He has the best name in electronica. I'm not even on about Daedelus, although borrowing your name from the Greek mythological craftsman and tragic inventor who, like this Daedelus, was so skillful he could event images, seems like the most appropriate name for this hugely impressive producer and musician.
I'm on about his real name, Alfred Weisberg-Roberts, LA resident, dandyism enthusiast and international globe-trotting man of mystery.
His music is a squelchy mash-up of beautiful sounds and beats that'll keep your head nodding for weeks. He is both the most modest and humble yet massively exciting sample-basher you'll witness. See him live and it takes you to another dimension. There's no hiding behind laptops as if he's googling the local cinema listings for this man; he invented a sampler-box-thing that lights up at his command. You actually see the samples being triggered and layered on top of each other to create electro-hip-hop cuts like no one else around. There's nothing tragic about this Daedelus.
Collaborations with hip hop luminaries MF Doom and Busdriver have wowed all who've heard them, and with the release of yet another excellent album in Love to Make Music To on the ever dependable Ninja Tune label, there's more collaborations that shine through in this one. Does he find it a liberating process working with different mcs?
"Any guest producer's touch is always a reveal, and an emcee's that much more so. I'm not one for putting words in another's mouth, and when some meaning is made, say about ill villains, in the case of MF Doom, or a relationship that won't leave alone [Paperboy on Touchtone from the latest record] it is something I need to carry in the spirit of the song from then on."
Inspiring each other in the studio, the new album is full of guests to make a colourful, joyfl long-player. This time I was lucky enough to be sent it by a radio plugger, but I first heard Daedelus randomly, when a chance spotting of his Of Snowdonia album got the better of me and i had to hear it.
The closing track on said album is called Hiraethus, a uniquely Welsh word that briefly translates to 'longing for something', or 'missing the homeland'. How does one of the world's finest producers get to hear of Snowdonia, let alone name a track Hiraethus?
"You are too kind", begins Alfred (that's the modesty again), "and if perhaps others like myself; Californian somewhat HipHop hopeful, Electro delighting, and Victorian preoccupied can speak on such great subjects, then I'll yell them at any great heights possible." I love the randomness of his delight for Snowdonia, for Wales.
When I was in school in Cardiff I'd lie and say I was a vegetarian, just to try and seem a little bit interesting. Over in LA, Daedelus was telling his classmates he was Welsh.
"I've been confused about my Welsh origins since I was very young, lying about it in grade school, it is my shame somewhat in this way. But who cares really when you have elf-like creatures like Joanna Newsom, that dude from Of Montreal, or Bjork (who in her defence is Icelandic, and could be automatically pagan and some kind of fairy princess accordingly) parading around with much more unacceptably bizarre preoccupations then a fondness for Wales."
This, of course, is true. It's the fact his music is so exciting that makes this extra angle seem thrilling to me.
But back to the studio; if it's Daedelus' name on a record sleeve or lcd screen, does Daedelus get the final say?
"I think the saying goes something about the buck stopping here, lines in the sand, and such, and anyways if it has my name (or often pseudonym) on the album it needs to pass a certain measure. I have left whole albums on the cutting floor as almost an act of karmic hope for perhaps an odd good tune. Actually come to think of it, Ninja Tune as a label really is the one that says yeah or nah in this case, I'm just doing the addition, so to speak..."
There's always someone above you with a bigger say. Soon there'll be a new American President. Does he feel the need to make his political feelings known though his music, listened to far beyond the fifty states?
I had notions for a long while about letting the listener decide all context and only infringing on this with perhaps an album title here or songs refrain there, maybe some vague record jacket artwork to guide a story", he says. "Everything was somewhere buried if the lister wanted it, but way below a casual spin. But push came to shoving, and with our current presidential cycle I stepped in a new very very blatant repetitive direction in support of Barak Obama. Call it my downfall if you will from obscure IDM noodling, and embracing simple words of praise and perhaps change. As sung by Taz Arnold, "This is real and not for play, I'mma vote Obama way, we hood, we voting, we throwing it up'. And I am."
HUW STEPHENS