This avant-garde hip-hop stuff is spreading faster than anti-Arab sentiment on September 12th. You know the stuff of which I speak; hip-hop built from samples harder to grasp than a wall of Jell-O, whose time signatures change faster than a 15 year-old girl's fashion sense, all strung around beats dirtier than the old man asleep at the bus stop. Innovators like cLOUDDEAD, El-P, and the Anticon Crew have been redefining what hip-hop is for years now, so it's nice that people are finally starting to take notice. If you've been paying any attention, you know what's bound to happen next: the market will glut, and innovation will make way for imitation. But first, Dälek returns to the scene, fresh off collaborations with Faust, Techno Animal and Kid606, with a sophomore album inventive enough to extend avant-garde hip-hop's stay in the limelight for, at the very least, a few more weeks.
As an emcee, Dälek shows off a rare versatility, equally capable of straight rhyming and formless spoken word. As a poet, Dälek has a grasp on subtlety that most will never approach. And as a collective, Dälek have achieved the seemingly impossible: successfully bridging the conventional and the experimental in a way that respects both at once. It's a risky endeavor-- one that threatens to alienate fans of both disciplines. But it's this very risk that makes Dälek's music so very affecting.A1 Spiritual Healing 3:29 A2 Speak Volumes 4:42 A3 ...From Mole Hills 5:18 A4 Antichristo 1:21 B1 Hold Tight 4:15 B2 Heads 1:38 B3 Black Smoke Rises 12:02 C1 Trampled Brethren 5:12 C2 Voices Of The Ether 4:55 D1 Forever Close My Eyes 7:49 D2 Classical Homicide 5:59 CD-1 41 Shots CD-2 41 Shots (Instrumental)
