The Works of Drew Tewksbury, a Multimedia Journalist

Album Reviews

Dälek - Gutter Tactics

By Drew Tewksbury ⋅ January 12, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

My Bloody Valentine would have no analogue in the rap world if it weren’t for Dälek. The New Jersey spawned hip-hop duo, producer okt0pus and MC/producer Dälek, occupies a musical space that defies categories. Shoegaze rap? Noise hip-hop? Darkwave-grunge-grrriot guys? Not quite. Regardless of their phylum in hip-hop’s family tree, Gutter Tactics—released on former Faith No More member and current avant experimentalist Mike Patton’s label, Ipecac Recordings—takes the duo’s songs deeper into the moody chrysalis of layered, fuzzed guitars, breakin’ beats, and politically charged lyrics. On “No Question,” the moans of what could be a thousand guitars put a blanket of warm noise under Dälek’s flow and the sped-up Portishead beat. As with the best rock songs, Dälek and okt0pus have a verse-chorus structure that eschews much of contemporary hip-hop’s rambling lyrics laid over infinitely looping ten-second clips. It is in this void of lazy creativity, so often masked behind a thin veil of postmodernism (“Man, this shit’s recombinant!”), that hiphop’s third decade festers, marked by mind-numbing copycat-ism. Dälek isn’t the future of hip-hop, but an appealing alternative to the superficial flotsam of today’s chart toppers. Unlike pop-rap, Dälek’s thick, evocative soundscapes—essentially an orchestra of noise laid over classic hip-hop breaks—function as melancholic movements and head-nodding soundtracks for introspection.