Release Date:  09/05/2011

Released On:  Big Dada Records


When we think of the traditional homes for rappers, it’s the usual suspects that come to mind- LA, Brooklyn and Atlanta across the pond.  Over here if you take Mike Skinner out of the equation it’s quite hard to look past the capital and, if we’re taking it further, the Grimey East.  One place you would not imagine the new Great Hope of British Rap hailing from is Ipswich.  But then DELS is no ordinary rapper, and with his debut album GOB he has set down a marker that can have him reasonably viewed as the heir apparent to Roots Manuva.

Manuva himself seems fine with this and lends a vocal hand to Capsize, along with Joe Goddard (Hot Chip) who also produces the track and the two tunes of DELS you are most likely to have heard already- Trumpalump and Shapeshift.  All three are monster tracks, with Capsize a glorious mash-up of scrunchy bass, distorted horns, computer game bleeps and a classic choral delivery by Goddard of “the times they are so treacherous we need to stick together/the nights they are closing in we need to stick together.”  The track is described on the press release as a “kind of Ghost Town for a new generation” and though that is high talk indeed, it says much that it doesn’t come across as contrived nor overblown.  It’s a fun track, make no bones about that, but one who’s heart lies in lines like “how many fresh-faced youths will they send to war/without any clear definition of what they’re fighting for?”

As if to emphasise the subject of that preceding it, the Micachu produced Violina then opens up with disparate sirens and spat out vocals from the Suffolk boy.  The next two tracks are definitive hard hitters and display even further that DELS is a rapper totally unconcerned with posturing or self-aggrandising,   DLR being the story of a homeless girl where, over some lazy beats and dreamy keys, he drawls “the rain keeps falling/her eyesight is blurred/another lost voice that will never be heard.” Droogs then advances this with a story of rape and child abuse, and he pulls no punches when he raps “she hates it when Daddy creeps through the door/creaking the floor boards/it’s like she’s floating down the river with no oars.”  The production here is from Kwes, who has previously worked with The xx and the musical similarities here are as stark as the sparse beats that hover over DELS’s unsettling rhymes.

The album then wraps up with the title track, and it’s a full circle return to bigger production values as DELS raps ‘I won’t get swallowed by the darkness/I won’t get swallowed by the gob.”  It proves that DELS is an adept musical artist, and one who values the importance and construct of an album as a whole.  After the first three songs, and especially Trumpalump and Shapeshift which are the most originally memorable tracks (especially the former with its will I wake up?/will I wake up with you?/If I do then we can start again” chorus, again delivered by Goddard), there isn’t a song that you could initially term as an earworm.  But, like all the best albums, with further listens you realise there’s so much more to the whole than just the singles, and that DELS is a glorious antidote to the output from rappers from all the places we might consider more likely to deliver such a worthy record.


8/10
 

Posted In Album Reviews, May 09 2011. Words - David