UK MC Dels produces a justifiably confident debut album.
With so many UK MCs following their American counterparts and taking the quick route to the charts by way of candyfloss beats and nursery rhyme lyrics, the emergence of Ipswich-born Kieren Dickins, aka Dels, is a bit of a relief.
Surreal rather than simplistic, and mercifully free of the usual stereotypes and cliches, Gob, Dels’s debut album, has turned out far better than earlier missives might have suggested. Class-A assistance from Hot Chip’s Joe Goddard, Micachu & the Shapes’ Mica Levi and Roots Manuva certainly helps, but a good portion of the credit should go to Young Turks-signed producer Kwes, whose deliciously awkward, and sometimes even grating, productions dominate the album. Between the pair of them, they have worked up a fierce science, which manages to produce a genius bridge or unexpected melodic highlight at precisely the moment where the raps begin to lag or the backing threatens to cross to the wrong side of interestingly abrasive.
On the introductory Hydronenburg, Dels’s first words are, “If you open up my brain with a can opener …”, which pretty much describes the verbal perspective over the next 10 tracks. Lyrically, he favours vulnerable and questioning over braggadocio and slogan-making, with only Droogs’ well-intentioned but slightly ham-fisted musings on child abuse falling short.
The album’s various forces (minus Micachu) combine explosively on Capsize, which adroitly appropriates Jamaican iconography like Richie Spice’s anthemic Youth So Cold to report on a desensitised generation growing up in David Cameron’s Britain. Goddard delivers a sublime chorus warning “times are so treacherous, we need to stick together”, while the old master Manuva has a spray on a multitude of ills for his scorching solitary verse.
DLR, featuring the album’s only other guest, fellow Big Dada artist Elan Tamara, expresses a homeless woman’s point of view in a way that manages to be neither cloying nor preachy, with a superbly mournful backing by Kwes.
Although it dips and fails to fully redeem itself in patches, this justifiably confident debut suggests the combination of Dickins’s mellifluous flow and Kwes’s eight-bit, bass-heavy, sci-fi beats could have many more miles to go. At a time when hip-hop seems to be represented by vapid clotheshorses and empty-headed loudmouths, Gob’s substance and complexity are sweet solace.
GOB, Dels (Big Dada/Border).