Daedalus

Santa Monica multi-instrumentalist, knob tweaker and rave culture aficionado Alfred Darlington (aka Daedelus) merges the strange yet familiar on his newest Ninja Tune full-length, Love To Make Music To. Having gotten intimate with more than a few vintage synths, the fat, analog buzz and circuit-defined bass are brought on board to authenticate his homage to rave in ’92. While the off-key choir sample, forced hand claps and synth swarm of "Fair Weather Friends” sets the tone for buoyant beginnings, things get grimier and weirder fast. The lo-fi, dub-step pulse of "Twist The Kids” featuring vocals by N’fa, the tin percussion and tumbling piano of the bossa rave track "Get Off Your HiHats” and the crazy jump-up two-step of "Hrs:Mins:Secs” give Love To Make Music To more than its share of WTF? moments by the halfway mark. However, once resigned to Daedelus’s amusement park of rave, it’s easier to grasp his ADD version of rave music’s historical soundscape, a place where analog circuitry spews forth cut-up acid house motifs, pitches bend and go completely askew, and strange, oscillating but oh so familiar sounds collide. Ending in far stranger places than it begins, Love To Make Music To turns its focused schizophrenia into a jam-packed and joyously hyperactive rave retrospective.