Oliver Dean
Ghetto Love

Studio-Album

The way this singer/songwriter, being “just a newcomer”, presents his very own album is almost insolent. Not giving any tribute to marketing strategies, and ignoring that the music business wants gags and gimmicks, he is simply doing his own thing.

Oliver Deans way of working is monomaniacal. Ghetto Love is his album; he wrote the songs, he played them, supported by nine guest musicians, he produced and mixed the album himself. When Oliver Dean self-confidentially and presumptuous names his inspirations, it is not arrogance but the demand of high standards: David Bowie, Lou Reed and John Cale - loners and mulititalents, who gave numerous impulses and innovations in the recent 30 years of music.

Ghetto Love is a programmatic title for the album of a lone wolf. The songs are episodes in the history of an individual in a - metaphoric - ghetto: external separaton and self-chosen isolation. Nevertheless, the seductiveness of this music is surprising. Oliver Dean is talking from experience, be it friendship, love, and also its failure, or loneliness, madness and dreams of flying.

Admirers of a certain gloomy elegance will love this album. There is an incredible erotic tension, created by the steadiness the music radiates in even the most tensive moments, and Oliver Dean’s deep voice, which stays calm, almost cool, when he sings about painful matters. It’s hard to put this elegant, bitter sweet music in words - maybe it is more helpful to remember the night club scenes from Blue Velvet or the mood of the Nouvelle Vague films. Oliver Dean is the reincarnation of the dandy, known from Roxy Music and Bryan Ferry - in a post-modern, broken form.

Ghetto Love is outlet, purification, catharsis. It wouldn’t be quite right to call it an ego trip. Ghetto Love is the result of a long solo run, now Oliver Dean emerges from his Ghetto, having created an album which, in contrast to the chill of its motifs, always sounds warm, close and almost optimistic.