Dan Black Artist Review
By: JamesH | Posted: 10th June 2009
Dan Black is a one man musical concoction of dance, indie and rap. Based in London and Paris, Dan Black certainly has continental nuances in his music, notably in the demo track ‘I Love Life' from his forthcoming album.
This track boasts quite a catchy synth sound throughout, a sound which may have been popularised recently by such artists as MGMT and Hadouken, yet far removed from the pioneers of synthetic sound such as Kraftwerk. Like these bands, Dan Black has infact modernised what can be considered an outdated sound by creating his own musical design.
If you like dance inspired indie music, then Dan Black will fit the bill. Inspired by such artists as Jay Z and Sigur Ros, there is certainly an aspect of a fusion of influences in Dan Black's music, yet ‘I Love Life' is fairly conventional in its composition as a dance track.
The way that ‘I Love Life' does differ from such recent breakthrough acts as Basshunter is that there is a definite sense of seriousness in ‘I Love Life', the song is a determined and subdued mixture of rhythmic percussion and electronic hums, less upbeat and more austere.
Dan Black's vocal monotony is reminiscent of The Streets Mike Skinner, although worlds apart in content and style, they both seem to tell a story using casual conversational style, but Dan Black does have cleverly structures lyrics.
The use of a vocal coder at points also enhances this space age feel which the song shows off, but one thing that does get extremely tiresome is the tinny sound of the cowbell which doesn't let up for the whole duration of the track.
Aside from this annoyance, there is a much needed bridge towards the end of the song which seems to cut short, just as you feel something has built up to a climax.
It is possible that Dan Black has come about at the right time, with the indie dance scene growing ever more popular, new wave fluorescent clad youngsters are producing top quality music with their very own subculture of art, fashion and music.
All in all ‘I Love Life' is a track that has potential, but it just has that something missing, its just a little too repetitive and sometimes predictable.
Dan Black is currently touring throughout Britain on the Wonkypop Tour, check out Dan Black's Myspace page for more information.
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Tags: monotony, annoyance, space age, conversational style, quality music, art fashion