- Thu, 2012-06-28 12:52
Before I launch my rival and possibly superior website, ifuckinglovemusic.com, the peeps at I Like Music have asked me to guest edit theirs. My name is dan le sac and you might kinda recognise me as that fellow who knocks around with that bearded bloke from Soccer AM.
Sadly I'm not actually launching ifuckinglovemusic.com because I'm too busy getting ready for the release of my first solo LP! It's called Space Between the Words and features a whole host of people slightly more talented than me. Merz, B Dolan, Joshua Idehen, Fraser Rowan (of my old band The Lava Experiments), Pete Hefferan (of Pete & the Pirates), Sarah Williams White and Emma-Lee Moss (who happened to Guest Edit I Like Music last month) all take on vocal duties.
Music is the best thing on earth, you might argue movies are better but without those wonderful soundtracks they'd just be CCTV footage of overly dramatic people, to prove it here's a little playlist of noise I'd like you to hear.
dan le sac.
Click the play button below to launch the pop-out player and stream dan le sac's playlist, then scroll down to read his features...
Back in the year 2000, before we knew Rupert Murdoch was evil and when we still had satellite dishes, in those heady days when MTV still played actual music videos - and was in fact a Music Television Channel - there was a show called 120minutes. It was on this show I first heard Mike Ladd's Infecticons, and truly realised that there was more to hip hop than "ass cappin'" & "ho' thrashin'". It is a diatribe against the guns, bitches and bling direction of hip hop at the time, without the knowing nod saying "look how conscious I am."
"emcee's sound the same like onomatopoeia…"
This is a broken-hearted, sombre, despairing record. It is the moment in my life where I realised not all was correct with 'U can't touch this' and 'cool for cats'. It marks the point when I realised rainbows went nowhere, and god didn't actually exist. How was my 14/15 year old brain meant to cope with Joy Division and puberty at the same time? I felt like I discovered women & death in the same day.
Yet I owe the consequences of hearing Closer, for that first time, everything. It speaks in some way to every record I've ever loved, it influences the way I make music, it taught me how lucky I am to have led this life I lead. Four men from Salford did all this to me in just under 45 minutes. Who can ask for more?
Now all of the above is a deeply personal response to a deeply personal album, but to approach it with cold unbiased analysis feels somewhat impossible for me. It is a beautifully bleak album, with moments of abject misery, but that darkness at its core is offset by stunning melody, lush production and truly honest delivery.
It is rare for me to find a video that is shares such a simpatico relationship to the song it was created for. HEALTH and director Eric Wareheim have achieved something so perfectly matched that I can't imagine one existing without the other. Although, that said, if you tell anyone I used the word 'simpatico', I will come to your house and inflict some street justice on you.
The video is dark, both in content and execution, yet for something so aggressively bleak, it's wonderfully uplifting. She survives, he doesn't.
In short, chase a girl in a wig with a man in y-fronts holding a machete, add blood and I am happy.
Partner in crime to Britain's favourite bearded wordsmith - Scroobius Pip - dan le sac is already known for his ability to craft a catchy and idiosyncratic tune. Now the time has come for him to explore those skills in new ways with the release of his debut solo album: Space Between The Words. Without the Pip in tow dan le sac is free to strike out for musical pastures new, touching on everything from electro-pop to house in a journey aided by a handful of carefully chosen vocalists.
Find out more about dan le sac and his debut album at www.danlesac.co.uk
