Dean Blunt
Black Metal
31 October 2014
Rough Trade
4 stars out of 5
Formerly one half of Hype Williams—probably the most
enigmatic musical act since The Residents—Dean Blunt (real name Roy Nnawuchi) has
put out a couple of completely unclassifiable records since his split with Inga
Copeland a couple of years ago: last year’s The
Redeemer and now Black Metal. The
self-confessed peddler of “chillhop” (which he claims “makes most people feel a
bit queasy because there's an overabundance of vertical lines in the middle
that forces their eyes to blink involuntarily”) has created a monster in his
new LP, which straddles the line between fractured ‘80s new wave jazz and your
kindergarten-aged nephew hitting random keys on a musical calculator.
Some of the tracks on Black
Metal are so dark and serious that you can feel yourself at those Hype
Williams shows where the band performed with themselves—and the audience—in pitch
blackness. And then, on the other end of the spectrum, there’s a moment where
you can hear Blunt turning down the volume on his Macbook. “Country” is the
kind of noise-shredding that will have Autechre fans drooling, while elsewhere
Blunt gives us clean-tone electric guitar and dubby bass—his version of jazz is
both incredibly disconcerting and strangely comforting. His turns at hip-hop (“Hush”)
seem both completely natural and disturbingly out of place, his passes at dub (“Punk,”
“Mersh”) both engage and create anxiety. Blunt is at the top of his game here, which
for a man who has put out some forty releases is no small compliment. You
definitely must approach Black Metal
with an open mind, for whatever you think it’s going to be like, it isn’t.
reviewed by Richard Krueger
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