A lazy reviewer might be tempted to get away with just listing all the music People Like Diagrams appears to resemble or be influenced by. But to do that would miss the point of Glasgow sound artist Colditz(aka James Chapman)’s exquisitely crafted set of miniatures.

Chapman utilises sparing instrumentation and simple techniques (looped samples, repeated motifs) carefully interlocked and layered, like the movement of a watch, to build complex, engaging pieces. There’s a sense of both automation and independent life about these works that makes them compelling and quite addictive.

There are stuttering, mechanical repetitions and wheezing, organic melodies. Repeated figures are built up with layers of drones, accompanied by lead instruments; harmonium, cello, trumpet. Sad tunes, reminiscent of old sea shanties, float to the surface through pulsing systems music. Samples loop and repeat on themselves recursively while layers of shimmering guitars echo into the distance.

Pieces like The Galaxy, with its shuffling brushes and delicate piano figure, are like entire worlds rendered in miniature, others sound like the product of improvisation. Untitled uses just accordion pulses and rhythmic guitar picking. Like an exercise to see where you get just by pressing strings and keys.

People Like Diagrams most obvious predecessors are the Meccano robots of Pierre Bastien’s Mecanoid. Both discs capture a peculiar melancholy, as if the automata of a long gone fairground have started up and play by themselves, for no audience.

Where Bastien plays in real time with his automata, Colditz adopts samples and multi-tracking to achieve his ends. This has some interesting results on Psycopation where sampled electronic hum is punctuated by the repeated carriage return ring of a manual typewriter. A muted trumpet plays a melancholy theme before giving way to a tapestry of quiet, percussive samples and a delicate piano motif.

But sounding like automata is not the only trick in Colditz’s book. On the title track, the samples and effects are underpinned by spacious live drumming which lends it the sort of spacey, ‘post rock’ feel of bands like Do Make Say Think. The disc finishes with 3 Up Left, a crafty collage of field recordings in the spirit of Cage’s 4.33 (it also happens to be 4.39). First impressions are that this is a straight live recording however, repetitions start to creep in; a distant car horn; birdsong; the ambience of what sounds like a rainforest. It soon becomes clear that this is just as sophisticated a piece of music as anything else on the album.

People Like Diagrams manages to be experimental and accessible in equal measure. It is minimalist music with heart and soul, crafted with wit and imagination. Colditz creates beautiful worlds out of tiny sounds.

Recommended for fans of Pierre Bastien, Eno, Eric Satie, Four Tet, Rob Ellis, Bill Wells, Mike Cooper,  The Lonesome Organist, John Cage