Zu / Dälek
live@Estragon 19 gennaio '06

As I wandered semi-drunk on my birthday, I discovered a small poster for the Dälek concert at the Estragon the next evening. Great. I was very happy and then I found out that it was for the meager cost of only 10 euros. Great! The next evening I go.

First to play are Zu, a Roman jazzcore trio. Initially, I can't stand them; at their best moments, they seem like a badly mixed cocktail of System Of A Down and Sonic Youth, while at their worst moments, it's me on bass and a sodomized elephant. Then I start to understand them. The drummer is amazing, like one from Area, but overall I don't like us, especially the bassist who is excessively verbose, too focused on sound rather than rhythm. And even the saxophonist, although talented, was wasted just making all that noise. By me, their sonic attack doesn't hit the mark at all.

Then Dälek starts (and here the target is hit squarely, indeed pulverized by a huge bazooka bullet). An ocean within. So many sounds that don't just envelop you but actually emerge from within you. You feel the genesis, the creation inside your guts. It's like an extremely painful birth. And no psychotropic substances, just a short and very fat African American rapping and another further back with his Macs and strange contraptions, who is not a god but a very evil metropolitan devil with a too-evil face partially hidden by a hood. Like a very powerful acid. Perhaps Dälek are truly immortal beings. They will be there at the end of the world, the apocalypse, and while we are all bent over waiting for judgment, we will still hear Dälek rapping over the clangor and screeching of dying humanity. Not a concert. A mystical experience. For songs like "Distorted Prose" or "Culture for Dollars" or "Opiate the Masses", you can't talk about industrial rather than post hip-hop; it's something that animates in your worst nightmares, a sonic turmoil with a serious vein of emotional terrorism. A malaise that has nothing to do with spleen or taedium vitae, but has subtly mutated into nihilism, aggressiveness, restlessness, into a constant state of paranoid hallucination.

Then to leave Estragon and face the world again with the awareness of how the apocalypse will sound. Far above any nice concert... Just too much. (I haven't spoken about the crossover combo between Zu and Dälek, certainly amusing but nothing more).