Photo by Michael Patras

The Meditations of Dälek

Jersey based producer/MC Dälek’s ‘Meditations’ is a sonic slide show to this apocalyptic sideshow. Using field recordings of voices protesting police brutality and the ambient drones of a vacant and haunted metro system, ‘Meditations’ is a brilliantly designed way to experience a complex moment in time in a dose that can be heard, consumed and, indeed, meditated upon.

While the pandemic keeps showing up like a drunk asshole at a graduation party for recovering alcoholics more injustices become unearthed, month after month each volume of Meditations captures a moment of this ever-changing marathon better than CNN or Fox News ever could. Taking over the airwaves is imminent; these are signals for the next generation of what the next steps should be.

We hear the words “I believe that we will win” being traded back and forth between speaker and army as effects enhance the syncopation of the voices in protest reminding us that rhythm is a system for mobilizing bodies to rise up from oppression and the sounds representing grief over dead bodies that family members will have to live through.  Organized sound motivates the sines, each volume of Meditations is its own world, like you just turned the corner and entered a dark alley in a scene from a Deadverse Universe Video Game (“Grand Theft Audio”?).

Dälek’s mastery of the MPC, effects and new innovations in IOS music producing and processing apps forms into a battle station, his approach to beats stretches the time line out so that we walk slowly through the carnage. Sound wise, the point is to express the tension and the beauty and it is all represented clearly here, production is about choices, there is no universal way, just a long set of functions that we can choose to add to our arsenal, Meditations is one of many systems of expression that utilizes technology to plummet us into another dimension, and is much like a graphic novel or a painting with infinite layers.

For me, personally, Meditations does what I hope most artists set out to do, it lets us know that we are not alone, neither inside or out and at the same time are very much alone. It is a tricky thing to pull off but comes from an understanding about producing music live here in the moment rather than thinking into the future about what label will release it and what sort of promotion to do or even punching that save button at all. This is a new dimension coming and the world is finally “weird” enough for sound alchemists to register to the wider audience.

By Raz Mesinai: producer/UPA founder

Deadverse Recordings on Bandcamp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oaba5rjMMdU