Daedelus Helping to Revive Rave Days

Posted on Nov 19th 2010 5:00PM by Jesse Ship
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Ninja Tune

Alfred Darlington, aka Daedelus, was turned on to the '90s rave sound from the young age of 12.

"I bought my first record because I liked the cover -- It ended up being 'Trip II the Moon (Part 1)' by Acen," he tells Spinner. "As a young person, I don't think I was able to distinguish from the fact that a lot of it was super terrible and cheesy, but at the time, I was so young to it, and it hit me. I just wanted to buy everything I could with that sort of sound and energy, so that's all I'm trying to make these days -- it's all just rave in my own weird f---ed up manner."

Because of his close affiliations with artists like 12th Planet, Darlington is sometimes ladled into the bass heavy dubstep mix currently rocking the world, but his productions are usually far mellower and varied; much more on the fringe of the commercial scene. A typical Daedelus album will range from jazzy, orchestral mash-ups to glitchy bleeps and head-nodding trip-hop.

"It's so wonderful to put out a little noise and chaos meeting a little noise and order -- which somehow fuses to be a little more than itself," he says.

His home base of Los Angeles lends itself well to his sonic concoction. "I'm used to hearing the fun mix of beats, dubstep, indie rock and psych," says Darlington. "[Psych] seems to have all the LA kids on fire."

"People are a little afraid of embracing the exact moment of time that they're sampling from," he continues. "Even though people were sampling large from jazz, psych, or fusion records, it always had to be regurgitated. But now we have kids who are saying that they want to hear the original stuff because it's as good as what it has been regurgitated into."

Watch Daedelus' 'LA Nocture'

One of the major hubs for the bass heavy symphony that's emerging is the Low End Theory club. "You can go and listen to a whole night of instrumental music, and it can be amazing and florid, and your everything," says the producer. "But there have been many different roots and avenues that people have taken to get there; some people came from an instrumental hip-hop background, whose wigs were blown by other experimental producers who kept perverting the ideas of what hip-hop could be. Others got into it because they went to a rave and saw whomever. Or they just happened to get into a Flying Lotus joint -- or maybe one of my songs -- and it just hit them more than that dubstep 'womp womp womp.'

"When you get rid of a typical formula, I think it freaks people out in a nice way."