Daedelus – Tailor Made review

Alfred Darlington. Quite why you’d pick a pseudonym when you already have a name as incredible as Alfred Darlington at your disposal is a mystery, but then, it’s one of many brilliantly odd things about both Daedelus and his ever-evolving music. From indie-tronica, to the deeply warped hip-hop of his Exquisite Corpse album, his MF Doom hook-up Impending Doom” or his 2006 sample-tastic release on Mush, Denies The Day’s Demise, Daedelus has covered a huge amount of ground. Since signing with Ninja however, he’s distinctly upped the tempo and applied his scattered, bricolage techniques to making electronic/dance music in his own idiosyncratic way. 2008’s Love To Make Music By was a revelation, and the seasick Italo of single “Make It So” especially proved to be one of the year’s most affecting and standout tunes.

Thankfully, Daedelus appears to be building on this formula. As a prelude to new album Bespoke, this first single features Canadian electronica producer, and former Plug Research labelmate, Milosh on the vocals and positively charges out of your speakers at a galloping 130bpm tempo. With a thick kick and a juke-like clap keeping time, a thick wave of conjoined samples gets slowly filtered up, much like the start of “Make It So”, but even more bug-eyed and delirious. Short loops of urgent strings samples nestle up against tight bass hits, barber shop quartet backing harmonies, even guitar chanks that sound eerily like they’ve been sampled from Arabesque’s “In The Heat Of A Disco Night” (the sample source for Fake Blood’s “I Think I Like It”).

Milosh’s languid vocals fit like a glove over this sea of soaring noise, as he takes time over each line and allows the melodies to float over the top of it all like a saxophone player playing a deliberately restrained solo. The whole thing reminds hugely of Radiohead’s “Idioteque” but constructed with warm organic sounds rather than icy electronic ones. Remixes from Floating Points remix and Tokimonsta are lined up for the future, which will no doubt be pretty special, and on the strength of this first single, Bespoke looks like being a pretty essential purchase too.

Oliver Keens