Planet Made of Diamonds Twice the Size of Earth! (2012-2024)

Planet Made of Diamonds Twice the Size of Earth!, like much planetary matter, was born in a brief and fiery explosion but has since lived a long—and fairly uneventful—life in the universe. In the fall of 2012, when Sarah Hopp was studying at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, she came to Alex Silver with news from National Geographic: a planet made of diamonds twice the size of our own was discovered by scientists looking into the sky. Very hard and rare carbon, valued dearly on Earth, was floating through Outer Space all nonchalant…

Alex slammed a few stupid chords on the guitar in honor of the news and the two singers repeated what became the title of the album, over and over, for approximately one week, writing together all of the lyrics and melodies that would fill out the world of these songs. Through that winter, Alex recorded bits and pieces with a mic borrowed from the owner of Dumpster Values and frontwoman of Broken Water (a nice mic from Sarah’s boss!) and the first song to congeal into form was “Long Stretch of Fog.”

By spring of 2013, having sung the album many times in a special living room for just a few important friends, there was a proper record of the celestial event. On the final day before moving to Ann Arbor for the summer, the singers were still recording vocals and the clang of house-packing can be heard in the background of certain tracks.

The album sat, naturally, in Alex’s hands for many years until he picked it up again while studying French in Montreal (2017), projecting giant footage of Earth as seen from the International Space station on his Petite Italie apartment wall and editing. By the next summer, in Santa Fe (2018), he released it.

Come 2024, it is now available to widely stream/download/buy and we hope that 12 years is not its half-life, but merely the opening of its fragile eyes. Enjoy and beware the perils of diamond consciousness.