Hey Folks,
Just a heads up about the Daedelus gig this Saturday at the Twisted Pepper. Please note this is an EARLY SHOW and Daedelus will be performing from 10.30 - 12.
Tickets available from Ticketmaster, Tickets.ie, Sound Cellar & City Discs @ €15, which gives you access to the POGO 4th Birthday party later on.
[b]Also please check out our new website
www.choicecuts.ie . :wink:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRJ2YvRv3N4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAAy1XDp1Xw Alfred Darlington isn’t your average cookie-cutter musician. From how
he looks (early Victorian Dandism), to how he makes music, to how he
expresses himself and views the world, his is a very individual, a
‘bespoke’ outlook.
Alfred was born in Santa Monica in 1977 to an artist mother and
psychologist father. Musical from very early on, as a child he was
classically and jazz-trained in a number of instruments, but his
interests were broad and varied – less a prodigy than a renaissance boy
whose obsessions ranged from Greek legend to the mountains of Wales. As
a 15 year old he finally persuaded his parents to take him to the
Principality. Whilst in a YMCA in London he flipped the radio dial,
found a pirate radio station and taped some UK rave and hardcore. “It
was my first ‘Eureka!’ moment in music,” he says.
Back in the US he joined local rock bands, jazz bands and ska bands,
which he enjoyed but felt limited by,too. At home he was listening to
Warp, Ninja
and your harder electronic stuff. He started DJing out the more
leftfield side of drum and bass and making his own rudimentary
productions. They were meant to be drum & bass but they kept
turning out different and from his outsider’s experiments his own style
was born. He chose the name Daedelus as he had a childhood obsession
with invention, and what was he doing, after all, if not tinkering and
fiddling and experimenting like the “gentleman inventors” of old?
In 1999 he started DJing on
Dublab.com for his “Entropy Sessions” and began dropping in his own early demo productions. Carlos Nino (of
ammoncontact)
had the show after him and usually pushed Alfred out the studio as
quickly as possible as he was not so into Daedelus’ confrontational DJ
style, but when he heard a tranquil Daedelus production he took, in
typical Nino style, Daedelus under his considerable wing around the LA
scene. Nino placed Daedelus tracks on two influential compilations and
then persuaded
Plug Research to release his debut album, “Invention” in 2002, Remixers included
Madlib, who later took Daedelus’ accordian parts and used them on the
Madvillain record, closely followed by his “The Household” EP on
Prefuse 73’s Eastern Developments label.
In 2003, he was booked to play a show in San Diego by Brian Crabtree
and Peter Siegerstrong and they asked him to test out an early
prototype of the Monome box. “It’s a Non-traditional electronic
instrument,” Daedelus explains. “Basically it allows for massive
improvisation.” Since then Daedelus has continued to use this
revolutionary box, bringing much genuine liveness to the sometimes
static world of performed electronic/dance music.
In 2003 he did “The Weather” album with
Busdriver and
Radioinactive and the remix album “Rethinking the Weather” on Mush records (home of
cLOUDDEAD, also on
Big Dada/Ninja Tune).
2004 saw the release of “Of Snowdonia” on Plug Research, the album with
which Daedelus says he first “felt true artistic confidence, finding a
true voice. I was finally in the right zone.”
There was certainly no let up in his creativity. Also in 2004 he
released the concept album “A Gent Agent” on tiny German label
Laboratory Instinct. The 2005 album “Exquisite Corpse” on Mush album
featured the likes of
TTC, Mike Ladd, MF Doom.
Ninja signed Daedelus for UK/Europe (a relationship which has reached
its full expression on “Love To Make Music To,” his first album for the
label worldwide and put together with the help of their team). In 2006
“Denies the Days Demise” came out, a record showcasing his love of
Brazilian music. Last year he released his first live album, “Live At
the Low End Theory,” and “The Fairweather Friends EP”. Later this year
will see the release of his collaboration with his wife, Laura Darling,
as Long Lost!
And while his reputation has grown internationally, his place in the LA
scene has also solidified. The musician that many of the hottest names
in the city turn to for everything from bass clarinet licks to advice
on obscure electronics, Daedelus has worked extensively with Taz from
Sa-Ra, the pair of them opening for the likes of
DJ Assault, Justice and
2 Live Crew as well as appearing in
Erykah Badu’s most recent video.
As for “Love To Make Music To,” Daedelus says that this album is “the
imaginary memory of a time that never was! It’s my drug/love record,
harking back to that time in the YMCA in London, when I first heard
rave…”