Asphalt For Eden is a hip hop album with a difference. Featuring whoozy trip hop beats married to darkly psychedelic sounds and the growling delivery of MC Dälek, it is somewhat out of step with mainstream rap in both its sonic inventiveness and in the way that it holds a mirror up to society without lapsing into either lazy slogans or the tedious bitches and bling fantasies of many of the genre’s overlords.
From the mid-1990s until some five years ago, Dälek was a hip hop crew that pitched Public Enemy grade rage with the sonic experimentation of My Bloody Valentine. They produced five groundbreaking albums and toured with both hip hoppers like KRS One and extreme noise terrorists like Godflesh before going their separate ways in 2011. Last year, however, MC Dälek recruited Mike Manteca and DJ rEK, a couple of long time fellow travellers and resurrected the posse.
Asphalt For Eden is the first fruit of this collaboration and while it may be less brutal than Dälek’s previous albums, it still has plenty to engage both the hips and the mind. “Guaranteed Struggle” mixes up icy electronics with an off-kilter groove and some fine scratching by DJ rEK, while “Masked Laughter (Nothing’s Left)” features MC Dälek’s measured and menacing vocals dubbed up against some samples that ponder the nature of revolution. “6dB” is an instrumental that brings to mind Death in Vegas at their best and the lively “Control” nails the band’s colours firmly to the mast with a chanted refrain of “Control thought, control breath, control art, control sex”.
While Dälek may have chilled out a bit since their first incarnation, Asphalt For Eden is ample proof that they have plenty of fire left in them yet.
