(The Medicine Label / SSR)
Noms de plume (Noms de turntable?) are in fashion for DJs these days: just as Norman Cook is Fatboy Slim, the Parisian Dominique Dalcan has released The Man in the Shadow under the name of Snooze. But where Fatboy Slim is Cook’s booze-fuelled alter ego, Snooze is Dalcan as black-and-white movie buff. The promotional material tries to place Snooze in the French disco house scene, but this DJ/musician’smusic resembles more closely the cinematic trip-hop of Portishead, albeit with drum-’n’-bass stylings. Steeped in an atmosphere of jazz-tinged noir and peppered with obscure film samples, this album evokes the smoky lounges of the pre-Technicolor life. The breakbeats (“Middle Class Lady”) and downbeat jazz (“Anais Nin’s Plot”) are hypnotic, as is the blending of piano and scratching on “Before Sunrise”, but guest singer Nancy Danino’s two torch drenched vocals are the album’s sweet high. Layered over the theme from The Saint and a rising string section in “Down for Mine”, her smouldering voice drips melancholy; on “Your Consciousness Goes Bip”, it exudes cool detachment. Like the alarm clock function, Snooze sneaks in under the radar of the consciousness, calling you into the world – but it’s his world, a world of cigarettes, dim lights, and men in shadows.