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Q MagazineApr 2, 2012DVA's full-length debut Pretty Ugly feels more late night than early morning, cutting a swathe through dubstep, future soul and jittery electronica. [Apr 2012, p.98]
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MojoMar 23, 2012Soulful, moving music. [Apr 2012, p.91]
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Mar 20, 2012It's rare an album creates a world so weird yet so coherent and absorbingly musical, but DVA has done it here; the only reasonable response is to take a deep breath and dive in.
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Mar 12, 2012The songwriting and hyper-futurism made easy are a case of Smart by name.
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Mar 7, 2012A consistently engaging and at times exhilarating listen.
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Mar 7, 2012His vision continues to be as expansive and eccentric as usual.
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Mar 20, 2012The Hyperdub resident dabbles in funk, grime, experimental, R&B and soul, a mélange of styles that effortlessly coexist.
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Mar 20, 2012There's occasional crimes of flannel-wet schmaltz but mostly Smart is like an esoteric, London-based Dam-Funk with a fondness for chemically enhanced raving.
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Mar 16, 2012Pretty Ugly is occasionally tender, sometimes facetious; thrillingly mechanical, let down by human voices; frequently adventurous, often injudicious.
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Mar 14, 2012Pretty Ugly takes the ugliest tropes of UK dance music and flips them inside out without losing what makes them so physically powerful in the first place.
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Mar 22, 2012DVA is most successful when he edits out the excess and focuses his production on a handful of strong elements. As a producer, it's self-control, not talent, that he's lacking.
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Mar 15, 2012Framing Pretty Ugly as a broken-beat album helps account for its pleasures, but can't entirely absolve its pitfalls, perhaps because much of what is true for funky remains true for broken beat, namely, that the flight into syncopation should not be heedless.
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The WireApr 18, 2012More than half of Pretty Ugly combines vocals prominently into the mix after a style that sometimes flounders in its own ambition. [Mar 2012, p.52]
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Mar 7, 2012Taken in its entirety, it doesn't offer enough variety or dynamics to warrant repeat listens.
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May 2, 2012Pretty Ugly is neither very pretty nor particularly ugly, rather a lumpen, unengaging mess.