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by Daï Djakman Faré Fri May 01, 2015 12:49 pmzovem se ongnonlou dolo i primio sam se na eklekticnu hiperprodukciju dean blunta. ne tolko na njegove autorske stvari koliko remikse. jebemu mater, ovaj autisticni lounge-electro mashup UGK hitova, intervjua, TV izvestaja o smrti pimp c-a je nesto najinventivnije sto sam skoro cuo, nedeljama ga cedim. covek je na svoj nacin podigao spomenik bendu koji voli i usput napravio mega album on its own right. mislim kontam da je fanovima UGK i ljudima iz hip hopa ovo potpuno neslusljivo djubre i satanizacija (i verovatno je to uz copyright issues razlog zbog koje je ovo iscurelo samo kao soundcloud thing), ali jbg nama iz house/elektro voda je ovo stravaa.
intervju iz gardijana u spoileru
intervju iz gardijana u spoileru
- Spoiler:
Dean Blunt is a musical prankster with a message
The former Hype Williams man is fond of making daft claims – but his recent output is sincerely personal and slyly politicised
Monday 2 December 2013 06.00 GMT Last modified on Thursday 22 May 2014 10.31 BST
Dean Blunt has a reputation for lying outrageously to interviewers. When I first met him 18 months ago, during a tour with his experimental pop duo Hype Williams, he fed me various lines: that he only listened to Oasis – in fact, he met his bandmate Inga Copeland during their performance of Cast No Shadow at Knebworth – and that Hype Williams were now splitting because he was off to wrestling school and Inga to a motor-racing career. So when he insisted that we do this interview via Skype chat, I sensed major trolling ahead. But after announcing that he's speaking from Atlanta, which he says is like "a 112 album skit", he settles into a thoughtful, funny and impassioned discussion.
Blunt's music has also shifted into a more clear-headed phase. Where Hype Williams sounded like a lover's rock cassette dredged from a canal, his pair of albums this year, The Redeemer and Stone Island, are heavy on piano ballads and Brylcreemed crooning, albeit with their narrative compass held next to a magnet. The latter, self-released on a Russian website, is "me in a Russian hotel room with a short-haired angel rinsing out my hotel bill ordering champagne", while the former is about "black London love". He pauses before adding "it's not about it, it is it." The Redeemer is a brilliant album that takes an elliptical path through a relationship, where movingly honest songs declaring "you bring out the best in me" crash into samples of schoolkids counting down to zero and Big Ben chiming noisily. "What happened during that time is a blur," he says. "Living out thoughts rather than evaluating them, or rationalising them. I didn't choose what it was about; someone chose that for me."
Hype Williams are definitely no more, and his explanation of the separation is similarly mysterious. "I don't really see things as solo or not. Circumstances make certain things come to the front more. Circumstances out of my control, sometimes. The only work I do is to not be destructive as a result of these circumstances, and channel them into something else." So what were the circumstances? "Wish I remembered," he replies. "'It was all whirlwind, heat and flash'," he adds, quoting a line from Sonic Youth's Goo sleeve.
Certain elements have been carried over, though, such as the ferocious strobe and thick dry ice that filled their live shows. Why does he like it so smoky? "Looks damn clear to me – clear as a Mac makeup counter," he counters. And why has he taken to having an impassive black security guard onstage with him? "I have a brother with me everywhere I go – never any others in the venue so I might as well increase the numbers a bit," he says, wryness seeping off the text pane. "All I can say is… The same kids asking for me to sign their records be the same kids holding their girl tight when I used to walk past them, and that's a joke I'll never stop finding funny." Funny, really? "Yes. Someone consumed by that fear is at way less an advantage. Some kids the other day knocked my friend's drink out of his hand and ran away in fear, cos they angered the big black man. You can literally say 'boo' and they jump. Hilarious."
"I'm not talking about racism, I'm talking about the liberal left," he continues, "who cover up zits with concealer. No one knows anything cos they think they know it all; ignorance is nothing to be ashamed of if you are open to learn, but this default knowledge be causing all kinds of foolish behaviour." What default knowledge? "Being taught to look at the world a certain way, but only the surface has been taken on, the easy part." Blunt also has no time for those who are "immersed in another culture to understand it – that is unnecessary. Like how you can tell a white girl loves brothers when she has overly plucked, constantly surprised eyebrows, hooped earrings and a sexface 24/7. And I'm supposed to get down with that? [That's] just as offensive as Sophie the Belle & Sebastian tea-and-scones dame who says I scare her."
At the risk of "Professor Griff'n myself", he says, referring to the dementedly Afrocentric Public Enemy member, he's currently working on "teaching young black working-class kids about agency; awareness of the palette open to them. Reclaiming and rebalancing privilege. Maybe you don't see the closed door, cos it's closed but made of clear glass." What are his methods? "You'd have to attend a class to see how, and I'm not sure Brother Ahmed would let you in," he says drily.
One kid he's been working with is J-Star Valentine, who is supporting him on tour and who gained a modicum of notoriety for his rather baroque rendition of Hallelujah on week one of The X Factor this year. "He is beautiful," Blunt says. "He is a pure product of his generation, with no insecurities about this, and complete awareness – but still honest. I just like him as a person as well, and would rather hang with him than some techno regurgitator living in Berlin." He says they talk about "the love, life and losses of [Real Housewives Of Atlanta star] NeNe Leakes," and that they're "designing the merchandise for the next season of [equally tacky reality show] Bad Girls Club: Evian bottles replaced with leopard print covers to conceal the brand on TV. By the way: leopard print needs to be stopped in any form. Ironic bad taste in 2013 is just bad taste." He's pulling the rug just as my feet were getting comfy, and closes our conversation by saying he's off to Miami to shoot a Puerto Rican romcom called Boo'd Up. But wherever he really is, his inversion of the laws of balladry, PR, live performance and social etiquette remain bracing. Unlike most bands, who tell you about the influences they've sought and found, Blunt tells me that "what I like makes its way to me – it chooses me. I don't keep up with the Joneses – I am the Joneses."
