Dälek

Veteran agitators Dälek have never been ones to stick within the rigid parameters of genre. A group who seemingly hold the utmost contempt for conservative expectations regarding form, instead pioneering a volatile and timeless strain of hip-hop, drawing as much from My Bloody Valentine as Public Enemy.

This sonic rebellion shows up in the form of absurdly loud 808s, speech elevated to the center of a vocal performance or samples that are mangled and obscured beyond any possible recognition of their original source material. Coupled with its broad rejection of conventional social norms, the sound of rap music itself is unextractable from its political stance. It is the music of the oppressed. A music where the fight for liberation plays out within the beats and rhymes itself.

For dälek, this stance has taken the form of a brutal sonic temperament that pushes rap music’s capacity for noise and protest to some exhilarating conclusions.