Experimental hip-hop noise pioneers D LEK have completed work on their new album "Asphalt For Eden" which will be set for release on CD/LP/Digital on April 22nd. This will be the first D LEK release since 2009's "Gutter Tactics" album.
Ever since their 1998 "Negro, Nekro, Nekros" debut LP, D LEK have forged a sound unlike any other entity in the DIY hip-hop scene where the band would take a style of dark urban hip-hop artistry and blend with a rhythmic backdrop consisting of noise, experimental music, shoegaze, and dark ambient. This would be showcased on four acclaimed full-length LPs released on Mike Patton's Ipecac Recordings (along with a collaboration with Faust and a b-sides compilation released through Hydra Head) throughout the course of the first decade of the 2000's. It was during said decade in which D LEK would share the stage with such a diversity of artists as KRS One, The Melvins, Tool, Jesu, The Dillinger Escape Plan, DeLa Soul, Prince Paul, ZU, Black Heart Procession, Flying Lotus, Mastodon, Grandmaster Flash, just to name a few notables. In 2011, D LEK quietly went on hiatus for an undetermined amount of time.
Fast forward to spring 2015 when producer MC D lek himself with the blessing of former longtime member/co-producer Oktopus decided to resurrect D LEK with a new lineup that now consists of Mike Manteca on samples and effects and DJ rEk on turntables. The new lineup would release a new single/video for the song "Masked Laughter (Nothing's Left) in the spring of 2015 likewise to mark their return.
