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Avg: 4.0 (43 ratings)
- Date Released: January 27, 2009
- Genre: Hip-Hop/R&B
- Style: Hip-Hop
- Label: Ipecac Recordings / The Orchard
An onslaught of fierce sounds and mumbled politics
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We Say...
As audacious agit-prop moves go, metal-gazing Newark undie-hop duo Dälek opening their fifth-or-sixth album by sampling old Obama pal Rev. Jeremiah Wright railing long and hard about American soldiers murdering babies and unarmed civilians will be a hard one to top in 2009. They make his spiel flow like a Last Poet, too, and it perfectly sets the stage for the apocalyptic aural graffiti that follows. Though the pair's recent music has sometimes tended toward a monotonal blur that could fade into the background with all the modern Neurosis/Isis competition, Gutter Tactics seems as determined to spray-paint the urban landscape as anything these guys have done since 2002's prescient Filthy Tongue of Gods and Griots.
That said, anybody who tells you he's catching most of the words is pulling your leg. The raps mostly sound drawled deadpan through scuba gear 20,000 leagues under the sewer — a dystopian distortion-rap distancing technique harking back as far as Rammellzee's early '80s work with Death Comet Crew. There's a line about a black president here, one about shattered homes or Palestine there, but only in a couple tracks are words audible in more than mere snatches: "Los Macheteros/Spear Of A Nation," a list of apparently significant dates and muffled place names that builds Sonic Youth guitars toward a middle-Eastern chant, and "Gutter Tactics," which sets an identifiable chorus (mathematics, street static, etc.) against the album's heaviest sludge-doom riff. The rest totally fills the room, though, varying its onslaught with just enough factory clank and ringing sadness to keep you from suffocating in the Krylon tarpit. -
They Say...
Coming off of the blistering beats and symphonic doom of Abandoned Language, New Jersey duo Dälek (pronounced dialect) continue swaggering down the same path that made their last album a success, and in a sense, Gutter Tactics could be considered Abandoned Language, Pt. 2. When you've found your sound, why make a departure? Previous tour dates with Ipecac labelmates -- Isis in particular -- prove to be hugely influential once again, as metallic fuzz and white-noise layers propel the agitated rhymes of dälek (the MC) in a thick swampy steam. Aptly titled, the album has a dark, disorienting, and toxic vibe. Instrumentally, Gutter Tactics shares much in common with the droning shoegaze of My Bloody Valentine and the distorted orchestration of Mono, due to live overdubs provided by various musicians ushered from dälek's Deadverse record label into his newly built studio. The funky jazz of Motiv is washed into a haze behind Destructo Swarmbots' myriad of guitar effects, resulting in a blurry ultra-compressed dreamscape wedged between the brick-breaking snaps of Oktopus' beats. It's actually quite difficult to specify what instrumentation makes up the wall of sound -- synths, strings, horns, guitar effects, or something else entirely. It all simply sounds like a sludgy cyclic hum that shifts between two moods: threatening and beautiful. On one side of the coin, there's the ominous "No Question," with factory crunch drum sequencing accented by intense Jeru the Damaja-type rhymes. On the other, there's the flashback to the sweeter days of hip-hop in the sedate and droning "We Lost Sight," a song that marks the MC and producer at the top of their game as chamber organs swell hypnotically underneath a gritty boom-bap, while dälek reminisces in a echoing vocal, "We lost sight on how to use these mikes/What scripts we write/How to choose our fights." Disenchantment with the state of rap, and society as a whole, is a major underlying theme, but the statements never feel too preachy or in your face. Instead, the vocal freestyles hover just slightly above the music, delivered in an amorphous mumble that matches the sonic abyss of the background perfectly. Headphones are highly recommended for this one.
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| 01. |  |
Blessed Are They Who Bash Your Children's Heads Against A Rock |
1:24 |
|
| 02. | |
No Question |
4:40 |
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| 03. | |
Armed With Krylon |
5:11 |
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| 04. | |
Who Medgar Evers Was... |
8:03 |
|
| 05. | |
Street Diction |
5:28 |
|
| 06. | |
A Collection Of Miserable Thoughts Laced With Wit |
3:21 |
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| 07. | |
Los Macheteros / Spear Of A Nation |
3:15 |
|
| 08. | |
We Lost Sight |
4:32 |
|
| 09. | |
Gutter Tactics |
4:38 |
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| 10. | |
2012 (The Pillage) |
3:30 |
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| 11. | |
Atypical Stereotype |
6:22 |
|
11 Total Tracks, 50:24 Total Length
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Credits
- Alan Douches - Mastering // Dean Rispler - Overdubs // Alap Momin - Engineer // Alap Momin - Mixing // Jesse Cannon - Assistant Engineer // Paul Romano - Artwork // Paul Romano - Art Direction // Paul Romano - Design // Joshua Booth - Producer // Joshua Booth - Overdubs // Joshua Booth - Mixing // Oktopus - Producer // Oktopus - Overdubs // Oktopus - Group Member // Will Brooks - Engineer // Marco Burbano - ? // Joe Kostroun - Overdubs // Alexandra Momin - Photography // Opiem - ? // Rev. Jeremiah Wright - Author // Johnny Vignault - Overdubs
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