Inner Gatefold (Left)
Inner Gatefold (Right)
Back Cover
Vinyl Etching
Album Information:
Released in 2017 on Ipecac/Deadverse
Format: LPx2 with D-side etching
Overview
After over two decades of challenging the system, questioning minds, and musical boundaries, New Jersey’s Dälek have distilled their diverse and experimental style of hip-hop into their most streamlined release yet. Endangered Philosophies features distorted walls of sound, old-school turntablism, and MC Dälek’s powerful political diatribes over pounding boom-bap beats. Finding influence from My Bloody Valentine, industrial music, and Sunn O)), in addition to their legendary forbearers Public Enemy, Dälek tend to get pigeonholed into niches of avant-garde and industrial music while, like most experimental/abstract hip-hop, being unfairly siphoned off from the public’s idea of “real hip-hop”. Dälek isn’t having it though: “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 Kraftwerk, we wouldn’t have ‘Planet Rock.’ So, in that sense, what we do is strictly hip-hop.”
Track Notes
A1 – Echoes Of…
(Heavy, Noisy, Dense)
– starts with a heavy loop of distorted guitar noise
– heavy boom bap drums come in, followed by MC Dälek’s first verse while accelerating noises (almost like race cars) join in the dense onslaught of layers
-Beat cuts out for a bar to accent lyrics
-second time beat cuts out, leaving loops of distorted guitars before chorus kicks in
-Chorus – similar to verse musically, but with extra layers of distorted guitars
-buried vocal samples of revolutionary leader before second verse kicks in
-turntable solo after second verse, before last chorus comes in
Lyrics:
– first verse is generally about speaking out against the status quo and corruption
– Chorus: “We the echoes of…” influential minds and revolutionary leaders (Malcolm X, MLK, Medgar Evers, Bobby Seale, and Fred Hampton). “Our people won’t kneel!”
-Second Verse
A2 – Weapons
(ambient, mellow, atmospheric)
A3 – Few Understand
(Focused, Mellow, Droney, Groovy)
-old school turntable stabs during chorus
-ambient bridge
