DEAN BLUNT & INGA COPELAND
Black Is Beautiful
HDB012
Hyperdub Records 2012
15 Tracks. 39mins16secs

Amazon UK: CD | LP | DLD US: CD | DLD Boomkat: CD | LP | DLD

Having so far operated mainly as Hype Williams, a slightly enigmatic outfit which as spurted three odd and oblique albums on Carnivals, De Stijl and Hippos In Tanks in less than two years, Dean Blunt and Inga Copeland are now stepping out as themselves (if these are indeed their real identities) for their debut release on Hyperdub. But, apart for the name change, nothing has really changed for the pair. Black Is Beautiful is equally as convoluted, obsessive, schizophrenic and dreamy as its predecessors, and it is all the better for it.

Sounding like something half way between an amateurish mixtape and an odd lab experiment, Black Is Beautiful is pretty impossible to pigeonhole, its influences reaching far and wide, with no particular strand taking any precedence over any other at any point. Continue Reading »