Album Review: Dan Le Sac - Space Between The Words

This may be Dan Le Sac's debut solo album, stepping away from his collaborative work with Scoobius Pip, but he's by no means going it alone on Space Between The Words, joined by a cast of thousands of vocalists (well, nine to be precise), over the course of the album's 13 tracks.

Le Sac has never been a particularly interesting producer, his compositions functioning competently as backing for a strong frontman, but left to his own devices there's really not a lot to these tracks. This is a workman-like album, entirely competent but lacking any artistry. Even the best songs, like Caretaker, a hip hop track featuring B Dolan, or the slightly sultry Memorial with Emmy the Great, stretch on a minute or two too long, driving into the ground an idea that was, at least initially, interesting and relatively fresh.

Most of the other songs never even reach that point, setting the dial to paint-by-numbers euro-house or dubstep and never aiming for anything greater. With a strong, or unusual, singer, the backing tracks might have been fine – significantly worse work has been saved by an interesting vocal hook – but none of the guest vocalists emerge as the saviour the album needs and this seems more like a production problem than anything else. Space Between the Words is rarely offensive, but there's nothing that will catch a listener's attention, let alone their imagination.