// This week we have mostly been listening to... DELS

19th May 2011 09:46:40

DELS is an Ipswich born breath of fresh air, a genre bashing hip hop artist that steamrolled us on the first listen. He bases early influences from his Caribbean roots of soul, funk, hip hop and dancehall, but then maybe just anything with a little bit of drive and bass. It was at Kingston University studying graphic media that DELS, (Kieran Dickens) found himself exposed to creative people and a wider reaching net that delivered him to artists such as Joy Division. The name DELS comes from a P.E. teacher getting his name wrong, calling him Del Roy and with the p*** taking that followed it stuck. Dickens jokingly adds that when he crosses the white line his silk and dazzle on the ball is likened to Del Piero, either way he’d like to rediscover Kieran as it has got lost a bit along the way.

His debut album ‘Gob’, out this week, is a bench mark of the collaborations, Joe Goddard (Hot Chip) and Micachu produce five of the tracks creating synthetic mayhem in parts. Not worried which hole he may be pigdeoned into or whether he will be accepted by hip hop has given dickens a creative freedom sitting on the line of abandon. The energy running through ‘Gob’ is owing to this no-strings approach, it is also said that leaving the big smoke to record the album back in Ipswich meant he wasn’t trapdoored into the ten a penny trance filled wallpaper music we are currently cursed with.

‘Gob’ lends itself to creating fantasy, a fantasy which would be taken from Dickens’ namesake rather that anything to Disney or too chocolate box. The playful introduction to ‘’Shapeshift’ provides that little bit of fairytale; the stoked fire belching out flashing flames as the family sits by rationed morsels. Then the rash and volted bass crashes through the family scene smashing the grace into de-braced destruction. It with this kind of two second chrysalis that the album finds a theme, and no better shown than in the ‘Shapeshift’ video. Dickens runs into the phone box, takes off his glasses and guises a new DELS, but unlike the S-man he does it over, then over again.

Taking pride in difference, it is how Dickens grew from a CD player and a mike to being backed by, *deep breath* two keyboardists, singers, delay pedals and bass guitar in three years. ‘...Make sure that when I’m onstage I’m communicating something to the audience because I feel like hip-hop could be so much more interesting if you have some great musicians around you.’

Coming from a graphic design tertiary education, DELS has his own ideas and crafts his style with imagination. He was responsible for both the album cover, a huge gobstopper cracked in two with each of the rings signifying the length of each of the tracks on the album, and all the concept and direction in his imagination sparked videos. Like his music his dress has underlying hip hop direction but then in each brazed and broken part there is a nu-cool too. Picture either a Franklin and Marshal Baseball Jacket, or a Barbour heritage jacket paired with a pair of efflorescent white Nizzas... and that as they say is that.