"City Centre" is the hilariously heartfelt debut single from Senior Dunce, the self-billed outsider who doesn't stop marching to a different drum beat. He builds a whole new drum from scratch. Interjecting a bizarrely adorable pronunciation of "center" as "central," Dunce makes a linguistic slip into a brilliant, almost glistening statement, pulsing with warmth, wit, and a low-key spirit of defiance.
Penned from his current base in Liverpool, UK, "City Centre" documents when a cultural confusion transformed into a shared inside joke. Suddenly, a foreigner struggling to accept the correct British pronunciation also discovered unexpected brotherhood in his language, not mockery. Not only did his local Scouser friends take it up themselves, but they also enshrined the moment as a tiny act of resistance against linguistic orthodoxy, even the kind that came in your native dialect.
The Korean-born artist, who spent more than two decades in the music trenches as a sound designer, producer, teacher, and even club owner, brings a freakish depth to his debut. His obsession with kick drums is bordering on unhealthy, and it's there in the track's deliberate low-end construction. Every beat, it's clear, is intentional, a footstep through a personal past that includes bullying, alienation, despair, and finally, creative survival.