The Range

https://www.residentadvisor.net/podcast-episode.aspx?id=521

“Can you think of many current dance music artists whose music you’d call “earnest”? Not earnest in the sense of solemnity or seriousness, more like honest-to-god, heart-on-the-sleeve emotion? Dance music often seems most comfortable in obfuscation, its emotions held back a little, but as The Range, James Hinton writes songs that go against this grain. His sound, a kind of home listening style made from bits of club music, is pretty and incredibly sincere. In his review of Potential, Hinton’s recent album on Domino, Andrew Ryce used words like “poignancy,” “vulnerable,” “bittersweet,” and “heart-tugging melodrama” to describe its 11 tracks. In particular, Hinton loves to draw sentiment from the human voice. On Nonfiction, his 2013 breakthrough album, he sampled speech and singing from YouTube videos with barely any views; on Potential he put this concept at the heart of the record, going as far as to make a documentary about the stories behind the people he sampled. “Right now I don’t have a backup plan for if I don’t make it,” says a wannabe artist on “Regular,” a line soaked in hope and vulnerability in a way that defines the album.”