Black Metal

The Artist: Dean Blunt

Dean Blunt is a shapeshifter. Formerly half of Hype Williams - an experimental duo known for their distortion and detachment - Blunt has spent his solo career evading categorisation.

He’s made conceptual art pieces, fake press releases and albums that feel like puzzles. He rarely gives interviews. His live shows are sometimes confrontational, sometimes barely shows at all.

But behind the irony and anonymity, there’s something deeply human.

Especially on Black Metal.

The Record: Black Metal (2014)

Black Metal is full of contradictions. Romantic but disaffected. Lo-fi but lavish. Cold but somehow open.

Opener LUSH is a loop of a string section, scratched and scarred. 50 CENT drifts along with grainy vocals and tape-deck fuzz.

Then 100 arrives - a swoon of acoustic guitar, drum machines and echoed vocals, it sounds like Elliott Smith trying to reach us from the beyond.

BLOW is Dean at his most solitary. Everything stripped back to breath and strings.

MOLLY & AQUAFINA is stranger still - a drugged-out, deadpan anthem with its own warped gravity.

Every track is a collage - crackling samples, abrupt endings, sudden beauty.

There’s heartbreak in here. And bravado. And decay.

But what makes Black Metal so magnetic is its refusal to explain itself.