Daedelus

Maurizio: Hey Alfred, it’s Maurizio with the New Montreal. Did you make it into the states okay?

Daedelus: Yea, absolutely. It’s been an easy ride thus far.

Maurizio: Perfect. I’m here with Kael and Mike.

Daedelus: Hey. I hope you guys enjoyed last night.

Mike: Oh we had a blast.

Kael: Yeah it was great.

Maurizio: We had a fantastic time. And speaking of last night, we were wondering how many buttons do you think you pushed last night?

Daedelus: [Laughs] oh man. Well considering the larger of the two Monomes I use has 256 buttons, the smaller is 64, and so considering that probably at a rate of, roughly, running at 140 bpm most of the night, between 130 to 160 bpms, and on average pushing at least one button, not per beat, but I would say 1 every 5 beats, sometimes more, there’s some sort of math equation to be done here…

Mike: Don’t worry, we can do the math on our end. I think we’ll be okay.

Kael: Yeah, we’ll figure that out for you.

Maurizio: Stemming from there, do you have a particular aversion to knobs?

Daedelus: You know, I like knobs, and certainly knob twittling is a quite marker of typical IDM kind of music, not necessarily that I make that kind of sound, that’s the classic. But, I gotta do my own thing I guess.

Mike: We were struck by the sheer amount of music that you have, the huge collection, that you’ve made, so we were wondering, when you have your clips cued up to the buttons, what percentage of it is somebody else’s music, and what is your own sounds? Most DJs today are using a lot of other people’s materials in their sets.

Daedelus: No, it’s more of a balance. I tend to use quite a bit of other people’s material, but its all in such blip form, in short quick form, that it’s the kinda thing where… I don’t know I kinda… I would like to say that all of it is somebody’s music somewhere. I know its kind of a loose answer but I really hope that in some fashion I’m trying to transform it to my own uses, I guess, so it kind of remains independent. I do throw in a lot of my own music and I feel like I need to be respectful to people who want to hear that.

Maurizio: Do you consider yourself a DJ or more of a producer?

Daedelus: Producer. I wish I could DJ. DJs have the hardest and the easiest jobs. Y’know, the easy thing about being a DJ is you can play the classic music of all time and if you have the right crowd you’re playing the right mix of things you win. You just win. Its very simple, and I have to admit, that I’m… a DJ out of the kettle can take requests and I like taking requests as well but I try to ease into a format that inspires rather than constricts. I don’t need to play 50 Cent or Lady Gaga.

Maurizio: Well, we did hear some hip-hop in your set last night and we have heard some dubstep in other sets of yours, so we were wondering what style of music would you consider yours?

Daedelus: Uhm, I’d like to think that my… I don’t know. Romantic music I guess. That’s such a terrible thing to say. It’s the hardest part to define it. I do my best to stay true to what I’m interested in, and that also involves beating up a lot of noise and a lot of beats, a kind of ruggedness just so you can subsequently have pretty things. And that’s my goal really. To have a bunch of pretty things interspersed.

Maurizio: So you just finished a collaboration with Jogger, you played with Jogger and Nosaj Thing last night, and you’ve been touring with them for a while. How has that all been?

Daedelus: They’re fantastic. They’re the best. I mean, its been a very inspiring tour, musically, and personally and everything. I’ve known Jogger for a long time and I’ve known Nosaj to different degrees, like I’ve seen him around the scene and interacted with him and stuff, and he’s a fantastic fellow. It has made for wonderful touring. I’ve done, I guess, quite a bit of touring in the past and sometimes you pull off and you don’t necessarily end up with the greatest group of people and in this case I totally lucked out. They’re great.

Kael: What part of your tour are you on right now?

Daedelus: Well, we’re on the kind of weird part. We’re sort of in the middle, but the end isn’t in sight. It’s never-ending. Like, its never gonna ever end. Which is fine, actually. As long as it goes as well as it did last night in Montreal, then we’re gonna be fine.

Kael: How was the Toronto show?

Daedelus: Toronto was cool, it was a little different. They seem to party a little harder there – there was a mosh pit during my set, as well as an MC who decided to start rapping over my stuff, and it took about 5 minutes before the bouncers asked him to stop. I heard that sometimes they have guns in Toronto, and I didn’t want to get shot by a random MC. I don’t really want to go out like that.

Maurizio: So where you headed to next?

Daedelus: Right now we’re headed to New York.

Maurizio: Where in New York? I happen to hail from there…

Daedelus: Le Poisson Rouge. Keep the French thing moving. It’s a fun venue because it has a whole bunch of different of stuff there. It’s like a weird classical venue, a weird jazz venue, a weird electronic venue and I think we can do all that stuff tonight. I think we’ll try to fit all that in.

Maurizio: While you’re touring you’ll be coming out with a new LP, in late March?

Daedelus: Yeah, yeah. Late march it’ll be coming out on Brainfeeder which is Flying Lotus’ label.

Maurizio: Are you excited?

Daedelus: I’m overjoyed, even though it’s a kinda like a durgy record – it’s a bit of a slow little record, but that’s half the fun. I mean, if I tried to release it sometime ago, who knows. But music nowadays is so open to different possibilities.

Maurizio: So it’s a slower, more relaxed take on Daedelus?

Daedelus: Yeah, it’s a little closer to my earlier material. It’s a little – yeah a little more somber, a little more evocative of different moods, and its fun. I appreciate the fact that both Brainfeeder was open to that, and that in this day and age people can realize, oh, we don’t have to party the whole the time.

Maurizio: You collaborate with your wife, correct?

Daedelus: Very much, yeah.

Maurizio: How is that?

Daedelus: It’s a struggle at times. Y’know you’re in the studio sometimes and [interrupted by driver] Sorry… its funny you cant just take the production and just leave it at the studio, I mean we carry it around with us all day all night and it gets into our daily lives. We take it to the dinner table, probably too much. We get into a little argument about a chord change and suddenly it becomes a bigger argument about a chord change.

Maurizio: So does she ever push you buttons?

Daedelus: I would say yeah. She can push my buttons better than most, in all the best ways I think.

Mike: Are you still producing new material while you’re touring, or do you wait ‘till after you finish and are back in the lab?

Daedelus: I do find it good to separate the two mindsets, production mindset versus touring. When I’m playing live there’s a great deal of composition, I guess, for me, or creation I guess. Even though I’m using other people’s material as my own there’s kinda… I get the feeling when I’m playing live that I’m playing for the night. There are certain shapes or whatever that I like to work with. It still feels kind of creative that way. And then at home it’s a different whole structure. You try to paint on a blank canvas, so it’s a whole different thing. You’re not looking at exactly a night to look forward to, to inspire you. So I keep those two separate, though I’m trying to find more and more the meeting point of the live show versus the production at home. But you know it’s hard to get the right ears for album creating, I find, on the road. I really admire Nosaj because he’s able to do the production on the road and really make tracks and remixes, and the cross talking, using the left and right sides of the brain. He’s some kind of genius. I’m still practicing.

Maurizio: Well, for practicing it sounds great. And before we finish up, we have to know, how long did it take you to grow those side-burns?

Daedelus: Well, I’ve been growing them ever since I re-met my wife. We met 10 and a half years ago, 11 years ago now. So yeah I’ve been growing them since then, for that period of time. I’m kinda freaked out that if I ever shaved them, that maybe my wife would leave me. It’s a very typical thing to think about. A while ago she was also growing her hair out and then she cut her hair and she didn’t leave me then so maybe, maybe I’m okay. Maybe I can nicely shave them one of these days, but I like looking a little bit more like an older gentlemen from Vicotrian times. Maybe one of these days I’m gonna have to shed that. Probably when my mid-life crisis happens.

Maurizio: Alright. One last thing: three albums that you’ve been listening to recently.

Daedelus: Ok sure. Hmm, what are some good choice ones… there’s the new record by — that I’ve been catching up to, I’ve been checking out his material, he’s a talented young producer. And then there’s a record by Shlomo that came out on Friends of Friends records, that’s an excellent record group. They do the beat low-slung thing quite well, and I like that he has a fresh perspective of a younger gentleman in the scene. We’re both from Cali, he’s from Los Angeles and I’m from San Francisco, so I think we see things a little differently than some. And then lately I’ve been really getting down with…. There’s a lot of singles lately that have been really charging me up, like a lot of the work by… Oh actually here’s another one. Silkie put out a good record in terms of dubstep, various producers have been putting out good dubstep records. Zomby had a good record out with Where Were U in 92?, and I think Silkie’s record was very authoritative on the purple sound. I know it came out a little while ago, but I’ve still been listening to it. I like that stuff. I’m quite down with it.

Maurizio: So do you think we’re going to hear some more dubstep in your sets?

Daedelus: Oh for sure. I try to lace all kinds. I don’t like the idea that its going to be just dubstep, I get bored of that stuff, its too stagnant. But when it’s in the mix I love it. You’ll definitely hear a lot more bass.

Kael: Have you ever tried making your own dubstep?

Daedelus: Oh yeah totally. I just got done with a compilation called North, South, East, West and I did a song called A Bloodworth, its dubstep in 6/8 so I don’t know if people really want to dj it. But it’s my take on it. It’s on Bleep Records, which is Warp’s little mp3 distribution thing.

Maurizio: Well thanks so much for taking the time out to talk to us.

Daedelus: Well thank you very much, and have a lovely time. Hopefully our paths will cross again soon, maybe in LA.

Kael: Do you think you’ll make it up to Montreal again? You going to continue touring?

Daedelus: I mean, I’m gonna never stop touring, so long as people still want to see it. But I definitely hope to make it back up to that scene. I don’t know when exactly, but it was really fun last night, so hopefully I can do it again.

Maurizio: Oh one last thing! Any upcoming collaborations we can know about?

Daedelus: I just finished this track with a guy named Milosh, who is out of Toronto. And then with Ghost1. I did a track with him, and some vocal work with those guys so there’s that on the horizon, but I don’t want to give away too much. But I do have a lot of vocals on the way.

Mike: Well, we’re looking forward to that. Thanks again.

Daedelus: Thank you very much, and have a great day, okay?

Kael: You too! Have fun on the rest of your tour. Have a safe trip back!