Dean Blunt

Maverick musician and producer Dean Blunt, a London (Hackney) native born Roy Nnawuchi, played bass in Graffiti Island prior to making bigger waves with Inga Copeland as Hype Williams. The duo was classified as chillwave and as hypnagogic pop, two terms Blunt rejected. From 2009 through 2012, Hype Williams released a handful of albums and several singles and EPs, where material ranged from lo-fi house to noisy collages with equally whimsical titles. Blunt started releasing solo material in 2011 and quickly built a discography that rivaled the size of his work with Copeland. Among his most notable full-lengths were The Narcissist II (Hippos in Tanks, 2012), The Redeemer (Hippos in Tanks, 2013), and Black Metal (Rough Trade, 2014). The first two of those three saw him dabble in slack singing and songwriting, while the last of the bunch was a full embrace of the form that was even, at times, guitar-based.