Daedelus - "Fair Weather Friends EP"

Daedelus - Fair Weather Friends (Ninja Tune 2007)

Daedelus – Fair Weather Friends EP / Ninja Tune

Like him or not, Santa Monica, CA soundscaper Alfred Weisberg-Robert aka Alfred Darlington aka Daedelus always brings interesting music to the table. Releasing an album per year since 2002 with a good number of EPs, 12 inches, remixes and singles sprinkled throughout the downtime, Daedelus's prolific recorded output is only outdone by his penchant to practically reinvent his sound with each release. With his one-of-a-kind sample-triggering box, coattails and mutton chops in tow, the Dublab DJ's career has warped and mutated from puzzling sample-based instrumentals concentrating on source material from the 30s and 40s to pleasantly quirky analog-based music concrete to the exuberant, more accessible synthcapades of his 2006 album, Denies the Day's Demise. His music doesn't simply please the ears, it gets them perked and questioning; exactly how did he program that stumbling rhythm into such a catchy beat, or how could he have matched such oddball samples to flow so seamlessly. And above all, his music excels with its underlying sense of humor and desire to be enjoyed. Yes, it is ambitiously creative music and challenging at times, but it is also impossible to ignore the freewheeling fun both Daedelus and the listener are having when the music begins to flow.

2007 has yet to see a new full-length album and by the looks of it, this may be Darlington's first off-year, but thankfully a five-song EP was released recently on Ninja Tune Records. And of course, with a new release comes a new sound for Daedelus. Egged on by European audiences to concoct more dance floor-friendly tunes, Darlington collects his most accessible, straight-forward tunes to date; but don't fret, that effervescing quirk is still riding shotgun.

The Fair Weather Friends EP opens with its title track: a synthy, handclap-driven jubilation of spring and sex held together by an excellent arrangement. Faintly reminiscent of Denies the Day's Demise's fuzzy synth cascades and Brazilian-derived rhythms, "Fair Weather Friends" could get a dance floor hopping, but I doubt it will reach outside the indie kid hooplas. The youthful female vocal sample stating "when the weather gets warm, we get the same things on our minds as boys do," as well as the group cheering and distant steel drum pings remind me mostly of the Go! Team, but thankfully a bit more restrained and structurally refined.

With "My Beau" though, Daedelus heads into territory you may have never predicted, sleek R&B. And not just any R&B, mid-90s urban radio R&B. In fact, he re-imagined the Ghost Town DJ's one-hit-wonder "My Boo" from 1996, which charted well on Billboard's Hot 100 and the Top 40 singles chart, and is surprisingly recognizable. Daedelus keeps the underlying Miami bass influence, but opts for fuzzier synth lines and a slower bpm than the deep thudding drum-and-bass that carried the original. The sultry R&B vocals do definitely hark back to the mid-90s urban stations though, and Daedelus appears to have fun with them, chopping and restructuring without losing the accessibility or the original sass.

"Hermitage" sounds much more like classic Daedelus with its rampant, reverberating drum surges and bass clarinet-sounding bass line. Once the four-on-the-floor beat drops though, you can easily hear the European night life seeping through. "El Subidon" attacks with a syrupy string arrangement completely saturated within barrages of late 90s trip-hop drum techniques and those omniscient synth melodies. And finally, "Bonour" echoes more of the current L.A. sound: slightly R&Bish space-synth funk with IDM and electronica elements.

Five songs, five completely different sounds on the Fair Weather Friends EP, or in other words, Daedelus doing what he does best: being unpredictable. The tools pretty much stay the same throughout the EP, but each song is very much singular in style. And what is most fascinating about the multi-talented producer is though I may not be particularly into the style he is currently purveying, he always seems to spin it in a way that sounds interesting, sometimes more so than the original derivative. That is what all sample-based artists should be striving for: a complete reinvention of the original sound, not simply a rearrangement. Weisburg-Roberts… I mean Darlington… I mean Daedelus knows this, and he has proven himself over his surprisingly long discography with a strong sense of humor and the most killer mutton chops this side of the 20th century.