Dusted Features Every Friday, Dusted Magazine publishes a series of music-related lists compiled by our favorite artists. This week: Dälek and Psapp. Tweet

Listed: Dälek + Psapp

Dälek has spent the last several years amazing and annoying audiences with some of the nastiest, noisiest hip hop ever committed to tape. The New Jersey trio's first two albums, Negro Nekro Necros and From Filthy Tongue of Gods and Griots, featured experiments with traditional Indian music and with rock-band instrumentation. Their new Ipecac album, Absence, which hits streets on February 8, is more single-minded - on almost every track, MC Dälek's slow flow is nearly buried by roaring Flying Saucer Attack-style noise.

Dälek (aka. Will Brooks)

Ten Albums I'm listening to right now (no particular order)

1. Uniform - Not A Word
This is my good friend Wajid aka 2nd Gen's newest project. Very dark, stripped down electronic soundscapes. One can really get the sense that this is percisely what is going on inside his twisted mind. I find it very soothing, but listen too close and you could plot a murder to this.

2. Sonic Youth - Sonic Nurse
Not that this record needs more praise, but it really is brilliant. This is Sonic Youth at their best. Just incredible textures and guitar tones and more importantly great songs. There is no filler on this album, each track is mad solid.

3. Nine - Nine Livez
Nine is looked over way too often. Ill muthafukin' voice, ill flow, and that real boom bap from early 90's hip-hop. New York Hip-hop just got that real sound, that real grit. This record got that. I think niggas slept on this one, "Whatcha Want" and "Redrum" got a little play.... but he deserved more. Cop this joint.

4. Crooked Fingers - Red Devil Dawn and Reservoir Songs
This is Eric Bachman's project, he's my peoples but regardless I'd be listening to this.... it's too good not to. If you drink, like I drink, you need a soundtrack, and this is it. Put on his cover of Prince's "When U Were Mine" and get a bottle of Jim Beam, but don't say i didn't warn you.

5. The Nels Cline Singers - The Giant Pin
Nels is the best guitar player out, period. He can play any style and plays it for real...with soul. On this record he playin like Wes Montgomery on one joint then he's McLaughlin on the next. The record is everywhere, stylistically, and yet the soulfulness holds it all together. It's not bullshit-free "look I'm so out there and playing every note" jazz, it's real good music.

6. Lost In Translation Soundtrack
Kevin Shields' fingerprints are all over this record. His songs and ambient pieces are amazing, and of course the MBV track "Sometimes" is classic. My favorite, however, is the Death in Vegas track "Girls". So lush, so heavy, and so beautiful. You can lay back and fall into this track.

7. The Bug - Pressure and Ladybug projects
Kevin Martin is the illest whiteboy on the planet. This is a man who truly understands, fuck that, breathes Danchall and the concept of low end! This is the heaviest shit on the planet. "World War Three" makes me want to kill someone. "Killer" on a real sound system will make you shit on yourself.

8. B4L - A New Breed
This is the newest joints out of Brick City. Young Newark heads who don't give a fuck. I'm tellin you everybody gonna be noddin their heads and bumpin these joints. Raw street joints with an Aphex twist.

9. Immortal Technique - Revolutionary Vol. 1&2 and Bin Laden
Heads in the underground know about this MC. Viscious in a cypher and spitin' knowledge that hasn't been heard since the likes of PE and KRS-1. Intelligent lyrics that need to be heard, along with some funny ass lines... check out "Beef and Broccoli" where he disses militant vegetarians and if you want some knowledge pay attention to "The Poverty of Philosophy".

10. If When - We Will Gently Destroy You
Ex All Natural Lemon and Lime Flavors member who is still doing some great stuff. Some very dense layers, it may leave you a little disorientated, but don't get scared. There is a steady bassline to hold on to... well sometimes there is anyway. This might be pop music in the year 3025.

11. Jesu - Jesu
Justin Broadrick is back muthafuckas!!!!!! JUSTIN BROADRICK IS BACK!!!!!! This sound is his world, he owns that shit. If you hear some other shit that sounds like this, somebody owes justin some money! This record is just massive. You can feel the pain and hurt that went into this recording.

Psapp

Though their name may be difficult to pronounce, Psapp make some of the most easily enjoyable music you will find. The London based pair Carim Clasmann and Galia Durant released their full-length debut record, Tiger My Friend (Leaf) a few months ago to glowing praise. While it is not entirely dissimilar to other beloved acts like Stereolab, Broadcast, and Mum, their round, crisp production is quite uniquely pleasing. More precisely, as they say on their website (www.psapp.com), they "like making songs with little noises popping out." Tiger My Friend is now available throughout the world on Leaf.

GAL:

1. Dr John - Gris Gris (Rhino, 1968)
It's just so humid and raw and crackers, like being caught in a B movie jungle, wading through swamps, fighting monsters and living on tree bark that has psychedelic properties and makes everything even more murky and surreal. "Walk on Gilded Splinters" is one of the best songs EVER.

2. Fela Kuti - Original Suffer Head / ITT
This affects me in the same way as the Dr John record, you sort of want to run around naked covered in mud..that feeling of being excited but not really knowing how to express it, and wanting to flail your arms around and scream.... Which leads NICELY to...

3. The Slits Cut great songs, tons of space and those vocals which should sound contrived with that breathy, screechy delivery just sound life affirming and joyful. You can really imagine the hysteria that accompanied the making of this record and that's what making a record should be like - decades on and it's retained all it's freshness - there's no higher accolade.

4. Tom Waits There's a Tom Waits song for every moment but Rain Dogs and Mule Variations are the ones I always come back to - I love it when he gets sentimental and writes those tearjerkers, and then mumbles them in a gorgeous, drunk and overwhelmed way, that junk shop atmosphere is something that Carim and I both love.

5. Chris Isaak - "Wicked Game"
This is just a perfect song, absolutely flawless. It really is one of the most wonderful vocal performances ever. To just have one song with this much emotion crammed into it is more than enough to justify all the gubbins that came later.

CARIM:

6. The Balanescu Quartet - Possessed (Mute, 1992)
There are mainly string quartet versions of Kraftwerk and David Byrne songs on this album which are nice but nothing compared to track six, "Possessed," written by Alexander Balanesu himself. I really don't like long 16 minute tracks but this one is special. Strings an drums might not be an obvious line-up, but it definitely works well here. Balanescu also play on "Arabian Waltz" of Rabih Abou-Khalil - also very nice !

7. The Books - The Lemon Of Pink (Tomlab, 2003)
One of my favourites of 2004.......I am a bit too late as always, but I still found it, Hurray! Warm & friendly insanity - chopped up, fried, toasted, spun around in a washing machine but still in one piece. How can anything so fragmented sound so organic and compact? I never listen to just one song from it; it definitely works as an album.

8. Ethiopiques Vol.4: Ethio Jazz & Musique Instrumentale 1969-1974
Buda Musique A French re-issue of Ethiopian Jazz; I didn't even know there was such a thing, but it sounds amazing. Somewhere between 70s film soundtrack music, Miles Davis and oriental textures. I really love that wobbly sound of tape machines not exactly sure which speed they are supposed to run or is it because no one could figure out how to switch the vibrato off on the amp?

9. Meredith Monk - The Book Of Days (ECM Records, 1990 )
Very haunting vocal album, more atmospheric and less song based as "Do You Be". It is the soundtrack to the film The Book Of Days which I have never seen, nor do I know anybody who has ever seen it. I'd like to keep it that way as it is sometimes better not to know, and wreck the magic of an album. I saw her live a couple of years ago and although she is a good performer it took away part of the magic I imagined.

10. CocoRosie - La Maison de Mon Reve (Touch And Go, 2004)
About 10 years ago I got one of these lovely and silly animal organs for my birthday. Many years and plenty of animal organs and animal organ sessions later still nothing matches the elephant sound of "the original" which is literally all over the CocoRosie album along with lo-fi drum machines, cheap keyboard sounds and most of all really good songs. I love the way they messed up the recording - it's the right sort of wrong!

11. Simply Rockers Vol.4: Jamaican Music From the Vaults (Trojan Records, 2003)
Yes, there have been billions of Trojan records releases recently; hard to catch up with them, but that one somehow sneakily manages to get played on my stereo all the time. There must be some MSG in this record - can't be healthy really.

By Dusted Magazine

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