D…lek

Sat Sept 6

Berbati’s Pan

D•lek create a dense, murky hiphop sound–one congested with dirgy, traffic-heavy noise, ghostly shoegazer atmospherics, and skronky free jazz–set to distorted, drop-kicked beats, fusing the adventurous mechanics and aggression of avant hardcore with PE’s hiphop blueprints. Their work (the 1998 debut Negro Necro Nekros and the brilliant From Filthy Tongue of Gods and Griots) pulls references from Faust, the Velvet Underground, Tricky, and My Bloody Valentine as well as from classic hiphop; the technical intensity is fueled by resolute delivery from Will Brooks, who uses Dlek as his pseudonym.

“Our music is as angry as my thoughts and it’s as dark as the messages I want to get across,Ó says Dlek. “It disturbs me what’s being passed off as [mainstream] hiphop today. It’s basically pop music and the music is so happy. I don’t understand where hiphop made that turn. It used to be such a dark, angry music. “But,Ó he laughs, “I guess if you’re making millions of dollars, that would tend to make you very happy.Ó

Alternately, Dlek creates a leveling amount of effects. Their dynamic is relentless and steely on songs like Filthy‘s “Classical Homicide,Ó an industrial-grade chemical cleanser of a song with lyrics clawing through warped noise loops. But the song preceding it, “Forever Close My Eyes,Ó is as narcotic as a MBV track, with echoing effects that would make the Verve swoon. Although the music is a mix of organic material and samples, Dlek says he strives to structure all his music in his own style. “[Older] hiphop records took sounds off [other] records and changed them to sound nothing like the original, but unfortunately a lot of [new] hiphop records are just old jazz records where huge chunks are looped and a beat is thrown underneath,Ó he says. “I didn’t know that growing up, so I think I’ve always worked a lot harder on the production end. Apparently I was doing it the hard way. But that’s our style: We’ll manipulate the smallest possible sample in such a way that I’m composing a completely new piece of music. It definitely runs through the music we create, which comes out as a very dense, dark sound.Ó