Dream, Interrupted is an instrumental hip hop album by American rapper/producer Danny!, and the fourth release under Danny's personal 1911 Music/Badenov Records imprint. "Dream, Interrupted" was released exclusively in the United Kingdom (under Danny's birth name, Daniel Swain) on August 14, 2006 (see 2006 in music) prior to seeing a stateside release the following year.
Overview.
Prior to the release of "Dream, Interrupted", Danny had released three studio albums ("The College Kicked-Out", "F.O.O.D." and "Charm") that showcased both his rapping and his production skills; "Dream, Interrupted" helped shift the spotlight solely on Danny's production. Presumably, the record was released under Danny's full name in an effort to distinguish himself from Danny!, his rapping alter ego.
The title itself is an allusion to Danny's well-publicized 2006 "retirement" in which he decided to briefly discontinue, or "interrupt", his long-time goal, or "dream", of hitting it big in the music industry. With the success of his third studio album "Charm" and his subsequent signing to Definitive Jux Records for an EP and music video, Danny has since released a sequel to "Dream, Interrupted", aptly titled "Dream, Fulfilled".
"Dream, Interrupted" opens and closes with, appropriately, portions of The Sylvers' "Cry Of A Dreamer". Excerpts from a Marvin Gaye interview are placed within the clips. The album's tagline, "23 years. 23 beats. 46 minutes. "You" do the math." helped listeners grasp the reason for Danny's choice of quantity of tracks and the overall length of the album (though the tagline is erroneous, as both the "Intro" and "Outro" aren't instrumentals at all, making the album comprise only 21 beats). The most common theory regarding "Dream, Interrupted"'s format is that the number "23" was meant to represent the age of both Danny! the rapper and Daniel Swain the producer at the time of its release; the sum of 23 and 23, of course, is 46. This was later confirmed during an interview.
The instrumental titles contain either subtle references to events in Danny's career, ethereal connotations or utter nonsense. The "hidden" meanings behind song titles have been debated on several hip-hop message boards.
Music.
With many of the tracks clocking in at just over two minutes long, the concise exploration of various tracks made "Dream, Interrupted" very similar in style to J Dilla's "Donuts", another instrumental album lauded in 2006 with an underlying theme and track titles containing seemingly subtle meanings.
Musically, "Dream, Interrupted" picks up where "Charm" left off, with the album balancing a sophisticated yet very distinctly upbeat sound with a somber undertone. Over the course of the past few years Danny's production style has evolved from sped-up, "chopped" soul samples typical of most of his contemporaries to more ambient, jazz-infused offerings that seem to be a hybrid of drum &amp; bass, bossa nova and electronica. This could be attributed to his recent experimentation with sampling songs from out-of-print foreign film soundtracks, specifically from France, Italy and Japan, as well as sound library records from England. Thus, Danny's musical "evolution" is first documented here on such songs as "Listen", "Twilight Mist" and "Sea of Tomorrow". Occasionally, however, Danny will revert to the sound he first introduced on his earlier work; examples on "Dream, Interrupted" include "I'm Not Ready", "This Time Around" and "Salon Des Refuses".
Availability.
For reasons still unknown, "Dream, Interrupted" was initially released in compact disc format in various parts of the United Kingdom. As a result, very few copies exist in the US and only a handful of music editors have ever even "seen" the actual record stateside. However, all of Danny's independent releases have been distributed in limited quantities, presumably due to a lack of a substantial budget.
The scarcity of the record in the UK, the virtual nonexistence of copies in the United States, and the meager promotion of the album overall made "Dream, Interrupted" one of Danny's most mysterious and sought-after projects in late 2006, until it was re-released digitally the following year. For a while following its initial release little else was known about the album outside of its promotional tagline and the occasional interview that Danny would mention it in, when prompted. In 2008 Danny's third instrumental album "Dream, Extinguished" would significantly eclipse the amount of scantiness and subsequent infringement of "Dream, Interrupted" due to its abrupt cancellation. "Dream, Interrupted"'s lack of publicity was a sharp contrast to the ubiquity of "Charm", released precisely five months prior.
References.
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