L.A.-based producer Daedelus's live show is a lot like Daft Punk's recent epic set, except, well...not. Instead of a giant pyramid, the L.A. producer performs on top of whatever rickety table the club has on hand. His lightshow is a custom-made Monome, a minimalist sample trigger box connected to his Powerbook which represents his Showtunes-era samples as lights whizzing across the unit's wood-paneled display. But on Live at Low End Theory, recorded in June at the well-known L.A. club night, his gauzy re-interpretations of his own work take on a whole new life as dance music just as critics and fans were writing him off as a niche commodity.
After The Weather, a successful collaboration with Busdriver and Radioinactive, Daedelus was criticized for turning his old-timey samples into a schtick rather than exploring his compositional prowess. Subsequent releases Of Snowdonia and A Gent Agent-- as well as his side-project Adventure Time-- had the feel of an artist not quite commanding his source material, like a flea-market collector content to hang a record's quaint, dated album art on his walls rather than spin the disc.
But in 2005, he staged a virtual hip-hop punch-out with Exquisite Corpse, delivering on his promise as a producer and featuring rappers like MF Doom, Prefuse 73, Mike Ladd, Cyne, and TTC. And 2006's Denies the Day's Demise was one of his best releases since his Invention five years earlier. It might not have done so well in the market, even given its high-profile release on Ninja Tune, but his dreamy hip-hop/samba time capsules was at no time better parceled. Daedelus' shows have for a long time employed a breakbeat-friendly ethos, but Denies was perhaps the first record to actively sell his affinity. Low End Theory may be essential to proving to larger audiences that Daedelus can break out of the rubric of aged source material and home-made fuzz without seeming a novelty or getting walked on by underground rappers.
The Low End Theory club night at the Airliner in L.A. is a perfect place for Daedelus to throw down. Hip-hop and assorted electronic performers knock elbows to an audience of urbane and avant-garde types. Daedelus himself has always trodden this line by mixing his readily parsible concept (old records with glitch laid all-up-ons) with varied production stints in the underground hip-hop community. He even places himself outside of easy identifiers by performing in Edwardian coats, tails and ascots. There's no better way to identify yourself as a hyperbolic, rap-obsessed white man than to chill with Busdriver and Madlib while dressing like a dandy, right? But it's the added punch of heavy breakbeats on "Press Snooze" (using the sample from "Like Clockwork Springs" off Demise) that really shy away from his duality of old-time sample-monger and poor man's Prefuse.
Daedelus' live show shares elements of Prefuse 73's Preparations: this relentless stream of off-white noise, a dense heap of familiar, pleasing sounds with beguiling dance appeal. Even a Daedelus fan has to delve deep into this disc to get to points of familiarity, since none of the track names match the studio works that feature the old samples or compositions. Instead of the pristine "Something Bells" off 2004's Of Snowdonia, we have to deal with the shark-toothed dance beats of "Now's the Time", with the addition of a tinkly synth line from Denies dipping in and out of coherence. Come to think of it: Lucidity is a key to Daedelus's work, which at its low points seems like he's planning his next move with a bit of uncertainty and at its high points can't be forgotten without pointed effort.
Daedelus' heaped-upon layers of samples sometimes lack the direct impact he seems to strive for. His live show is a relentless assault of sampled and constructed melodies which evolve with toe-tapping, but not body-moving, spontaneity. His timeless eccentricity, his penchant for the coats-and-tails, certainly takes listeners out of the contemporary, incestuous interplay between electronic and hip-hop music. It's not that he can't host a damn good party or re-examine and brilliantly re-combine his work. Daedelus just seems more at home in the herky-jerky company of clockwork, steam-powered robots whose interstella exploits have as of yet only aspired to the levels of Jules Verne and Little Nemo. If you're an electro-romantic, you'll feel right at home.
