Happy Ending: CD

The album was recorded at the top of an East London tower block, mixed in a beach hut on Camber Sands and gilded by Bollywood strings is already setting its sights hide and wide, but when the sound and vision encompasses panoramic electronic soul laced with a viscerally personal reaction to the mad times we’re living through, we’re in the presence of something special.

The lead single that trails the album, ‘All in the World,’ is a window onto the duo’s kaleidoscopic rhythm and rhyme, mixing joy and rage with chance and chaos. Over a percolating house/disco hybrid – “It’s a bit ravey,” Sean reckons – David’s suitably charged lyric suggests he’s surrendering rather than fighting this, “Catalogue of fools,” as he puts it. “This is my return to the louche years / Back to the numberless days and the hangovers HiFi Sean & David McAlmont - Happy Ending.

Our two British protagonists are Sean Dickson, a former indie star who reinvented himself as an electronic adventurist - musician, DJ, producer – whose last album Ft. featured a stellar line-up of guest vocalists, including Yoko Ono, Fred Schneider (B- 52’s), Alan Vega, Crystal Waters (fronting ‘Testify’, which topped the US Billboard dance chart) and David McAlmont - the last, a thrilling singing sensation with an illustrious history, from indie-soul pioneers Thieves and the legendary McAlmont & Butler to purer soul and jazz recordings and a striking collaboration with minimalist composer Michael Nyman.