3 out of 5

Label: Profound Lore

Produced by: Mike Mare, Will Brooks

I slept on Dälek.  As was usually the case, my reasons were based on thee most scientific of methods: snap judgement.  I made assumptions based on their having been on Ipecac as well as the type of shopper – when I worked at Tower Reords – who would purchase their Dälekdiscs along side whatever other “cool” indie hip hop or Mike Patton affair their music budget afforded.  Sniff, my nose-held-aloft went, and then I spent my paycheck on albums I’ve likely since re-sold.

Continuing my subscription to the “do everything backwards” channel, it took a remix album on Hydra Head to get me to pay attention to the band, making Asphalt For Eden my first Dälek album proper.  And it’s on Profound Lore, which makes me wonder what ol’ judgey me would’ve made of that.

Ah, but I’m avoiding the review.  WHY?

Well, maybe I’m not too sure what to say.  In truth, between remix album and now, I procured other Dälek albums, and enjoyed them, but noticed I didn’t actively return to them.  Digging into Asphalt, I sort of get why, even acknowledging this as the first disc I heard sans beat-maker Oktopus; the group achieves a theme, and a particular beat, and maintains it… essentially for a whole album.  Thus, the same timing structure extends over all of Asphalt’s tracks, whether Dälek is doing their lowdown, rumbly groove thing or getting louder and harsher or attempting an instrumental, and if there’s not a particularly memorable / catchy hook on top of that, it’s easy to let the song fade from memory.

The first approximate half of Asphalt nails memorability.  Vocalist MC dälek sounds particularly incensed about the state of the world, delivering poignantly barbed lyrics atop dense, shuffling beats.  Third track Masked Laughter (Nothing’s Left) even flips tue script, somewhat, laying back into more of a drone-like structure that ends up gaining strength through its repetition.  Critical starts out nigh rocky before settling into the usual groove, but it’s a well-sequenced, if brief, changeup.  The run of tracks at album’s end is where I’m almost completely lost, however: instrumental 6dB boils the beats down to their essence, and sans that top layer, it’s frankly lacking.  Followup Control returns, once again, to the usual format, but with the pause of the preceding track, we’re stripped of momentum and the similarity of the song to others becomes more obvious, aside from not having a particularly grabbing hook.

I would say that Dälek absolutely has a unique sound, and when they’re on, there are freaking on.  The key is offering enough variation to keep that vibe alive over a whole album, and Asphalt From Eden makes it past the critical midpoint, but rather loses its grip thereafter.