Dälek unleash industrial-strength beats, layers of juddering ambience, and a fierce verbal polemnic. Gutter Tactics matches rough, suffocating production to brutal subject matter. A few piano figures provide relief but the general mood of uncompromising defiance is signalled by the cover depiction of a lynched human recreated as a mtuant, and an opening track sampling Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
The new album opens with "Blessed Are They Who Bash Your Children's Heads Against A Rock," a track which should attract plenty of attention. It features Rev. Wright in combination with a slippery beat allowing plenty of space for his exact meaning to be heard. Either Wright is a great orator and Dälek have followed the rhythm of his speech or the gaps between his words have been cut into a suitable beat. Either way, the track perfectly flips the phrase "blessed are the peacemakers" into something quite different. Reverend Wright runs through a list of terrorist attrocities: Europeans seizing the USA from the Native American population; the kidnapping and subjugation of African slaves for labor; and dubious US military and foreign policy actions. It is the usual tale of blood, sweat, and tears in the cause of creating and defending our shopping malls, highways, and suburbs. There's no disputing the facts, just the interpretation. Wright cleverly says "we" to invite shared responsibility and punctuates his scorching diatribe with the word "terroism".
There's no topping the power and brevity of that track but there's plenty more combustive power on Gutter Tactics. "Street Diction" combines glistening, jangling detritus with thud and doom but the vocals are sometimes less audible than I'd like. When the musical radiation cloud clears a little, it's for a namechecking solidarity with other artists. A certain irony, since, as with Burial, the sound suggests humans coping with alienation, but projects an infectious isolation. This is music to be heard while alone. I suspect that even in the booming cars and at gigs these rythyms and rhymes do not create togetherness.
"A Collection of Miserable Thoughts" is lighter than much of this album but the words are a preemptive strike for artistic independence. Not as extreme as The Residents' manifesto of pure creation but the line "wasted breath or testament to the downtrodden" lays the stance out nicely. Dälek aren't really pushing the envelope on Gutter Tactics merely refusing to back down, apologize, or quit. The cover art shows a shadowy lynching, the afoementioned mutant, and NYC's Ground Zero; clear connections between a history of brutality and (what Rev. Wright calls) "chicken's coming home to roost." Thematically, "Los Macheteros/Spear Of A Nation" broadens the grievances beyond the USA by plucking barbaric incidents from the history of South Africa's apartheid regime.
Gutter Tactics is far from being preachy and heavy handed and it's quite possible to enjoy the disc without knowing "who Medgar Evars is". But the clues by which to appreciate these pieces in an broader historical and political context are here for those who wish to explore. That said, the lyrical content is not always impressive. "We Lost Sight," for example, is a dangerously seductive track, but when it's nearly done and the beats peel away all that's being said is: "We lost sight of how to use these mics/what scripts we write/how to choose the fights." The track is choppy and spry, but I can't work out if the message is aimed at other artists or at political figures. If it's the latter, then the unrepentant figure of the recently departed G.W. Bush naturally comes to mind, as do the words of Auden.
"Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets."
samples:
- Blessed Are They Who Bash Your Children's Heads Against A Rock
- A Collection of Miserable Thoughts Laced with Wit
- Street Diction
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