Dälek - "Gutter Tactics"

Dälek - Street Diction (Ipecac 2009)

Dälek - Gutter Tactics / Ipecac

Things were pretty different when we last reviewed New Jersey duo Dälek in early 2007. We were in different cities, we were under a different president, we were still open to the idea of a certain neon-imbued monstrosity that's now completely out of control (Hey there, Elektrobär). Landscapes and soundscapes alike have shifted paradigms; it's a new world out here, and it's probably for the better. Probably.

Of course, some things should stay the same. For the longest time, I thought this about MC Dälek and his trusty cohort Oktopus. Here are two guys who have spent a decade reinventing rap and subverting the typical hip-hop categorization that continues to widen the gulf between champagne poppin' megastars and truth-serum backpackers hellbent on a capital-M Message. Though they did it largely on the atonal template of forerunners such as Cannibal Ox and The Infamous (1995), their lyrical content was still the same: They spoke on a template of ambiguous fear, which was perhaps the best reflection of the political climate they had come of age to. In the era of a born-again Bush, nobody seemed scarier than a group equally nebulous in character and sinister in tone.

While Dälek was always most fascinating because he preferred to submerge his vocals rather than extract them from the mix (in the vein of the Rhymesayers and, later, the gaggle of NoW Coasters), Oktopus weaved dynamic sonic structures in and out of a distinctive triptych of albums: From Filthy Tongue of Gods and Griot was demanding without being directly doomy; Absence was utter industrial hopelessness; and Abandoned Language was savvy urban grit that perhaps best encapsulated what the group had always been working on. If their last album wasn't the embodiment of a decade of output, it sounded awfully close.

Given this set-up, it would be expected of me to say that Gutter Tactics was always going to have it tough. Recorded in the waning days of the Bush administration and released the day Obama came to power, Gutter Tactics felt woefully out-of-step the moment it leaked, a relic from a passing era, unfortunately dated. I was unconvinced the moment Jeremiah Wright opened his mouth on "Blessed Are They Who Bash Your Children's Head Against a Rock." Not only is the chosen speech laughably extreme (We bombed Qaddafi's kid without "batting an eye?" I guess he doesn't remember that Qaddafi's daughter was adopted, and oh yeah, the whole Berlin discotheque bombing thing), it sets the stage for an album that feels redundant - this is, in fact, an inferior version of Abandoned Language. Oktopus has a handful of memorable songs on here (the title track of which rips off My Bloody Valentine's "Glider"), but any kind of message this time around has been suffocated by the extraordinary density of the mix. It is the most brutally unrelenting release they have yet committed to tape. In a time when a breath of fresh air is en vogue, Gutter Tactics takes aim at nothing in particular and hurls its bitterness to see what sticks. All of this is a poorer way of describing what Daniel Levin Becker has already emphasized at Dusted.

That said, it's worth noting the rebuttal (even as an afterthought). Dälek may not need to fulfill their former function - that of hip-hop's bleakly prophetic superego - but they are still necessary as a socially conscious warning sign. The issue is that they are no longer a complete group on their own; instead, they are the angry and ambiguous yin to the specific street violence of another hip-hop duo: the Clipse. Where the Thornton brothers insist upon rising above the streets through the pointed fear pervading their dope, blood, money and guns, Dälek assume the role of stormcloud to set the mood. Are they upset over the "death of hip-hop" (whatever that even means anymore)? Are they angry about corrupted youth? Are they raging to rise above it all? Do they even know? I think the answers lie in the Clipse. These two groups are speaking the same street diction in different dialects; they are angry about the same things, but one emphasizes ambiance through maximalist quagmire while the other stares out vacantly from behind minimalist desolation.

Personal, political, professional: Above all else, they are polemical. We'll have to wait a little longer and see when it comes to Till the Casket Drops, but as for Dälek losing their relevance, they still remain as elusive as ever. This album is the first time it feels like that's working against them. I don't know what the answer is when it comes to what they can do next to stay focused, to stay necessary, but the deep blues and greens of Gutter Tactics suggest that the group is cooling off one way or another. Hopefully this spells a withdrawal and reevaluation rather than a retirement.