dean blunt & inga copeland - black is beautiful (album preview)

*Excerpts from the album. Now available at Experimedia.net.* I'll be honest - Dean Blunt & Inga Copeland's Hype Williams project has always been very hit-or-miss (and mostly miss) for me. After a while, I pretty much stopped caring and couldn't really be bothered to care either way. But with "Black is Beautiful," it finally all clicked. "Black is Beautiful," the duo's Hyperdub debut, is the soundtrack to William Gibson's Bridge Trilogy (and particularly Idoru) that I always hoped would one day exist. This is warped dystopian perfection that covers a whole lot of (moon)bases. Slippery pop confections put Copeland's vocals at the forefront. Paired with the smudged-out productions, it's an expertly realized combination that is only bittersweet because it doesn't last forever. Woozy synthscapes plot out virtual shapes on a pitch-black horizon while squashed beats dance along in the red. "Black is Beautiful" is weirdly focused in that it always sounds like something that would be playing in the margins as you hover through the underbelly of Tokyo circa 2206. I had no idea Blunt & Copeland had this record in them. Fantastic. - Brad Rose, Experimedia---Red vinyl LP version, housed in an embossed sleeve. "After three albums for as many labels, Dean Blunt and Inga Copeland, also of the group Hype Williams, release their debut Hyperdub LP, Black Is Beautiful. Amid rumours circulating, and confirmed by their 'advisor' Denna Frances, the album was recorded during a tremulous period for the two : Inga Copeland's Arsenal girls tryouts, Dean's 'Waschbärgate' trial (he was implicated in being behind a one night robbing spree across 16 taxidermists based in London and the South East, allegedly only for racoons) and his subsequent conversion to Nation of Islam upon being acquitted. Black Is Beautiful is laced with their signature hazy glow and is full of crunched eurovision lullabies, kinetic drum machine jams, unsettling funk, smeared walls of synth, moments of unadulterated opiated bliss, mogadon rap, infinite coughs and insights into the odd sexual behaviour of crackers."