Line #55 Music/Dalek


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/dalek_3.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:350:From Left-to-Right: DJ rEK, MC Dälek, Mike Manteca]]Dälek (pronounced "die-a-leck") are an experimental hip hop band from Newark, New Jersey. They are well known for helping to pioneer the genre of industrial hip hop in the late 90's and early 2000's. They have an extremely heavy, aggressive, and experimental sound, incorporating elements of industrial music, noise, shoegaze, ambient, and extreme metal, paired with angry, socially conscious lyrics which rail against government and religion. The band is currently composed of MC Dälek, Mike Manteca, and DJ Rek.
3
4	[[JustForFun/IThoughtItMeant Not to be confused with]] the popular OmnicidalManiac [[Characters/DoctorWhoDalek alien race]] from ''Series/DoctorWho'', whose name lacks an umlaut and is pronounced roughly as it looks.
5
6	Albums:
7	* ''Negro Necro Nekros'' (1998)
8	* ''From Filthy Tongue of Gods and Griots'' (2002)
9	* ''Derbe Respect, Alder'' (2004, collaboration with Music/{{Faust}})
10	* ''Absence'' (2005)
11	* ''Deadverse Massive Vol. 1: dälek Rarities 1999-2006'' (anthology, 2007)
12	* ''Abandoned Language'' (2007)
13	* ''Gutter Tactics'' (2009)
14	* ''Untitled'' (2010; recorded in 2005, between ''Absence'' and ''Abandoned Language'')
15	* ''Asphalt for Eden'' (2016)
16	* ''Endangered Philosophies'' (2017)
17	* ''Respect to the Authors'' (2019, EP)
18	* ''Live from Deadverse Studios in Exile: Meditations No. 1'' (2020)
19	* ''Meditations No. 2'' (2020)
20	* ''Meditations No. 3'' (2020)
21	* ''Meditations No. 4: Knowledge Over Nonsense'' (2020)
22	* ''Meditations No. 5'' (2020)
23	* ''Meditations No. 6'' (2020)
24	* ''Meditations No. 7'' (2020)
25	* ''Precipice'' (2022)
26
27	Members:
28	* Will Brooks (Vocals, production)
29	* Mike Manteca (Electronics, production)
30	* DJ Rek (Electronics, production)
31
32	Past members:
33	* DJ Oktopus (Production)
34	* Still (Production)
35
36	!!This band provides examples of:
37	* AlbumIntroTrack: "Blessed Are They Who Bash Your Children's Heads Against a Rock", which samples an infamous speech by Pastor Jeremiah Wright condemning the US for its many atrocities throughout history while arguing that 9/11 was karmic backlash.
38	* AllLowercaseLetters: Their name is usually stylized like this.
39	* AntiPoliceSong: "A Beast Caged", which criticizes the prison system.
40	* BadassBoast: It's hip hop, so this is almost a given. "Shattered" has a pretty good example near the end.
41	--> ''"You can call me Mr. Brooks, you already know my pen name."''
42	* BoastfulRap: Not as often as many other rappers, but they indulge in this now and then.
43	* BoleroEffect: "Abandoned Language" uses this so much it's practically a PostRock song with rapping over it. Other songs use this fairly extensively too, particularly on ''Abandoned Language''.
44	* BreatherEpisode: "Antichristo" on ''From Filthy Tongue...'', "Absence" and "Koner" on ''Absence.''
45	* ConsciousHipHop: A very dark, confrontational, and pessemistic take on the genre.
46	* DarkerAndEdgier: Musically, they're probably one of the biggest examples in hip hop. Back in the early 2000's, ''nothing'' in the genre was this heavy. Within their discography, ''From Filthy Tongue of Gods and Griots'' and ''especially'' ''Absence'' qualify.
47	* DespairEventHorizon: "Black Smoke Rises" is about this.
48	* DroneOfDread: Frequently incorporated into their beats - in fact, it's rarely ''not'' a component of them. In particular, "Black Smoke Rises" is almost nothing but this, and almost every song on ''Abandoned Language'' and ''Gutter Tactics'' has this as a major component as well. "3:46" also stands out as a particularly extreme example even by Dälek's standards; it practically qualifies as HarshNoise.
49	* EpicRocking: They've got some pretty long cuts by hip hop standards, with song lengths averaging at about six minutes. The longest is ''Untitled'', which is a single song clocking in at ''44'' minutes, which is pretty much unheard of in hip-hop. Other tracks above the seven-minute mark:
50	** ''Negro Necro Nekros'': "Three Rocks Blessed" (7:45), "Images of .44 Casings" (10:27), "Praise Be the Man" (12:01)
51	** ''From Filthy Tongue of Gods and Griots'': "Black Smoke Rises" (12:02), "Forever Close My Eyes" (7:49)
52	** ''Derbe Respect, Alder'': "Imagine What We Started" (7:03), "Dead Lies" (8:28), "Bullets Need Violence" (8:14)
53	** ''Absence'': "In Midst of Struggle" (7:44), "Opiate the Masses" (7:24)
54	** ''Deadverse Massive'': "Music for ASM" (16:37), "Back to Burn" (7:34)
55	** ''Abandoned Language'': "Abandoned Language" (10:13)
56	** ''Gutter Tactics'': "Who Medgar Evers Was..." (8:04)
57	** ''Asphalt for Eden'': "Masked Laughter (Nothing Left)" (7:00)
58	** ''Endangered Philosophies'': "A Collective Cancelled Thought" (7:07)\|
59	** ''Meditations No. 1'': "Meditation Part 1" (14:31), "Meditation Part 2" (9:18), "We Will Always Hold Here" (10:04), "Deft" (9:37)
60	** ''Meditations No. 3'': "Elekt" (7:13), "Almost Time" (7:43)
61	** ''Meditations No. 5'': "But That Does Not Mean We Are Too" (14:31), "This Is Where It's At" (9:50)
62	** ''Meditations No. 6'': "When at Last We Draw That Final Breath" (12:36)
63	** ''Meditations No. 7'': "Dreamless Sleep" (9:00), "Moments Lost" (7:00), "Withdrawn" (13:44)
64	* FaceDeathWithDignity: "Forever Close My Eyes" is both this and a DespairEventHorizon.
65	* FadingIntoTheNextSong: An awful lot of their songs; in particular, ''Absence'' is pretty much entirely gapless. Due to their unconventional song structures, it is sometimes difficult to determine where one song ends and another begins without actually looking at the track display.
66	* GenreBusting: [[HarshNoise Noise]], {{ambient}}, {{industrial}}, modern classical, TripHop, {{shoegaze}}, ProgressiveRock, PsychedelicRock, {{Krautrock}}, PostRock, Indian music, and even extreme metal are all influences on their music. They're almost more of a metal band than a rap band, as they've released an album on Profound Lore Records, which is a metal label, and have opened for metal bands like Music/{{Isis}}, Music/{{Godflesh}}, Music/{{Jesu}}, Music/{{Tool}}, Music/{{Mastodon}}, Music/TheDillingerEscapePlan, Earth, and Music/{{Melvins}} in the past, along with frequently having their albums reviewed by metal sites. Oktopus and MC dälek also collaborated with seminal {{metalcore}} band Starkweather on their album ''This Sheltering Night''. Despite all this, they're ambivalent about having their music categorised as anything but hip-hop, noting that early in the genre's history, it was commonplace for [=DJs=] to sample all sorts of sounds (perhaps due to UnbuiltTrope and EarlyInstallmentWeirdness), but the genre got boxed into more of a defined sound as time went on. MC dälek explained:
67	-->It's purely hip-hop, in the purest sense. If you listen to what hip-hop has historically been, it was all about digging in different crates and finding different sounds, and finding different influences to create. If Afrika Bambaataa wasn't influenced by Music/{{Kraftwerk}}, we wouldn't have "Planet Rock." So, in that sense, what we do is strictly hip-hop.\
68	\
69	If there is a difference, it's that the palette of sounds we work with is more varied than what has been called hip-hop in the last 10 years. Somehow, as hip-hop grew, it's been put into this box. I think it's funny when people are like, "That's not hip-hop. It's this and this and this." You can try to rationalize it as whatever you want to rationalize it as.
70	* IndecipherableLyrics: A few vocal passages on ''Abandoned Language'' are heavily processed, with the treble turned way down. This has the effect of making it sound like you're hearing MC dälek from underwater or through a wall, and makes it very difficult to understand what he's saying.
71	* [[{{Industrial}} Industrial Hip-Hop]]: Along with Music/KanyeWest circa ''Music/{{Yeezus}}'', Music/DeathGrips, Music/{{Clipping}}, and JPEGMAFIA, they are among the most famous proponents of the style. They are, however, apathetic at best to the label and vehemently resistant at worst, refusing to be referred to as anything other than hip-hop and citing hip-hop's original emphasis on being creative and finding a way to do whatever you wanted to do as their main ethos.
72	* {{Instrumental}}: They have a few; "Music for ASM", "Back to Burn", and "Imagine What We Started" are probably the longest.
73	* JumpScare: "Heads" has about a minute of anxious droning before it suddenly erupts into a cacophonous, jazzy drum solo. This is then followed by "[[NightmareFuel Black Smoke Rises]]".
74	* LighterAndSofter: ''Abandoned Language'' is mildly less cacophonous and distorted than the band's preceding two albums, though it is by no means light fare compared to most other hip-hop. ''Untitled'' and ''Asphalt for Eden'' are also mild cases in the context of the band's discography.
75	* LimitedLyricsSong: They often have only a few minutes of lyrics in songs that go on for ten minutes or longer. "Black Smoke Rises" is almost certainly the most extreme example by far, though.
76	* LiteraryAllusionTitle: "Opiate the Masses" is a reference to Creator/KarlMarx's [[BeamMeUpScotty frequently misunderstood]] aphorism that religion is the opiate of the masses.
77	* LoudnessWar: Likely used deliberately as a form of SensoryAbuse, though they're far from the most extreme example out there. Many of the quiet passages still have dynamic range, but when they get loud, ''boy'' do they get loud.
78	** Averted on many of the ''Meditations'' records - ''No. 1'' is [=DR12=], ''No. 3'' is [=DR11=], and ''No. 4'', ''No. 5'', ''No. 6'', and ''No. 7'' are all [=DR9=], although a few tracks play the trope straight ("But That Does Not Mean We Are Too" is [=DR4=] and "A Solemn March" is [=DR5=]).
79	* LyricalColdOpen: "Distorted Prose" has about half a minute of Brooks rapping ACappella before the beat comes in.
80	* MindScrew: A lot of their trippy instrumental passages have this effect. For that matter, so do many of their vocal passages, particularly when the beats and instrumentation are taken into account. Really, just their work as a whole.
81	* NewSoundAlbum: While their overall style remains mostly intact from album to album, each album nonetheless maintains some fairly unique characteristics within the context of their discography, such as the droning, dreamlike atmosphere of ''Abandoned Language'' or the unusually intense cacophony of ''Absence''.
82	* NightmareFace: The cover of ''From Filthy Tongue of Gods and Griots'', which resembles weird street graffiti.
83	* ProtestSong: Quite a few of them - arguably most of their discography, in fact.
84	* ReligionRantSong: Several, most notably "Spiritual Healing" and "Opiate the Masses."
85	--> ''"Genocide from [[Literature/BookOfGenesis Genesis]] to [[Literature/TheBookOfRevelation last chapter]]"''
86	* {{Sampling}}: Used often, usually from speeches given by politicians or news reports on TV. They also sample some fairly unusual choices of music for a hip-hop act, such as Music/MilesDavis' "[[Music/KindOfBlue Blue in Green]]" and Music/JohnColtrane's "Configuration" in "The Untravelled Road", and Music/GustavHolst's "Mars, the Bringer of War" in "Swollen Tongue Burns".
87	* ShoutOut:
88	** "Classical Homicide" has Brooks saying "How many [=MCs=] know who Faust is?" Faust is an acknowledged musical influence on the band, and they even recorded an album with them. How many rappers can say that?
89	** "Who Medgar Evers Was..." is a tribute to the murdered civil rights activist of the title.
90	** "Control" samples Noam Chomsky discussing his book ''Manufacturing Consent''[[note]]co-written with Edward S. Herman[[/note]], which is about mass media's manipulation of public opinion, the topic of the song. It also refers to Black Lives Matter.
91	* SingerNameDrop: When they bring up their band name, it's usually a stealth version of this trope, fairly unusually for hip-hop; they often use the word "dialect", which is pronounced like the band name with an added trailing "t", instead of their actual name. Brooks mentions his actual name a few times as well.
92	* SubduedSection: Many of their songs have these. In particular, they often close out their longer songs with them.
93	* SubliminalSeduction: Sometimes they employ backmasked vocal samples; one example comes at the end of "Praise Be the Man".
94	* SurprisinglyGentleSong: "Forever Close My Eyes" is the most obvious example. "Music for ASM" and "It Just Is" probably qualify too.
95	* TropeCodifier: Arguably for industrial hip hop. They predate Music/DeathGrips by over a decade.

Context Music / Dalek