Dean Blunt - Post-contemporary lo-fi trips

Trying to bring order to the Hype Williams chapter borders on the literally impossible. Shadows and riddles pile up thickly over every aspect of this non-music: the true identities of the shady individuals behind the pseudonym of a mainstream video director, the omnivorous and fragmentary stylistic form, the elusive artistic identity in constant metamorphosis. Let's try to answer these questions, retracing their discography with the help of a few, scant, media traces.

The Attitude Era

The first version of the story has it that Hype Williams is the resurrected project of two faded late-Eighties artists, the married couple Father Ronnie Krayole and Denna Frances Glass, a sort of ghostwriters who eventually decided to hand the brand over to two young Londoners, known as D. Blunt and Inga Copeland, who carry on its image in live appearances.

According to the second legend, instead, Hype Williams is the self-financed side-project of well-known soul-pop singer Joss Stone, while a third variant attributes the moniker to two individuals, Dean Blunt and his Russian-born partner, known alternately as Inga Copeland and Karen Glass. The choice of which myth to believe is left to the reader.

Further muddying the waters of what would otherwise have been little more than a witty, off-the-cuff gimmick is the sonic material peddled under the pseudonym: a disturbing, seemingly random jumble of pop culture fragments, a collage that heaps together indie, mainstream and avantgarde without distinction, updating backward-looking nostalgia from a perspective and background firmly rooted in the "here and now". Hence disorienting critics and listeners in four simple moves: a) blend every rough draft and run it through the same low-fidelity filter, so as to coat everything in a sort of dreamy haze that's part confused-and-drunk, part hipster 2.0; b) dismantle and reassemble the fragments to present them as pop-art vignettes that shun any immediate meaning and ultimately only make sense through a sharp, big-picture reading; c) constantly toy with media, labels and distributors, hopping between labels and self-releases, flooding the web with digital files, pumping hype around nothing, giving contradictory and cryptic interviews; d) show up in different outfits every time, from workwear jackets to recycled accessories, from clothes flaunting designer logos to casual looks, from miniskirts to masks.

In other words, the portrait of the post-contemporary de-constructivist is complete.

The duo's first efforts, however – a series of EPs running little more than ten minutes each – give away very little about the potential of the Hype Williams brand: a handful of low-fidelity neo-neo-psychedelic oddities, which caught the attention of the specialist press mostly because they surfaced just as the indie-hypnagogic fad was taking hold at the turn of the decade. A matter of hype, in other words, nomen omen.

The first album appears in 2010 on Carnivals, untitled and with marijuana leaves on the cover.

Seven tracks, themselves "untitled", which flesh out the EPs' timid hints more organically, splitting between psych-percussive suites ("#1", "#4") and sinuous beats ("#3", "#6"), up to the psychedelic fusion of the Sixties and the 2000s on "#7", all filtered through lo-fi devotion.

Still, the formula of Untitled stands out little from the mass of releases within the same neo-psychedelic niche, proving to be a more than pleasant listen for genre diehards, but not much else.

With the second album, released soon after, titled at mile-long length Find Out What Happens When People Stop Being Polite And Start Getting' Reel, despite its extremely short runtime (twenty-four minutes), the pair refine their low-fidelity neo-psychedelic recipe on one hand ("Blue Dream", "Untitled") and, on the other, reveal glimpses of that oblique, only-interpretable-as-post-something vision that would bear fruit shortly after: the unsettling opening of "Rescue Dawn 2" (a baby's cry? an inverted r&b chorus?) wrapped in dreamy synths, and above all the duo's first true masterpiece, "The Throning", a melancholy cold-synth aria over which Copeland sings a Sade classic ("The Sweetest Taboo"), radically flipping its mood.

Too brief and sketchy to be truly memorable, Find Out has all the hallmarks of a transitional record, fitting too within the broader arc of a duo, Hype Williams, who make a banner out of transience and inconclusiveness.

Continuing to operate amid media chatter and ambiguity (as of now there's no website address linked to the pair, while their social media accounts are created and deleted on a regular basis), 2011 then brings the EPs Dior and Kelly Price W8 Gain Vol. II, in every way a prelude to the third and, to date, final full-length released under the controversial name.

With One Nation, in fact, the pair shift more than one parameter in their still fairly muddled approach. The album's thirteen tracks balance the usual dub-psychedelic binges with a whole new set of references: synths take the lead, seasoned with ambient noise, unsettling monologues, worn-out beats and a distinctly more "black" spirit.

The pair's talent, modest on a traditionally compositional level, lies entirely in their remarkably effective instincts and their taste for juxtaposing patterns snatched from wildly distant, sometimes even jarring, forms. Nineties-style electronics thus marry space-synth, dream-drone ambient meets existentialist musings fished out of some obscure corner of the media, hip-hop fragments collide with dub-techno pulses, all rendered abstract in the typical lo-fi haze that suspends everything between reality and hallucination. Paradoxically both more unpredictable and more focused at once, the Blunt-Copeland (non-)formula is finally forged.

Hype

In 2012 comes the long-awaited, definitive leap in quality, accompanied by an actual record deal (the esteemed Hyperdub), a mysterious collaboration with the Guardian and a hefty dose of hype from the trade press (Pitchfork and Wire chief among them).

After the limited edition split with Demdike Stare for Honest Jon's Shangaan Electro, Dean Blunt and Inga Copeland suddenly shed their controversial moniker and release two markedly different projects under their own names, of a far greater depth than their recent past output.

We speak of projects advisedly, because The Attitude Era shares virtually nothing with what we're traditionally used to associating with the concept of an "album": no physical format, no label, no track numbering, no fully developed, self-contained narrative within it. A work whose size is measured in megabytes (101) and whose quality is measured in kbps (160).

"101 x 160. Sorry to anyone we promised these tunes to – cannae deal with them anymore." That's the terse message attached to the .zip file available for download between April 5 and 19, 2012, via the Guardian.

It's a sprawling mass of thirty-three tracks running almost ninety minutes, listed alphabetically with "provisional" titles, as if they were unfinished sketches, with the implicit invitation, perhaps, to sequence them however one likes.

And yet The Attitude Era can only be described as a pop record: pop for the pronounced, unprecedented leaning toward mournful synthwriting that Copeland develops here, pop for the mainstream styles and references it draws on, pop for the way it assembles media fragments of every kind (talk shows, moralizing sermons, gangsta movies), pop for its decontextualized recycling of alternative and experimental forms (drones, field recordings, garage, UK bass), and pop, finally, for the deliberately random, YouTube-browsing frame in which everything is set.

Whether it's the jarring juxtapositions, the synthetic melodies of nocturnal, melancholic beauty, or the beloved lo-fi haze, what weighs over the whole "collage" is a sense of decadence and excess, a post-contemporary exhaustion in which you find yourself trapped, torn between resisting and giving in to the "dance."

Alongside all this, though, Blunt and Copeland deliver another work, somewhat different in character. Black Is Beautiful is in fact released on record, through the much-talked-about Hyperdub, and shows off a tighter, more engaging form. The theme of the fifteen tracks, this time ordered only numerically (i.e. untitled), is the "black" of the title, expressed both stylistically, with a more pronounced hip-hop imprint, and conceptually, interspersing slogans and monologues from various sources. Still, the whole thing is once again clouded by dazed synths and assorted grime, like wandering in an "altered" state at three in the morning past billboards, Eastern European clubs, fast-food joints, drunk tourists and beggars.

Dean Blunt and Inga Copeland thus garnish another wholly enjoyable, contemporary trip.

If 2012 is the year of the duo's "coming out," 2013 instead opens under the sign of solo paths. Though they still frequently record together, on their newly founded joint label World Music, the two deepen their individual inclinations: Blunt pursues his idea of sound-collage, while Copeland shapes her own curious take on dream-pop, suspended between synths, garage and UK bass.

After the excellent EP The Narcissist II, in which samples lifted from internet videos and musical scraps (including a piece of Beth Gibbons) are cut and pasted together, Dean Blunt releases his first solo album, The Redeemer, a record that introduces more than one new element. In Blunt's intentions, the album is a concept piece about the mental state following a broken relationship, pieced together by digging into the dustiest corners of pop (traces of Kate Bush, Fleetwood Mac and Pink Floyd's "Echoes" can be spotted) and interspersing fragments of various media origin, as well as, for the first time, threads of organically composed material. On top of that, the record for the first time sets aside the beloved lo-fi guise in favor of high definition, while the synths lose their leading role, now coexisting with lush orchestral arrangements. Despite this, at the heart of it all the macabre Hype Williams fragmentariness keeps pulsing, now reorganized only in a more elegant form, like a theatrical piece in nineteen short acts.

The sequence of acts thus follows the progressive breakdown of mental order, shattering the fragile songwriting set up at the opening, starting with the splendid title track, which takes its cue from a Portishead-like desolation (featuring the only vocal cameo this time around, from Inga Copeland) only to die out amid screams of indefinite origin and lapping sounds that drag on through the whole central portion of the record, up to the touching "Need 2 Let U Go," a hazy folktronica streaked with soul and jazz.

"Papi" steers things back onto more reassuring tracks, flipping "Echoes" into a soulful arrangement à-la Isaac Hayes, obscured by an incomprehensible countdown and tolling bells, while "All Dogs Go To Heaven" drags out for five minutes a hypnagogic-psychedelic serenade with a high alcohol content. "Imperial Gold" and "Brutal" finally close things out with two more near-songs, part indie-folk, part piano-driven soul, whose (likely) meaning is once again called into question by a voicemail message ("and no more messages").

Emptiness and loneliness run through the whole of The Redeemer. As usual, anyone hunting for fully-formed songs will inevitably have to look elsewhere: Dean Blunt's meta-music either wins you over or repels you, with little room for nuance in between. For everyone else, this unlikely Sunday redeemer offers an unsettling portrait of 2.0 relationships, caught between feeling, stock phrases, and insecurity numbed by alcohol or typed out at the court of Yahoo Answers.

Likewise, Inga Copeland doesn't dawdle in creative pauses or breaks. 2013 opens with a round of DJ sets (including a Boiler Room appearance) and the short EP Don't Look Back, That's Not Where You Are Going, three tracks that outline her idea of stoned-dream-pop, a development of the vocal shorthand of The Attitude Era and Black Is Beautiful, suspended between ambient and UK-rooted electronic music, somewhere between Burial and Laika's "Sounds Of The Satellite," further explored right after in the mixtape released via SoundCloud, Higher Powers.

Split

Despite these premises, though, Inga Copeland's much-anticipated LP debut, Because I'm Worth It, represents a step forward and (more than) one step back. While the introverted Anglo-Russian artist does deepen her work on rhythm for the first time in a more "compositional" sense, succeeding in more than one instance, on the other hand she fails to put together a record that's truly significant and fully realized, ending up, in effect, with what amounts to an extended EP (a mere twenty-nine minutes) that once again tries, starting from the title itself, to lean on the post-contemporary dimension of her work, without managing to renew the spell and trance of the masterpieces made in tandem with her former partner.

Whether Copeland will manage to follow Blunt's methodical intuition is thus a question that, once again, remains to be answered at some unspecified point in the future.

Inga's prank has worked again. This time, perhaps, a little less fun than usual.

Also in 2014, Dean Blunt returned with another twist: he signed to Rough Trade, who in November released his second full-length, Black Metal. The record seems to leave behind the collage-like structure of The Redeemer, improving on actual songwriting while stripping the sound down to a minimalism that brings back sharp edges – this time morphological ones, of distinctly Hype Williams stock.

The first portion of the album unspools an unprecedented sequence of nocturnal, sentimental ballads, six short but incisive sketches, never so close to pure songwriting, with Joanne Robertson enlisted full-time on counter-vocals for much of the madness, and Blunt sounding more and more like a fallen rapper converted on the road to Nick Drake: off-key, misanthropic, lyrical. Yet thoroughly inspired.

As the tracks unfold, Black Metal takes on dark hues, almost justifying the pitch-black of the title and the artwork. "Forever" is a thirteen-minute semi-instrumental chamber piece on loop, crossed by a graceless saxophone, gorgeous in its sickly mood, while "X" rises to an even more "noir" ambience, likely the album's masterpiece, and drains the record irreversibly into a muffled nihilism.

In its final stretch, "Black Metal" indeed unrolls a series of drunken, disjointed numbers, as if the saudade of lost love had been transcended into dark schizophrenia: dub basslines, hip-hop splashes, synths and drones flow without any apparent connection, embroidered with unusually violent, mumbled lyrics ("Who's hot 2nite/ Whose girl's gonna picked up tonight" – here, as if in a flash of insight, another surprise ghost appears: Adrian "Tricky" Thaws).

By the end of the record's fifty-two minutes, the feeling is, ultimately, not unlike the one delivered by its predecessor: emptiness, solitude, urban depression, and a parquet floor scattered with crumbs, dirty socks and the last gram of weed.

Not content with the flood of releases, mixtapes and EPs included, in 2015 the pair began producing solo work under yet more different pseudonyms. So, while Copeland resurfaces obscurely as Lolina (releasing an EP and a far juicier Live In Paris), Blunt – by now clearly the half more interested in keeping some tie to the industry, both in the formats he chooses (the album, the single) and in his ties to established labels – reappears instead as Babyfather, the curious name under which he comes knocking again at Hyperdub's door in 2016 with BBF Hosted By Dj Escrow, a concept album that's actually not too far removed from the two previous Dean Blunt chapters, but with a more overtly hip-hop stance and a decadent portrait of England in the Brexit era, plus a cameo from Arca.

In 2021 came Black Metal 2. Years had passed since the first chapter. That was 2014, and the record already hinted that the artist was heading in a specific direction, less abstract and more intimate. What remains irreverent is the title – probably meant to signify a mood rather than anything to do with metal – and the cover, a blatant sarcastic nod to Dr. Dre's "2001". Blunt picks up that same state of mind and restates it with greater confidence: "BM2" is in fact an album of total coherence, from first track to last. Dean Blunt references African Pessimism, poking fun at Kendrick Lamar, leans on rock-ballad sounds mixed with a kind of shoegaze, almost echoes Lou Reed in the lyrics, and sometimes builds a hybrid of dream-pop and hip-hop out of fragments of meaning, words repeated with disillusionment and melancholy. A metropolitan poet, one might say, "a stranger in a dark room".

In the track "Nil By Mouth", the counterpoint between Blunt and Joanne Robertson's vocals (she features on several tracks) carries us into a post-apocalyptic scenario: the verses are fragmented, "Martin" has vanished, all that's left is the desert, lit by a shining star. In "DASH SNOW", Blunt repeats that everything will be fine in a tone that's anything but convinced, while in "LA RAZA" he sings "it's time you got to kill, do you've got the steel?" over an obsessive riff that slowly opens onto a dark melody – it's precisely this radical acoustic choice that marks a sharp contrast with his earlier work. The voice, meanwhile, is the usual Blunt: distant and lunar – starting from the track "VIGIL".

Only occasionally does the Blunt/Babyfather figure resurface, built on a dragging dub ("SEMTEX", "MUGU"), while "WOOSAH" stands alone as the only instrumental (an absolute first for Blunt), representing the leitmotif of the whole album, with acoustic guitar mixed into hypnagogic arrangements. We're far from the electronics and vaporwave of his early work, and "the rot" confirms it; the closing track of a journey to the end of the night, an elegy for a melancholy dreamer.

Refined, solemn, at times hermetic and decadent, Dean Blunt confirms himself as one of the most interesting figures on the contemporary English experimental scene. Black Metal 2 leads the listener through a spiral of meta-musical references and seduces with its languid spleen, in a place where "it's dark, there's never any light".

Contributions by Angela Bozzaotra ("Black Metal 2")

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