Dälek

Newark, New Jersey’s Dälek launched his music career the old-fashioned way: The burgeoning MC blew his student-loan check on an Akai MPC-3000 synth/sampler, using it to create 1998’s Negro, Necro, Nekros with assistance from longtime collaborator Oktopus. The five-track full-length shook the hip-hop underground, which tuned in to the duo’s mixture of conscious lyrics and space-oddity clamor. During the Nekros tour, the pair hooked up with DJ Still, whose dexterous turntable improvs earned him an invitation to join. A couple of years’ worth of touring culminated in the trio’s 2002 effort, From Filthy Tongue of Gods and Griots, which stepped up the noise factor via strange samples, funkadelic guitar bursts, percussive workouts and old-school lyrics that dared to question where it all went wrong. (Remember back when uzis weighed a ton?/Now every kid’s got one.) One of subterranean hip-hop’s hardest-working units (it’s opened for such disparate acts as the Roots and the Dillinger Escape Plan), Dälek knows how to present its art of noise in a live setting, generally climaxing in a haze of feedback, shattered records, smashed mics and bleeding eardrums.