X-tasy

Dean Blunt – ‘X-tasy’.

Dean Blunt. X-tasy.
6 March 2013

Dean Blunt just loves to push those buttons. If he isn’t destroying ear drums with a high frequency pitch change at the German debut of The Narcissist -a play-slash-live music performance presented at this year’s CTM Festival -then he’s releasing ‘X-tasy’ as an obtuse comment on racial profiling in modern media accompanied by a wikipedia link to the Spike Lee-coined ‘Magical Negro’ trope. Incidentally, it’s that very signal, turning from barely perceptible bass through to skull-crushing treble over four monotonous minutes, that Blunt played in Berlin already and it’s apparently a harbinger to his upcoming album The Redeemer, out on Hippos in Tanks and World Music Group, May 1.

The implications of such a ‘track’ are plentiful. Perhaps pointing most explicitly to the contemporary obsession with RnB culture, by mainstream pop and the underground alike, as some kind of exploitative mechanism. Especially, when accompanied by a video of a rippedĀ African-American, D’Angelo miming his highly-explicit ‘Untitled (How Does It Feel)’ in super-slow motion.

Make of it what you will and listen through actual speakers.**

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