There are not many hip-hop acts today willing to take on the world with the heightened level of intensity that New Jersey act dälek manage. Their 10th album entitled Brilliance Of A Falling Moon is a barrage of heavy beats and a shitload of noise and effects that initially stuns and then comes back to leave you absolutely devastated. Taking its name from a section of Erik Larson’s 2011 novel ‘In The Garden of Beasts’ every track here aims for the centre of the cranium. The pairing of Will Brooks (aka MC dälek) and Mike Mare are at the height of their powers, the current state of world affairs has fuelled their fire.
dälek waste no time in dropping into their trademark murky fusion of skull cracking beats and a myriad of noise and out-there loops. ‘Better Than’ sets the bar high from the get-go with pure menace and creeping tension. So many hip-hop acts nowadays opt for the limpest of beats, with tippy tappy sounds and it deters me from engaging with them. But not dälek, the boom-bap megabeat that underpins ‘Knowledge I Understanding I Wisdom’ has me grinning like a chimp. The atmospheric is so layered it’s hard to grasp all of the sounds that whiz past you. ‘Normalized Tragedy’ is fuelled on a house levelling beat that delivers one hell of a knockout blow. There’s some serious alchemy at work with the sonic experimentation of whooshes and whirs.
‘Expressions Of Love’ takes the terror level down a notch in terms of sounds. But this just leaves MC dälek more exposed so the focus switches to his voice as he declares that he is “prepared to spill blood for my culture”. ‘Substance’ flows like blood down a riot-torn street. The looped voices twisted and corrupted sound like a mix of wailing siren and war cry. It’s pretty harrowing stuff all told, but absolutely brilliant, no-one else creates these detailed soundscapes. ‘I Am A Man’ strips the manic sounds away to leave a crisp piston popping beat as MC dälek spits out “I’m a man with disdain for religion, who the fuck am I?”.
‘For The People’ has a malevolent swing to it as a head bobbing beat props up some sublime swirling tones that permeate the groove like ghosts. The message of defiance is to the fore as MC dälek growls ”the struggle won’t stop til’ we’re equal”. Album closer ‘By The Time We Arrive In El Salvador’ has a hard-edged beat that hurls at your brain like a wrecking ball as a Wu-Tang style piano interlopes across the grimy soundscape. This cacophony brings industrial level noise engulfing MC dälek. It’s suffocating and disorientating and that’s exactly how dälek like it.
After the collaborative album with Charles Hayward, it’s good to hear dälek back on their own terms, and the state of the world finds them full of vitriol and anger. This rage manifests itself into some seriously hefty grooves and they’re absolutely on fire on this album. I’ll call it out, dälek are quite simply the most exciting hip-hop act on the planet right now.
