Cosign

Daedelus’ new live album has been making some noise. He incorporates the ill Monome sequencer into his live show which is kind of the focal point of the album.

Pitchfork.com gave it a 7.1. They write:

“The Low End Theory club night at the Airliner in L.A. is a perfect place for Daedelus to throw down. Hip-hop and assorted electronic performers knock elbows to an audience of urbane and avant-garde types. Daedelus himself has always trodden this line by mixing his readily parsible concept (old records with glitch laid all-up-ons) with varied production stints in the underground hip-hop community. He even places himself outside of easy identifiers by performing in Edwardian coats, tails and ascots. There’s no better way to identify yourself as a hyperbolic, rap-obsessed white man than to chill with Busdriver and Madlib while dressing like a dandy, right? But it’s the added punch of heavy breakbeats on “Press Snooze” (using the sample from “Like Clockwork Springs” off Demise) that really shy away from his duality of old-time sample-monger and poor man’s Prefuse.

Daedelus’ live show shares elements of Prefuse 73’s Preparations: this relentless stream of off-white noise, a dense heap of familiar, pleasing sounds with beguiling dance appeal. Even a Daedelus fan has to delve deep into this disc to get to points of familiarity, since none of the track names match the studio works that feature the old samples or compositions. Instead of the pristine “Something Bells” off 2004’s Of Snowdonia, we have to deal with the shark-toothed dance beats of “Now’s the Time”, with the addition of a tinkly synth line from Denies dipping in and out of coherence. Come to think of it: Lucidity is a key to Daedelus’s work, which at its low points seems like he’s planning his next move with a bit of uncertainty and at its high points can’t be forgotten without pointed effort.

Daedelus’ heaped-upon layers of samples sometimes lack the direct impact he seems to strive for. His live show is a relentless assault of sampled and constructed melodies which evolve with toe-tapping, but not body-moving, spontaneity. His timeless eccentricity, his penchant for the coats-and-tails, certainly takes listeners out of the contemporary, incestuous interplay between electronic and hip-hop music. It’s not that he can’t host a damn good party or re-examine and brilliantly re-combine his work. Daedelus just seems more at home in the herky-jerky company of clockwork, steam-powered robots whose interstella exploits have as of yet only aspired to the levels of Jules Verne and Little Nemo. If you’re an electro-romantic, you’ll feel right at home. ”