When faced with a full album from Darling Black, those of you who like your music to fall into neat boxes, follow easy-to-understand demarcations, adhere to fads and fashions, and surf the prevailing zeitgeist, are going to find things a bit daunting.
Known for fronting Lulu Lewis, here Dylan Hundley makes startlingly unique music. Timeless and genreless, it is music that could have been made at any time from the post-punk synth revolution onwards, but which would stand out in an ahead-of-the-curve, non-conformist way wherever you might have found it on the timeline. Wandering between intriguing songs and beguiling sonic interludes, we are presented with a future-retro blend of darkwave and electro-dance, goth, and a kind of alternative disco.
After some soundscaping and spoken word-driven intros, “8th and Alvarado” is where things start to settle into their groove, a ticking, skittering, fragile, and spacious blend of beats and pumping, propulsive bass pulses, part post-punk party, part future-dance and “Dial” has the exotic rhythms and urgency of Talking Heads reimagined as an electronic project, a line that they really should have pursued. Hang on, they did, sort of. Well, let’s just say that if you like Tom Tom Club, you will find lots to love here.
With “Walking on Thin Ice,” you can feel a sort of Cold War chill blowing through the heart of the song. “Deep Down in the Ground” is pulsating and poised, and “Rosegarden Funeral of Sores” captures the spirit of Bauhaus and reframes them in a more dancefloor vibe.
Darling Black is an album of opposites, one where the cool, clinical beats are inviting, where rage and joy dance deftly together, where stark beauty runs alongside the slightly terrifying, where the sound of a dark, robotnik, musical past is reimagined for a new generation of alternative creatures of the night.
While previous singles indicated that Darling Black has a unique sonic touch, it is only when you experience the music as a whole – the songs, the spoken world, the grooves, the space, the strangeness, the short interludes, the complete scope and the scale as god, or in this case Dylan Hundley, intended, that you realise just what a beguiling and unique and rewarding album this is.
