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Mar 13

Festival Bands, Man!: Daedelus


Considering thousands of arts lovers are trying to figure out their SXSW schedules and the website doesn’t have the bandwidth for it, I’m moving onto the March 8 & 9 festival, the New Orleans Buku Music + Art Project. I’m a sucker for anything with the word project in it: equal parts academic and workhorse. Which is exactly why prolific L.A. producer, Daedelus (Alfred Darlington), is the Festival Bands, Man! feature of the week. Also, because I’m reading Ulysses for the first time.

I went to a small Daedelus show a couple years ago, and his set up is unbelievable. A labyrinth of soft bright buttons EVERYWHERE! It’s hard to imagine each one is actually responsible for a new collection of sound. I found myself mesmerized by his speed—like a snake charmer—and could visualize the inside of his brain, each fold a cushion of light and music.

Just as James Joyce’s work is filled with abstract diversions, beautiful descriptions of intellectual goings on that make way, ever so subtly, to the daily transcript of what was going on all the while—the reader gets to day dreaming with the narrator—Daedelus (spelled differently than the Greek artisan and Stephen)’s gorgeous outpourings are fucking hard to understand.

I don’t even like it that much. It’s a bit much! (Like your really smarty pants friend who sometimes gets on a roll talking about a topic of Passion and you just have to bail until he catches on with a joke to break it up). And that’s what Daedelus is known for: throwing in a couple pop songs that are instantly transformed into a better quality leather, and in turn, make the rest of his furious ramblings seem much less eager.

He’s a genius producer and deserves a lot of respect and for us to lend our ear, because if he were a scientist, he would get a ton of funding, and if he were an author, we would read between the lines with painstaking gaiety. 

DETAILS 

Band: Daedelus (producer)

Festival: Buku Music + Art Project

Venue/Stage: Float Den

Date & Time: Saturday, March 9 11:00PM -11:45PM




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