Hype Williams instigator and now solo raconteur, Dean Blunt, sidesteps preconceptions with a quietly psychedelic, sparse and sensual third album. In 'The Redeemer' he tends to a wipe-clean soundworld of lite jazz fusion motifs, bluesy guitar wisps and new age synth gelled together with dreamy sound FX and distressed ansafone messages whilst nonchalant, confessional vocals dictate a drowsy internal narrative. It's a sort of surreal soul scape simulacra, an adult contemporary fantasy as seen and heard from a detached perspective, a fact accentuated by the intangible, voice-in-your-head mixing and Blunt's lounging-about-the-flat delivery, together with occasional female partners and synthetic chorales. With 19 tracks in just under 45 minutes he's constructed an intricacy of ideas that's going to take more time and insight than we've got to fully unravel its cypher, to unweave what we may perceive to be ambiguity, or equally, a sort of provocative sincerity, but either way we're left totally beguiled and enchanted after a few listens. As glib as it may seem, the closest aesthetic comparisons we could make lie with 'R.I.P'-zoned Actress, Laurel Halo at her sparsest, or the slight sickliness of TV On The Radio's indie-soul-pop, yet ultimately it sounds quite like nowt out there.
