that was violins and orchestral arrangements.

Lyrically, it was also the first time I paid attention to vivid storytelling and began my journey on describing everyday events in a new fashion or point of view. The songwriting, production and mixing on this album is divine and seldom matched even by today’s standards… Oh, and there’s a secret track hidden at the end of ‘After All These Years’!!

I still have the discman, with crappy foam headphones and silver headband, and inside it, the only CD to ever live in it, Silverchair’s Diorama.

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Sydney-based indie-rock DIY artist Timi Temple has returned with tour dates (supporting Bootleg Rascal) and his new single ‘Tomorrow Is Yesterday’, produced by the artist himself and mastered by Steve Smart (Tash Sultana, Vance Joy, Cub Sport).

Evoking a late 90’s flavour reminiscent of Blur and Oasis, Timi Temple delivers chilled-out nostalgic alt-rock earworms with a fresh Aussie swagger. This is one infectious young bop.

Give it a listen — and check out his full list of tour dates — below.