Album Review: Dälek - Abandoned Language

Rating: 9 out of 10

Dälek never make it easy - not for their listeners and certainly not for themselves. Ostensibly, this duo is a hip-hop act: their songs have beats, and vocalist Dälek raps a lot about how the youngsters don't know the history of the genre. But most of their fans are white indie/noise/metal kids (like me!); they also tour with those kind of bands. Within hip hop their closest affinity is probably with the Def Jux acts, but their sound is more accurately described as a serious update of My Bloody Valentine's squall, only ten times more diverse and intentionally hostile rather than simply intimidating as a by-product. Their last album Absence was one of the ugliest slabs of noise you're ever likely to hear... at least until you took the time to wade through the layers and layers of sound to hear the broken, hopeful, beating heart at the center of all the anger. These guys are the epitome of "challenging" - and so it's little wonder they're relatively unknown.

It is also a fucking shame, and one I hope is going to end with this masterwork of a third album. Abandoned Language is the quietest Dälek album yet, but that's hardly a concession to accessibility. You still have to pay a lot of attention to these songs before they start to yield their secrets. I suspect a lot of people will give this a cursory listen, dismiss it as "monotone" or "boring" or "torpid," and never uncover all the beautifully strange sonic architecture lurking below the surface.

Consider first single "Paragraphs Relentless." A simple hip-hop beat, a bit of scratching buried in the mix, bassline so thick and ominous it's hard to pick out notes, and an eerie melody that sounds like a harmonica being played underwater are the prominent features. But listen more closely - at least three other layers of ambient sound shifting and sliding around each other are providing a subtle foundation for the song. Once you catch them, it's impossible not to follow their flow as well. What sounds minimal on the surface is in fact layered, immaculately produced, fascinating. And that's before you even add in Dälek's rap or the way the choruses practically explode with additional layers of sound. The net effect is hypnotic.

Every song on Abandoned Language follows this basic template, and yet each contains a list of details unique to itself that makes it stand out from the bunch. "Bricks Crumble" is built on an almost jaunty two-note bass loop. The choruses add in piles of dischordant strings and voices for a beautifully queasy effect. The song also features a brief instrumental break after the first chorus that wouldn't have sounded out of place on a Portishead album. A bit of a crowd-pleaser, except you only get it once. The bassline of "Starved for Truth" thumps like a heartbeat. The frantic beat kicks in, distorted bell-like tones echo off each other claustrophobically, and then the truly-sick chorus drops accompanied by squalling saxophone blasts. Only, it turns out this isn't just the chorus - it's the beginning of an amazing instrumental interlude. Dizzy two-note keyboard motifs start stacking up, the saxophone gets more urgent and dischordant, eerie layers of organ build in the background... are you sweating yet?

I could continue in the same vein, mapping out the way these songs twist, grow, collapse, and mutate - but I'd much rather let you discover their beautiful (il)logic for yourself. Abandoned Language isn't going to be for everyone - it's too demanding, and is too easily heard as uniform rather than brilliantly constructed and produced. It took me at least five listens before I was able to really pick the songs apart, but once I crossed that threshhold my fascination with it has continued to grow. This one's my new favorite album of 2007, and it's going to be a tough act to dethrone.