After three albums for as many labels, Dean Blunt and Inga Copeland, also of the group Hype Williams, release their debut Hyperdub LP, 'Black Is Beautiful'. Amid rumours circulating, and confirmed by their advisor Denna Frances, the album was recorded during a tremulous period for the two : Inga Copeland s Arsenal girls tryouts, Dean's 'Waschbärgate' trial (he was implicated in being behind a one night robbing spree across 16 taxidermists based in London and the South East, allegedly only for racoons) and his subsequent conversion to Nation of Islam upon being acquitted. 'Black Is Beautiful' is laced with their signature hazy glow and is full of crunched eurovision lullabies, kinetic drum machine jams, unsettling funk, smeared walls of synth, moments of unadulterated opiated bliss, mogadon rap, infinite coughs and insights into the odd sexual behaviour of crackers. The word EBONY occupies the album s entire front cover space in bold white print. Black Is Beautiful is red and white. Sales Points : > Artist name, title, catalogue number, and barcode are not shown a removeable sticker conveys this information. > There is no printed track list - aside from (Venice Dreamway) , all tracks are known by their running order position (eg 2 , 3 ). > CD comes in opaque studio master -style polyurethane box with red insert sheet. > LP is a limited edition pressing on red vinyl with red labels, housed in red inner bag and embossed sleeve.

Review

Black Is Beautiful is the fourth album the enigmatic production duo Hype Williams – recording here as Dean Blunt (a pseudonym) and Inga Copeland (possibly her real name, but with these two who knows?) – have produced in three years. Naming themselves after a director of hip hop music videos is just one of the many pieces of bafflement and misdirection the pair traffic in: they met at an Oasis gig in 1996; they’re part of an art project masterminded by a woman called Denna Frances Glass. These things and more may or may not be true, which may or may not be the point.

“The best art has humour in it,” Blunt told The Wire last year, and it seems to be glee that lurks behind Blunt and Copeland’s opaque media-facing demeanours. This pranksterism irritates those who prefer their art to explain itself, but although the duo’s muddy, chaotic productions – blends of unquantized beats, processed vocals and last-legs synthesisers taking shape in a post-grime, post-gangsta rap hinterland – are part of the game, the emotion they house and trigger is no joke. Blunt and Copeland might not mean anything they say, but they mean at least some of what they play.

Black Is Beautiful is their most immediately accessible album, but its 15 tracks (14 of which are untitled) don’t sound much like hits. Like its predecessors, this set works best taken as a whole, when its unstable collage has time to establish what turns out to be a powerful atmosphere. It’s a rapidly changing landscape, where the thrashing live drums of (Venice Dreamway) melt into bleary soul, lo-fi G-funk and psychedelia. Tracks waver between bliss and nausea, hypnagogic J-pop, a boom-bap slow jam sung by a Billie Holiday-channelling Copeland, and the chants, acidic gurgles and swells of distorted sound that comprise the unstable topography of the nine-minute long track 10.

Track 9 begins with a lengthy vocal loop that, after a couple of minutes, is joined by a hopelessly out of sync beat. This isn’t ineptitude but deliberate scrappiness. Indie bands hit wrong notes and sing out of tune all the time, their sloppiness signifying authenticity. But this same sloppiness feels more transgressive in electronic productions that have sought to remove the inaccuracies of human agency. This orchestrated disorder is another destabilising facet of what Blunt and Copeland are attempting to do with their biographical misinformation. Their project is one that invites thought, but crucially doesn’t neglect to elicit feeling.

--Chris Power

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• Producent: Hyperdub
• Ilość płyt: 1
• Data premiery: 2012-04-16
• Wykonawcy muzyki: Dean Blunt And Inga Copeland
• Lista Utworów: '( Venice Dreamway)','2','3','4','5','6','7','8','9','10','11','12','13','14','15'

Dean Blunt And Inga Copeland Black Is Beautiful [VINYL] - kliknij po więcej informacji