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Dan Black - Un



Dan Black - Un review


Send "Dan Black " Ringtones to your Cell 

   Musicomh
Creating a buzz song can be both a blessing and a curse. When Dan Black's Hypntz spread through the music blogs like wild fire last year, it seemed a bright future was guaranteed. Created using a loop taken from Rihanna's mega-hit Umbrella and featuring the lyrics from Notorious B.I.G's Hypnotize, it was the kind of odd, uplifting pop song that people seemed to have stopped making.

When album samplers were sent out earlier this year, Hypntz appeared in demo form, paving the way for its release as a single in the future. Unfortunately, Hypntz couldn't appear on the oddly punctuated ((un)) - the estate of Notorious B.I.G refused clearance of the lyrics - so Black had to hastily re-write the lyrics, creating the somewhat more downbeat Symphonies.

Lyrically it deals with the fact that Hypntz was pulled at the eleventh hour, creating a weird song within a song motif that rather ruins the overall effect. It's still a great song, but there was something wonderful about hearing "girls walk to us, wanna do us, screw us, who us, yeah, poppa and Puff" half-rapped by a white man whose voice is said to resemble "Quentin Crisp meets Liam Gallagher".

It also offered some bravado and a hint of danger to a singer whose own lyrics are often depressingly soft-centred. I Love Life lists various items of drug paraphernalia but is so polite and mannered that he could be detailing his shopping list. Elsewhere Cigarette Packs revolves around the line "cocoa you do me well", which even Belle & Sebastian would dismiss as being too twee. The dreary Cocoon revisits the themes laid out by Symphonies, acting as some kind of self-help mantra, urging himself to carry on with this whole singing malarkey.

Thankfully, the album is saved by a handful of stellar tracks, from the elastic, pulsating baseline of the brilliant Yours, to the urgent rush of previous single Alone. Both songs play up to Black's strengths, with melodies falling over themselves to be heard, whilst the syncopated, cut-up electronic rhythms suit his singing style. Life Slash Dreams and Wonder both prove that he can slow things down and still hold your interest, the former featuring some excellent percussive beats, the latter a chorus that would sound ideal blaring out of a radio. U + Me = is also excellent, not least because it features what sounds like a man burping over a fizzing beat....full text

   Guardian
Tipped at the start of the year to join La Roux in electro-pop's vanguard, Black's more soft-centred approach has since lagged behind, though this idiosyncrantic debut should help him make up ground....full text

   Guardian
Paris-based Dan Black created a splash online with Hypntz, an adaptation of Notorious BIG's hit Hypnotize. But BIG's estate intervened over the use of the late rapper's lyrics, forcing Black to rework the song with new words as Symphonies, the opening track here. His debut also seems to have got slightly ahead of itself. Like a modern-day Beck, Black is a brilliant genre-mixer, fusing hip-hop beats and synthesiser washes with a musical palette that stretches from Radiohead to Coldcut. He's clearly a clever chap, and it's hard not to be impressed with the transcendental feel of Ecstasy, which cries for "that hot breath of life in me". However, Black must work harder on the basic art of singing songs. His whiny vocals grate after a while, and while tracks like Yours offer fabulous - if soulless - computerised funk, the impact of the discoid stomper Pump By Pumps is rather dulled when you realise the tune had a previous life as Cliff Richard's Devil Woman....full text

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