| "One a, a one a, a one two three." And so the latest album from LA producer Daedelus starts. What follows is a richly textured cocktail of an album that isn't afraid to take chances and challenge the listener. Beautiful lush strings wash over, IDM style chopped, sliced and diced beats. Rappers and singers pop in from time to time, sometimes delivering performances as experimental and unusual as the backing tracks they appear on. Many of the strings sound like they've been ripped from 1940's movies. Phrases loop and glitch - occasionally I thought my CD player was playing up, but no, this is Daedelus pushing at the boundaries of what sounds right. There's clearly an awareness of dancefloor rhythms, some of the glitched out rhythm tracks sound like they started life as hardcore breaks, but nothing on this album comes close to being a dancefloor-filler. By Daedelus' own admission, this is a listen to at home album, rather than a collection of club tracks. It's not all glitch and clever though. The strings in particular, stand out as beacons of melody and harmony, while the sampling and instrumentation is top notch. The piano playing, harp and flute samples on "Move On" keep the song sounding warm and beautiful, despite the fact that the drums are quietly bashing away like a broken sampler operated by mid-fit epileptic. The album title, as well as the idea, is taken from the old Surrealist game in which a group of random French crazies and intellectuals write down part of a sentence, fold the page and pass it on to the next. The premise was that the many contributors to the album (MF Doom, Sci from Scienz of Life, Mike Ladd, Cyne, Laura Darling, Prefuse 73, Hrishikesh Hirway of the One AM Radio, TTC, Jogger) would not hear the completed work until it was finished. In many cases they did not hear the backing track they were eventually spliced with until the album was complete. This could have resulted in an album of disparate parts but thanks to Daedelus' guiding hand, this is avoided. Some of the rap-lead tracks threaten to take the album into straight, mellow hip-hop territory, but whenever things are getting too normal something odd comes along. The album has the feel of a movie soundtrack. Specifically, If Lars von Trier ever remakes Casablanca as a Dogme film, sets it in LA, makes the 2 lead characters take LSD through the story and remoulds Sam the piano player as a rave Dj, he'll find that the soundtrack has already been made. There are moments of fragile beauty, sweeping excitement, high tension and even a few soppy bits. It's not an easy listen - Daedelus works his listener hard - but he does ultimately reward that effort by taking the listener to a unique musical space. Standout track for me is "Fallen Love." A vocal sample asks "Do you think you might have fallen in love?" while the most beautiful sounding string section loops around a rising chord progression and almost straight hardcore drumbreak tickles away under frenzied bongos. Mad and beautiful, beautiful and mad - which pretty much sums up the album. - Big Chill |
1XLP/Out Of Print