DAEDELUS
MEET DAEDELUS, THE ESSENTRIC HIP-HOP NUT WHO DRESSES IN EDWARDIAN OUTFITS AND LOVES RAVE
LA based Alfred Weisberg-Roberts is a bonafide, 100% genuine maverick. Better known as Daedelus, he releases three or so albums a year on various record labels. He's generally considered a hip-hop producer, but he hums and hans and eventually says "no and yes", when you ask him if he makes hip-hop. What's more certain is that his new album, 'Exquisite Corpse', is his finest work to date, and the perfect introduction to his talents: it sounds like everything you'd hope for from a new Avalanches album, taking an extraordinarily complex patchwork of samples from the 1930s to the present day, combined with live instruments, scattered breakbeats, guest mcs and female vocalists. He likes to describe it as, "music that bangs, but for the bedroom."
Daedelus is loosely part of the West Coast independent hip-hop scene, but unlike many of his peers, he's pushing things forward creatively. Willfully open-minded and imaginative, Daedelus speaks reverentially of the "mangled, complicated Bomb Squad sound", claims Acne's rave anthem 'A Trip to the Moon' as one of his biggest influences, and is enormously fond of Dirty South hip-hop, animatedly enthusing about how this sound is now even influencing hip-hop in Mexico. A minute later, and he's talking about his broken beat and break core DJ sets. He hopes that people will bring air horns to his gig later that week (they fail to appear, but a spirited multiple stage invasion more than makes up for it).
Daedelus has a knack of bringing out the best in his fellow collaborators. 'Exquisite Corpse' features verses from MF Doom, TTC, Cane, and beautifully haunting vocals from Laura Darling. The 28-year-old says he's enormously fond of working with other artists, partly because "it's hard to improvise by yourself", but also because if he spends too much time in his studio alone, "the equipment starts talking to me!"
As for the future, well it looks bright, and busy. Daedelus has recently recorded an album with scorchingly hot fellow-West Coast producers Sa-Ra, who are being pitched as the next N.E.R.D., as well as an LP with Laura Darling that could just be one of the most amazing and romantic interpretations of hip-hop yet. Exquisite indeed.
TOM WILSON