DELS – Black Salad [EP stream]
It’s always refreshing when a voice not tied down too heavily by genre or carried by instinctual imitation appears on the UK rap scene, and last year’s thrilling debut LP ‘GOB’ indicated that DELS may be just such a voice. The album was fit to burst with untamed ideas, with the dense and cacophonous beats not always making for the most easy of listens – calling to mind Micachu & The Shapes at their most aurally grating. But when Dummy first heard the ease with which the Ipswich MC switched things up for heartbreaker You Live Inside My Head, which was offered up as the first taste of this EP, we were left with few doubts.
The ‘Black Salad’ EP does exactly what you’d hope from a release following a promising debut: DELS sounds consistently more assured and in control. Bird Milk sees the MC really step up his lyrical game, matching playful wordplay – “I’m a walking contradiction like a corpse” – to lines that flip the seemingly trivial into the touching: “I’ve got to go home ‘cause my lady’s cooking for me”. It also displays just what a fantastic producer Kwes really is – as its closing section spirals off thoughtfully through a mass of glockenspiels and cascading drums.
The Raisa K produced Not Today thunders along with insistent bass that matches the ascertained emotions DELS relates, and the EP is merged with two inventive instrumental-style pieces. You Live Inside My Head, which appropriately closes things, only seems to grow in intensity when experienced as part of a full work.
Clash Music have an exclusive stream of the EP – head here to give it a listen.
Big Dada will release the ‘Black Salad’ EP on the 26th November
