Interview - Daedelus

When I first heard that Daedelus (aka Alfred Darlington) would be performing at The Stranger’s Genius Awards, my first thought was: “Dang, that event is all about the speeches and the schmoozing. I hope people actually stick around and listen to the music.”

As luck so often has it, though, all my fears were for naught. When the always nattily dressed Daedelus took the stage in front of a half-empty Moore Theater (the other half was, as I predicted, mingling in the lobby), he was quick to invite everyone up on stage to join in the fun.

What ensued was part intimate dance party, part gawk-fest. The tech-centric equipment nerds gaped as a flurry of phalanges danced over an incomprehensible array of lighted buttons, while the less technically obsessed shook their respective booties to a frenetic set that managed to graze just about every genre capable of supporting a beat.

The pace was relentless enough that during the evening’s one minor snafu (which Daedelus later attributed to a software glitch), the crowd took those few seconds of accidental silence as a rare opportunity to catch its breath and applaud, before hurdling back into the rhythmic abyss.

Afterward, Mr. Darlington was kind enough to let us abscond with him to an upper stairwell, where fellow ‘phobian Tighe and I chatted him up about his performance, his musical philosophy, and of course his aforementioned mystery box, the Monome.

melophobe: So I take it you’ve played a lot of shows like that, with crowd interaction?

Daedelus: A lot of crowd interaction, but it’s tough. That machine - the Monome that I use [a two fifty six, to be exact] - it works like half the time, and people do a lot of staring. I’ve often called it the staring contest, where people look at the box and the box is basically looking back at them. And it’s so funny because… a lot of things happen when people dance and move, and you can tell if they’re into it or not, or progressively what’s working, and what it is that you want to do with them. I mean, not to be controlling, but to get a sense of it. When people are standing and staring, it’s very easy to think, “This is the worst show I’ve ever played. It’s going terribly.”

melophobe: [Laughter] So it’s pronounced “moe-nome”?

Daedelus: “Mah-nome” is kind of typical, but I call it “mah-no-mee.”

melophobe: Ha, I was right!

Daedelus: It isn’t properly that--

melophobe: Dammit.

Daedelus: --but I call it that because, honestly, when you say to someone, “Hey, it’s a mah-nome,” and if someone wants to look it up, what do they do? There are so many variations on how you can spell that. “Mah-no-mee” is very… syllabic. Especially overseas, where I’m playing fairly often.

melophobe: So that software [which runs on a laptop during the show], is that specific to the Monome?

Daedelus: It is specific to the Monome, but it’s all very much in the public domain. Anybody can download it.

melophobe: Is it open source?

Daedelus: Open source with a caveat. The actual program running is Max/MSP, and if you get the free version of Max/MSP you can’t really look at the software, you can’t look at the guts of it. But if you own Max/MSP it’s all there. So it’s just one of those restrictions of the software I’m using in specific, but… people need all kinds of software, and [the Monome] is open source in the sense that the basic schematic of the Monome is online. You can go online, get the schematic, build it. It’s very simple.

melophobe: I’ve looked at them online, and I’ve seen the waiting lists. Are you involved with the people who make the Monome?

Daedelus: On a friendly level, yes. On a professional level, not at all. And I love it so much because… If they had a different business practice, I would be less inclined. If they had a different way of approaching the way they treat the people who buy their products, I would really be turned off. But because they’re so open and wonderful… It is difficult but it is a labor of love. There are very few things in this world nowadays that are made by one person.

melophobe: That’s made by one person?

Daedelus: Well, it’s made by a couple. They don’t fashion every bit of it, but they assemble all the wood, they assemble everything, they put the chips together, they test it. And they also do everything as ecologically sustainably as possible. Like the buttons aren’t totally evil, they’re just made out of [silicone] rubber, and the wood siding is made from locally sourced wood near Philadelphia, where they’re located.

melophobe: That’s why they’re so impossible to get a hold of.

Daedelus: That’s the sad byproduct, and there are people who get angry about that kind of stuff, but it isn’t something to be taken lightly. A lot of people buy it because they hear about it, and they see that Trent Reznor uses it, or Kanye West put in a blog or something.

melophobe: How long have you been using the Monome?

Daedelus: About five years. I was the first one to have one, actually. I asked Brian [Crabtree], when he was first working on the idea with some other people in San Diego. I happened to play a show down there, and, well, he invited me to come down and play. I didn’t know what he was up to, but when I saw it, it was like… It made every bit of sense. I’d been wrestling with sample-based music, trying almost every conceivable way of approaching taking a sample and playing it like an instrument, or trying to. And always you’re dealing with these restrictions, and coming from a live music background you don’t want to have restrictions, you want to have freedom. So I loved it and I called him probably every day for about a month, and gave him every bit of money I had, and I ended up having the first one.

melophobe: And have you used anything else that was designed for similar purposes, like maybe a [Korg] Kaoss Pad 3 or a JazzMutant Lemur?

Daedelus: I’ve used a JazzMutant Lemur, I’ve used a Kaoss Pad, I’ve used a reactable. A lot of different touch screen approaches. I’m not a fan of the touch screen.

melophobe: Is it the lack of the tactile?

Daedelus: The tactile’s really important, not only because I come from a live music background, where you can feel your position on the piano, you know… Even if they’re all the same-looking keys, you know inexplicably where you are. It’s a very fixed thing. Touch screens move around. You have to look at them, that’s the thing. I know I stare at my Monome way too much, but I try to look up and involve the audience--

[Coincidentally, at this point we were interrupted by a gaggle of adoring fans asking for a picture.]

melophobe: Uh, we were talking about touch screens.

Daedelus: So yeah, the touch screen is basically, it’s something you have to regard at all times. You can’t just be divorced from it, you can’t look up to the audience and feel confident that the buttons you’re pressing will be in the same sequence they were last time.

melophobe: I heard someone comment that people must come up and fuck around with your equipment sometimes. Do you ever have an audience member mess up your set?

Daedelus: I do, but… I’m really into chance operations in general, so it’s definitely a chance operation. Unfortunately some people get the idea that it’s like, “Oh, you just push a button and it all happens.” So I’ve had these situations where people have gone a little bit… you know, they want to participate, which is fine, but it can get really messy.

melophobe: A little too much fun.

Daedelus: Well, things can start getting weird, you know, and it starts getting off-kilter…

melophobe: And then one person’s enjoyment becomes not much fun for everybody else.

Daedelus: Hey, trust me, I feel that way about myself sometimes.

melophobe: I also noticed that you kept it pretty dancey the whole time. I’ve heard a few comments on the new album [Love to Make Music to], that you’re in a dancier mood than you usually are.

Daedelus: Yeah, that turns some people off, I know. Which is okay, though, because I needed to express that part of what I do. I’ve had stabs at that kind of stuff before on all my records. If you look at a record like “A Gent Agent” I have songs that really go for a jungle-y sound, and on Exquisite Corpse I have a song that’s really quite upbeat, “Cadavre Exquis.” It’s one of those things that has always been on my mind, and then to be with a label that prizes that more than other things, it’s kind of a kick in the pants.

melophobe: So you’re very happy with Ninja Tune?

Daedelus: Not entirely.

melophobe: You seem to move around labels quite a bit.

Daedelus: Well, and that’s the thing, is that… In the end, every label is a chance to express a certain dimension of something, and Ninja Tune works well because I’m able to express this side of things. They wouldn’t be so keen on me expressing maybe some other sounds that I have.

melophobe: Could we get an example?

Daedelus: Well, they wouldn’t release Of Snowdonia. It’s more the fact that I made like two other records of completely downtempo music that didn’t make the cut. And that might show up or it might not, it’s fine. Also, at the same time I was working on Love to Make Music to, I was working on a project with my wife called The Long Lost, and that’s completely mellow stuff. So in some ways, they are kind of bookends, and that’ll come out next year.

melophobe: And who is your wife? I’m not familiar with her.

Daedelus: Her name is Laura Darlington. You might actually be familiar with her voice if you’re familiar with Flying Lotus’ work. She’s been on both of his records, on the final track of both records. She’s on my records too.

melophobe: You mentioned A Gent Agent earlier. Wasn’t that the one composed of spy movie soundtrack samples?

Daedelus: It wasn’t all spy soundtrack samples, but all things related to spy ideas.

melophobe: So you approached that one as a concept album, and it reminds me--maybe this is unfair--but it reminds me a bit of Matmos, how they go into an album with a set of constraints. [A good example would be their album A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure, which relies primarily on samples taken from medical procedures.]

Daedelus: I really try to keep it more conceptual. I like the physicality of what Matmos does, where they really have the sounds of it, but with something like spying it’s a mood. Noir is a mood, you know what I mean? And it’s very tricky to conjure with words, so music should be better suited to it, right? Maybe.

melophobe: I can understand that.

Daedelus: I don’t know if I totally succeeded, but at least I have the story. The idea is that Meanwhile is the list of characters, and A Gent Agent is the story. So next time you listen to it, maybe check it out.

melophobe: Do you have that conceptual approach to all your albums?

Daedelus: It’s kind of off and on. I know that by doing a lot of conceptual work, it alienates some people, because some people just aren’t willing to go along with the plot. They don’t want to, there’s no reason to, and I don’t want to expect that of every listener, but I always try to make enough room that if someone does want to go further… How do I express this… I wish I could say it in music or something, but it’s really the kind of thing where, you make this diamond, right? And you can see it, but it’s impossibly tough to get in. It’s this impermeable thing, and the only thing that can cut it is another diamond. It kind of feels like that.

melophobe: Do you want to be accessible while at the same time retaining that--

Daedelus: I never want to be accessible. Accessibility is a foolhardy idea, because nobody ever is. Really it’s impossible. The most you ever can become is tolerable.

melophobe: Approachable? Is that fair?

Daedelus: Yeah, hopefully. I try to be friendly about everything, musically as well. Sometimes you need to hurt people a little bit, to welcome them in. The sweet and sour kind of thing, I’m a really big proponent of that. In music as in all things there’s a certain balance you want to achieve, and sometimes that’s why I really torture things, but always have that little bit of nostalgia and sweetness. Like at the end of the set tonight, I thought it was really important to try to get to something off of Invention just to kind of show what it all came from. 

1 comments thus far ...

leave us a comment:

name

email (we will never publish this)

url

comment

remember my personal information

notify me of follow-up comments

Concerts We Recommend

melophobe sponsors

Connect To melophobe

1. melophobe
2. concert reviews
3. fifty-word reviews
4. articles
5. links
6.