DÄLEK

From filthy tongue of gods and griots

CD, Ipecac

Yesterday I saw Grandmaster Flash play live or rather do a DJ set live on the opening night of a new, big electronic / modern arts place in Vienna called the Museumsquartier (which is definitely worth a visit, if you come to this town.) because I wanted to see some cool, funky Old-school-rapping and mid-80ies breakdance beats. Some funny nostalgia-thing, you see? What I got was worse than I expected. After one hour Granfarter Cash was playing Seventies-Disco hits, doing boring scratches and demanded to see “hands in the air” for about fourhundred times. “Everybody say Hoo-oo!”, “Everybody say Ho-Ho!”. The goddam’ university-audience went nuts. The up-and-coming-beautiful people loved it and even some old artsy-types with little children on their backs ate this shit up as if it was vanilla muffins. Jesus. I was glad that me and my old friend Daniel left the place when we did and went for a late beer and some meaningful talking in some place that plays music so silently in the background that you couldn’t hear it. The next morning I listened to “from filthy tongue of gods and griots” again and I was reminded of what rap can really be, about twentyfive years after its conception. An interesting, creative and intriguing musical soundtrack to personal experiences and thoughts. Thanks to Dälek.

I saw Dälek play live some years ago in a small rehearsal room in front of about twenty-five people maximum, at something that was called a concert, which was set up by the same Daniel I mentioned before. They guys were great. They filled the room with a dark and underground atmosphere that made you feel part of something interesting and happening, something that only usually happens far away in Los Angeles or New York. The thought that rappers would do small concerts in Europe, travel with a rather unknown indie-band (like The Lapse back then) was completely new to me. It shouldn’t have been. Any kind of music has these two extremes (and I do mean any kind of music). Some people use their style to express feelings, to make something that is worthwhile in an artistic meaning and that comes from their innermost self. While others use that style to cash in big time by hyperbolising any cliché they can find in their genre. Rap and Hip Hop is so much more than Puff Daddy, Dr. Dre and Sammy Deluxe. You won’t hear Dälek blasting out of some old, tuned-up BMW on full volume. On the one hand, some of the noises on this CD would blow the windows right out of their frames if you did, but also, on the other hand, there is a lot of progressive and interesting stuff on this CD that make it unlistenable to the average Hip Hop / Rap-listener. And Dälek know that, or they wouldn’t put a twelve-minute-piece of noises and talking without drum-patterns or any kind of rhythmic-pattern in the centre position of their record. But to me that is the great achievement of Dälek, to show that there is meaning in something that has become a boring, youth-market-oriented piece of glossy musical trash. And Dälek is the complete opposite of that.