Up and coming: Dan Black - The un and only

"I PUT MY INFLUENCES TOGETHER with a very aggressive sledgehammer," laughs singer-songwriter Dan Black of an extensive chain of quoted comparisons which includes Prince, the Smiths and superstar producer Timbaland, not to mention late hip-hop godfather Notorious BIG, whose track Hypnotize Black covered as Hypntz.

"It's just a matter of experimenting," he says, "and often what I do doesn't work. But all music is a blend of two or more things that have gone before, or a reaction to new technology. Rock 'n' roll, blues, techno ... I'm not saying I'm a revolutionary – I like to think my work follows in these traditions."

Black is one of those satisfyingly chameleon-like pop artists whose changes in direction seem to be the result of honest experimentation rather than cynical fad-chasing. For almost a decade he was the voice of The Servant, a traditional indie-rock quartet who achieved negligible recognition in the UK but reasonable success on the continent.

Since The Servant split in 2007, the 33-year-old Black has returned to the method of working which suited him best when he started out, creating ambient electronic love songs and grand pop symphonies on his own. "When I was growing up," he recalls, "a lot of the artists I liked were quite autonomous; an obvious one was Prince. So with the advent of computer technology, you don't need access to the big expensive studios he had to use to create a similar sound."

Of course, the blessing and the curse of the solo artist is probably a certain degree of control-freakishness, at least in the case of a songwriter who's given as much leeway by his label as Black.

"I've always been a bit dominant in bands," he agrees. "I'd write a song and say: 'I've got an idea for the bassline, I thought you could do this and that', and that would understandably p*** everyone off. They'd think: 'Well, what is there for me to do?'

"But when I write a song, I don't see a dividing line between the sound of the drums or what sampler's doing what and the lyrics, melodies and chords that I'm writing. The same goes for the album artwork, the T-shirts and what a band wear live – all those things fuse into your perception of the music – so I guess I'm now foolishly trying to pull all of these elements in the same direction myself."

The strategy has worked for Black, with his name coming to public prominence when he became one of the only male solo artists to appear on lists of the hottest-tipped new acts of 2009 alongside huge subsequent successes such as La Roux, Florence and the Machine and Little Boots. Although he hasn't quite hit the same heights as these contemporaries yet, a busy summer festival schedule including Lovebox, Camp Bestival, Global Gathering, the Big Chill and Glastonbury – not to mention the forthcoming debut album ((un)) – should see his profile increase.

"Why is the album called ((un))?" laughs Black. You can tell he's used to the question. "Well, I live in France, so the word 'un' means 'one', and it's just me and this is my first record. Whereas in English, if you put 'un' before a word, it means it's not that thing – I hope this record's unboring, unrubbish, untypical, but I also want it to pull away from anything approaching cliché, so I hope it's unpop, unrock, unhip-hop. It juxtaposes happy with sad and the traditional with the modern, so the 'u' and the 'n' are each other's mirror image to represent this."

He's thought this through very thoroughly. "I've obviously got a lot of time on my hands," he laughs.

Black has lived in Paris now for the best part of three years.

"London's too distracting, while Paris is smaller and there's more emphasis on eating well and living a life with some kind of quality to it, not just going to crazy parties and being super-trendy," he says. "Believe me, my days of destroying myself with drink and drugs are far behind me."

In this and most other respects, Black is a most untypical pop-rock-hip-hop star.

• Dan Black's album ((un)) isreleased on Monday by A&M Records.


What other people are saying...

"Outstanding moments, notably the pulverising I Love Life and Pump My Pumps, which rips the riff from Cliff's Devil Woman and is still cool."

– Independent on Sunday

"(Black's] quirkily intelligent, richly melodic, funky electro would appear to be the very model of future pop."

– Telegraph