Precipice is the eighth album from Dalek, the enigmatic duo of Will Brooks (MC Dalek) and Mike Manteka (Mike Mare). Signed to Mike Patton’s increasingly essential Ipecac label (Melvins, Fantomas), Dalek have enlisted the help of Tool’s Adam Jones on one of the album’s tracks (a fair measure of the respect in which they are held), while the beautiful and evocative artwork comes courtesy of Paul Romano (Mastadon). A genuinely progressive offering, Precipice is an album that effortlessly draws the listener into Dalek’s unique world and, over the course of ten tracks, you have no option but to pump up the volume and lose yourself in its vast sonic landscapes.
Opening with the industrial swell of Lest We Forget, Precipice aptly begins in the darkness, although there is beauty here too. As the piece ebbs and flows in waves of distortion, a melody appears that is more Mogwai than Ministry, and the listener finds themselves lost on unfamiliar seas. It’s a remarkable opener, airy and ethereal, and it nicely paves the way for the more direct Boycott. Heavy duty hip hop, Boycott carves out its own path from a range of influences including Depeche Mode, Saul Williams and Miles Davis. It’s musically captivating and sonically brilliant – making for a remarkable gateway into the rest of the record. Next up, Decimation (Dis Nation) takes the ethereal soundscapes of Fuck Buttons and layers a punishing rap over the time that surges forward on firmly on the beat, recalling Wu tang Clan at their heaviest. In contrast, the trippy Good has a triphop vibe that edges into territory previously inhabited by DJ Shadow. That vibe remains on Holistic, a similarly engaging track that seems to exist in a magical world of whirling samples and abstract elements. It’s hard to quantify exactly what it is about the sonic environment that duo weave around the listener that is so utterly entrancing, but it is, at least in part, that same organic sense of artistic experimentation found on the early works of Cypress Hill, Wu Tang Clan and Public Enemy, and it’s impossible not to find yourself lost in their echoing corridors of sound.
Opening the album’s second half, the slow-motion hip hop of The Harbingers takes Will Brooks’ rhymes and sets them to a soundtrack that harks back to the early musical endeavours of Playstation game designers (most notably Nathan McCree of Tomb Raider fame), with perhaps a touch of Moby thrown in for good measure. It’s a work of art masquerading as a popular music track, and it leaves the listener in dumb-struck awe. After so mesmerising a piece, the band deploy a moment of ambient calm before allowing the dense sonic wave of Devotion (When I Cry The Wind Disappears) to fully envelope the listener. Musically and lyrically brilliant, it is a strangely affecting piece of music, possessed of genuine emotional depth. Perhaps, after two such monumental pieces, a dark, scratchy instrumental is the best way to go. Or at least so it appears. At the outset, the seven-minute A Heretic’s Inheritance appears to be an exploration of art-noise sat somewhere between Sonic youth and Tool. Yet, nailed by its lazy beat, A Heretic’s Inheritance suddenly sideslips into Death In Vegas territory as the vocals return, and with a white hot anger that blazes amidst the shattered riffs. We return to the darkness for the distortion-laden title track, which taps into the sense of paranoia that has infected the US in the wake of both the pandemic and Trump’s immeasurably divisive presidency. It leaves the lengthy Incite to see the album out in a blaze of searing noise and furious rhymes. It provides a fitting conclusion to an album that does not so much stand at the precipice as hurl itself in, screaming as plummets to the depths.
To not mince words, Precipice is an unequivocal masterpiece. Intelligent, focused and sonically adventurous, it is something unique in a world of the identikit. Beautifully produced for maximum impact, there is so much depth in this work, it is hard to know where to start. One thing is certain, however – you’ll still be unpicking the secrets of this magical album in years to come. 10/10
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