One Track Mind

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According to Greek mythology, Daedalus was a venerated craftsman who hewed a pair of wings for his son Icarus and built the labyrinth that kept the minotaur under wraps. According to the mythos of the contemporary electronic music world, Daedelus is a prolific producer, songwriter, DJ, and lecturer whose impressive back-catalog is scattered across reputable labels including Mush, Ninja Tune, and Plug Research. There are few artists today who deserve the Renaissance man classification more than Daedelus: he co-founded the influential internet radio station Dublab; plays a variety of instruments including the accordion, clarinet, and the weird gizmos made by the folks at Monome; and even his name, Alfred Darlington, sounds like some cheekily played aristocratic zinger (ladies take note: he took his wife’s surname. Sorta).

What’s next for Darlington? It’s tough to keep count, but his eleventh LP, Righteous Fists of Harmony, is due out March 23rd on Flying Lotus’ Brainfeeder label. And it’s about as heady as concept albums come: a tale outlining, in parallel, China’s anti-colonial battles of the 1800s and the modern struggles of drifting deeper and deeper into an uncertain future.

If that’s hard to wrap one’s head around, rest assured that the music can sometimes be much less demanding. To wit, “Order of the Golden Dawn,” a surprisingly traditional composition within the Daedelus canon which takes a more or less straightforward stab at the melancholy bossa nova of the early 1960s as popularized by João and Astrud Gilberto. Assisting Daedelus on the track is his wife Laura Darling, whom we don’t have too much additional info on but whose sultry, soft voice lazily floats through the air like cigarette rings. Her vocals are absolute paradisiacal perfection, a warm counterpoint to the song’s cool acoustic guitar strums and woodwind coos. If it weren’t for the subtle presence of that chugging drum machine beat, “Order of the Golden Dawn” could be mistaken for a product of that original Brazilian golden era. If this track isn’t what one might expect from Daedelus, that unpredictability and lack of complacency is a large part of what makes it so great.