(Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)
New Jersey's Dalek
(the project of rapper Will Brooks and producer Alap "Oktopus" Momin)
delivered a baroque pop-psychedelic version of
Public Enemy's
creative chaos
with the five lengthy songs of Negro Necro Nekros (Gern Blandsten, 1998).
Layers of instruments and a general philosophy of therapeutic discontinuity
yielded a dystopian soundscape (crafted by Momin and dj Rudy "Rek" Chicata)
in which the message (assuming that one could
make out the lyrics) was much less important than the vehicle.
Swollen Tongue Burns is a sonic nightmare, the voice hit and submerged
by booming percussion, industrial-degree electronic effects,
orchestral crescendos, acoustic blues detours, dissonant vertigoes.
The mini-album juxtaposed disorienting instrumental passages
(notably the Indian jam of the tortured Three Rocks Blessed)
with arrangements in the vein of
El-P's productions
(the dissonant multi-stylistic collage of voice and instruments of
Praise Be The Man).
The more regular pieces were the atmospheric ballad Images of .44 Casings (that extended to ten minutes via a calm instrumental repetition of its leitmotiv) and the jazzy The Untravelled Road.
Dalek thrived halfway between the neurotic and the transcendental, the same
way that industrial music did in the late 1970s.
Having replaced Chicata with dj Hsi-Chang "Still" Lin,
Dalek increased the doses of neurosis and alienation on
From Filthy Tongue of Gods and Griots (Ipecac, 2002), which now
resembled a series of essays on shock-inducing sounds.
Focusing on generally shorter songs helped Dalek achieve a combat cohesiveness
not registered since Tackhead
(Spiritual Healing, whipped by harsh electronic distortions,
the booming polyrhythm of From Mole Hills,
the metallic clangor of Hold Tight,
and especially the turbulent electronic soundscape of Voices Of The Ether).
The electronic ethnic ambient noise hodgepodge peaks with the
twelve-minute acid delirium of Black Smoke Rises, a free-form
parade of wildly dissonant sounds underpinning the rapper's free-form poetry.
Simpler structures craft the tragic overtones of Speak Volumes
and the soaring psychedelic hymn of Forever Close My Eyes.
Last but not least,
Trampled Brethren was another attemp at raga-rap fusion.
Ruin It was a collaboration with
Kid 606;
and
Derbe Respect Alder (2003) was a collaboration with
Faust.
Absence (Ipecac, 2004) is another spectacular journey through
Dalek's post-industrial wasteland:
explosive like a shrapnel
(notably Distorted Prose and
Eyes To Form Shadows),
dense like a lava flow
(Asylum),
and, still, elegant like a peacock's tail.
Tracks such as
A Beast Caged
Opiate the Masses and especially
In Midst of Struggle
provide for a multi-dimensional experience, encompassing
Throbbing Gristle's industrial nightmares,,
Gordon Mumma's electronic symphonies,
Lou Reed's metal-machine music,
Otomo Yoshihide's turntable noise,
and, last but not least,
Public Enemy's agit-prop raps;
while
Ever Somber
manages to sound infectious (if not downright catchy) in virtue of the
surgical balance between rhythms, rhyming and arrangements.
Koner is the "out of space" instrumental du jour.
Dalek's turntablist Hsi-Chang "Still" Lin has released an album of eerie
soundscapes, Remains (Public Guilt, 2005).
Oktopus' magic production touch is downplayed on
Abandoned Language (Ipecac, 2007), that sounds like a much more
traditional hip-hop album, despite the ten-minute subdued ambient-like excursus
Abandoned Language with its almost symphonic finale.
Oktopus had his own (harsh, dissonant) language.
Dalek is now limited to one language, the rapper's language.
The more disturbing aspects of the collaboration are gone.
Too often Oktopus' production merely emphasizes the MC's lyrics, instead of
providing a true counterpoint.
The notable exceptions are Bricks Crumble, emboldened by a
pulsing syncopated digital rhythm and psychedelic droning keyboards,
Content To Play Villain, enveloped in a
Robert Wyatt-ian instrumental horns-heavy
wall of sound,
the sleepy Afro-funk shuffle Isolated Stare, in which the rap pops up
only at the end,
and the wordless dissonant chamber music of Lynch.
Some of the duo's psychological power is lost in the
process. In a sense, this is the album that allows them to ponder and allows
their listeners to rest, after a deluge of shock therapies and violent traumas.
Deadverse Massive Vol. 1 (2007) collects rarities from 1999-2006.
Gutter Tactics (Ipecac, 2009), the second album without turntablist
Hsi-Chang "Still" Lin, boasts a sound that owes more to heavy metal, shoegazing
rock and industrial music than to hip-hop traditions,
thanks to a meaner Oktopus and evil contributions by friends.
Dalek samples a preacher (ranting about all the evils of USA intervention in the world)
in the overture
Blessed Are They Who Bash Your Children's Heads Against A Rock,
and nails his emphatic political sermon against a wall of musique concrete.
No Question exudes booming hard-rock vibrations and envelops them in
floating gritty electronic drones.
Combined with hypnotic tribal percussion
and gargantuan vocals,
the electronics is even more disorienting in
Armed with Krylon, a new artistic peak.
The bacchanal has psychological meaning. For example, the
dramatic overtones of Street Diction are accentuated by
cascading tinkling metallic noises.
There is actually little to Los Macheteros / Spear Of A Nation than a
rhythm that mutates from terrifying banging to pow-wow dance: that "is" the
meaning of the piece.
The static nightmare of Gutter Tactics creates pure tension.
The hypnotic effect of these raps gets amplified many times
in Who Medgar Evers Was thanks to a
swampy beat and a swam of elongated distortions. This eight-minute piece
borders on concerto-grade structure. Along the way it acquires industrial-style
metronomy and mind-bending dissonances.
Atypical Stereotype is another complex sound painting that piles up
high-volume sound effects.
By comparison the calmer shuffle of
We Lost Sight, with its counterpoint of simple keyboard patterns,
sounds like paradisiac easy-listening music.
The album loses much of its extenuating power in the second half, but the
first half alone is enough to justify its grandeur.
Untitled (Latitudes, 2010) is a 44-minute piece originally recorded in 2005.
The rap begins and immediately drowns in a shapeless vortex of sound, a
soft murky lysergic raga-like
slightly dissonant and highly ipnotic structure that eventually
rises to a mindblowing mix of tribal beat and guitar distortion,
sort of Donovan's Hurdy Gurdy played over a Crash Worship orgy.
This soars into an anthemic space-rock figure with
Middle-Eastern overtones, which then implodes leaving behind only a feeble bubbling radiation.
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