| Let me take a moment to hit the rewind button… This is a record that has been out for a few months that we’re just now getting around to reviewing, but still think it deserves more attention than it got. So here it is: Daedelus returns this time around with a mixed bag of an album in terms of style, guest collaborators, and quality. The opener is a sparklingly loungy intro into what hip-hop would sound like if it’s roots were formed in Las Vegas. A little bit glitzy, a little bit shady back alley, lit 24 hours a day by multicolored neon and packed to capacity with even more colorful characters - highlight of which is guest vocals by MF Doom on Impending Doom. Daedelus’ rhythmic style is characteristically choppy and Doom’s pipes skip and sputter along as gravelly and gripping as you’ve come to expect. Where else are you gonna hear “a couple grand” and “an elephant man hand” used in a rhyme? The style of this record is everywhere from the jazzy backdrop below Sci’s rhyming on Move On followed directly by melodic keys and lulling vocals courtesy of Laura Darling on Now & Sleep. From the chaotic industrial clatter mixed with bits of warm keys, dancy techno beats, action themes, scattered vocals and flutey twirls of The Crippled Hand (more musical elements are stacked here than you could find scanning completely across the FM dial) to the downtempo melody of (the first of two tracks entitled) Welcome Home, complete with delicately plucked strings and production by Prefuse 73. From the trainwreck, Cadavre Exquis, that almost requires a new sub-sub-genre name to describe, (disco-hop?) to the exceptional spoken-word flow of Mike Ladd on (the second) Welcome Home and indietronic stylings of closer Thanatopsis, Daedelus creates a brand of IDM tinted hip-hop that is neither old school nor new school, it’s more like the Professor Xavier School for the Gifted school of hip-hop. - Just Add Noise |
1XLP/Out Of Print