Dean 01 hails from Boston, MA.  His music is informed by his upper-middle class upbringing, heartbreak, and his constant desire to escape by using drugs and alcohol.  At, 23, his musical career is just beginning, and as his skills incubate, one can only imagine the places his angelic voice will take him.  Dean plays no instruments, but channels his otherworldly voice from who knows where, to create what he calls his “candy.”

Really racking up the quality releases R&R drop rrr079 on us and this time it’s a dreamy indie collage in the style of Panda Bear by Dean Angel and remember R&R is free.

EP opener West Coast Takeover Chant is a mellow and spooky arrangement of sounds and, well… chants. It sounds a little like a slice of music that was to moving and to scary to put in the Lion King. His voice is a soaring reverb drenched delight that adds the ghostly atmosphere to each tune.

Hola Jote has a beautiful fragile sounding broken guitar loop, it sounds like its made on a bashed up tin instrument. It’s a lo-fi gem that could be in a scene from a western.

Oheeoh uses atmospheric percussion and that spooky voice of his to make a mesmerising and almost religious track. The thumping boom of the kick is offset by a ticking kind of hi-hat sound; these don’t sound like drums though its some kind of found sound shenanigans.

Caterpillar is one of the highlights for me a truly excellent piece of music. The dreamy loop reminds me of some kind of freaked and tweaked house tune for some reason. Its quite uplifting yet the vocals give it a dark and soaring edge. This builds with some static noise and the loop really starts to hypnotise you like something The Field would do, well The Field mixed with Animal Collective.

Hair Soup closes the EP in lo-fi style with a crunchy a alluring bedding for Dean’s voice. His style is quite different to anything I have heard before, its brooding and melancholic with a kind of baritone feel to it yet he can make it soar. The way he uses it against the hypnotic backing track is a thing of wonder.

Dean Angel’s Crusader of Fruits Island EP is another thing of wonder and delight from Rack & Ruin, they keep on pushing original and compelling artists for the love of it. Download it now and check the back catalogue because if this is the first R&R you have heard you have a treat in store.

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Rack & Ruin is run by Dean Birkett from his adopted home country of Holland.  The label sprouted from a forum, he frequented,  for the band The Unicorns.  Birkett found himself so inspired by the music being shared around that forum  that he felt he had to document it.  His label provides the legacy, a kaleidoscopic mix of genres and a champion of new exciting artists.   Only one and a half years old, there’s some 140+ releases to be found at their website (which kind of makes us look lazy, what with our measly 10 releases in 2 years) yet the sheer volume doesn’t detract from the overall quality.

One of my favourite discoveries from R&R is the mind-bending Dean Woods (aka Dean Angel and soon to be known as Dean 01).  Much has been made of Animal Collective’s ‘Merriweather Post Pavillion‘ record this  year and its influence appears to have filtered through to our Dean too.  That’s not to say he’s simply copying, as stomping opener ‘Can U Believe?’ shows.  Infectious doesn’t even begin to describe this number which also recalls the bittersweet melodies of Brian Wilson and the wall-of-sound techniques of Phil Spector. ‘Conneticuit Rivr‘  follows peppering more psychedelic, reverbed vocals over a hypnotic, reversed template

‘Tonio‘ repeats the trick, but gets more success with another gorgeous chorus, while both ‘Dansinseed‘ and ‘Ahhhmens‘ display Woods’ considerable vocal talents (an echo-drenched, but colourful style), with the former sounding like early Syd Barrett mixed with the machinistic rythmns of  Silver Apples.

To be fair, the following four tracks don’t quite live up to Woods’ opening gambit of ‘Do You Believe?’, but with his ace played immediately you’ll definitely want to check out the rest.

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