Music Review: Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip - Angles

Like freeze dried prophets walking out across the pollution-hardened Thames, the British duo of Dan Le Sac (DJ, effects - aka Dan Stephens) and Scroobious Pip (words - aka David Meads) want to tell us that we've lost our way. Aware of the challenge of raising cerebral matters with a dumbed down audience, it's an impassioned message that they're prepared to cloak - in a move Trojans will be familiar with - in the disguise of clattering Brit-hop.

Instead of a sandwich board in a rat-infested strip mall, their 2007 debut single "Thou Shalt Not Kill" recontemporised Moses' original precepts, creating a street pulpit from which to set out the laws according to their own nu-hippy belief systems; the cockney enclave of Stanford-Le-Hope became their Mount Sinai.

With Stephens railing machine gun like against the vagaries of modern urban life in Britian - excruciating open mic nights, disposable micro music "scenes", preposterous soap-celebrity idolisation - all in a pronounced Essex twang, it was a record which had humour, social commentary, and balls aplenty, and became that rarest of things in the hype age; a bona fide word-of-mouth success. With a similar one hit wonder feeling to the equally bitchy viral hit "LDN Is A Victim" - itself an acid-tongued skit of East London's scenester ethics, pot-shotting discriminately at the likes of Lily Allen, The Klaxons, and Kate Nash - notions of career longevity for the duo however seemed like another act's problem. Not so. Stephens and Meads wasted little time in releasing a follow up, the only slightly less coruscating "The Beat That My heart Skipped" and, impressively undeterred by its failure to repeat their chart success, the duo then set out on a nationwide tour, along with various UK festival appearances.

Further surprises were to come by way of their debut album, Angles; whilst Stephens' charachteristic estuary delivery and bone dry humour remained a constant, musically it wandered far and wide, intriguingly extending its canon to draw upon elements
of folk ("Development") and electronica ("Waiting For The Beat to Kick In") as well as more recognisably energetic hip hop infusions. It was a creative arc that few had attempted since the Gorillaz's eponymous debut in 2001 and an undoubted statement
that our conscisences would continue to be mercilessly pricked for some time to come.

Article Author: Andy Peterson

British. Thirtysomething. Passionate. Opinionated to a fault. Never less than everything. If you're at the edge of reason, you're taking up too much room.

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