Deadly Verse
* Dalek: Culture For Dollars (10 mb) | Eyes To Form Shadows (8.5 mb)
From Absence : Ipecac Recordings : IPC-056
For those new to the Dalek experience, this ain’t your typical bling-bling style over substance radio friendly hip-hop. But then again, it ain’t your typical emo/sensitive/indie boy hip-hop either. Dalek, while classifiable as hip-hop, bring so much more to the table.
I’m finding it really hard to describe their sound because they bring so much together, but I’ll give it a shot anyways. They’ve somehow managed to meld together the disparate sounds of crushing hip-hop break beats with avantgarde noise. And on top of all this is MC Dalek spouting off tense, abrasive, paranoid rants about the state of affairs in the world today. While this may give you some idea how that sound, it probably says a lot more that Dalek are the only hip-hop group to collaborate and record with German experimental krautrock legends, Faust (here and here), that they’re totally at home when touring with death metal rockers and that they’re on Mike Patton’s (of Faith No More, Mr. Bungle and Fantomas fame) record label, Ipecac Recordings.
I saw this group live and they completely tore up the stage. It was actually a pretty terrifying spectacle. MC Dalek stalked the stage, one huge mass of anger and disillusionment. DJ Still created a wall of noise with his turntables employing avantgarde techniques like blowing on the stylus to create feedback. And Octopus was behind it all, anchoring everything with his break beats. There were only about 30 people in attendance, but they still put their all into the performance. The show pretty much ended when MC Dalek threw his mic stand off the stage and almost pegged some dude in the face. Needless to say, I was absolutely blown away.
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If you haven’t seen Sin City yet, drop everything you’re doing and go see it. What an all around phenomenal movie.
