dälek – Abandoned Language (Ipecac, 2007)
To begin with Dälek could actually be outer-space mutants comprised of metal objects. Seems’ pretty nasty. But in this world, Dälek is a rap duo that releases albums on a rock/metal label.
Beginning with the brightly colored and seemingly happy album From Filthy Tongue of God and Griots, this group has enamored and confused left-field hip-hoppers. Being matched with Patton’s Ipecac label is actually a sensible concept, much like Sage Francis or Eyedea signing to Epitaph. There is a white audience for this music and every group can take steps towards reaching out.
While the other acts mentioned have a bit more of a palatable sound, Dälek is loud and disturbing both musically and lyrically. On Abandoned Language, dälek (the emcee as opposed to Dälek the group) continues his unique criticism of American culture and the people that have constructed it.
In other critiques of this new disc, some have commented upon the fact that the group has toned down its’ trademark noise-some production. But luckily, the horns on “Starved for Truth” sound as if they have been culled from either Beefheart or Pere Ubu for inclusion on the track. This release seems related to El-P’s last slab in the sense that the commercial concept of music is present; dälek is reaching more people than before, but he seems at odds with it. Once he prods, “Sales are the mark of the illest emcee”.
Even more than all of these tirades on politics and the games we play, the idea of human communication is broached over and over again. The verse of dälek’s on “Bricks Crumble” is looped and played against itself, creating a disquieting form of interruption. He still speaks the same words, with the same meaning, but now there is the possibility of hearing something, a certain intonation perhaps, that escaped the listener before. Again, in “Tarnished,” the verse that dälek expounds is muffled and low in the mix, making music a more prominent and immediate form of communicating. In that same song though, the listener receives the thesis of most underground hip-hop screeds; “the core of man is tarnished.”
