daedelus

Denies The Days Demise

If 'Exquisite Corpse' firmly asserted itself as the Daedelus hip-hop album, then 'Denies The Days Demise' is some kind of mutant, electro-tropicalia - eschewing the collaboration rich approach of old and proffering a heady stew of all things Southern Hemisphere. The favoured name of LA-based Alfred Weisberg-Roberts, Daedelus proved his sampling credentials with the rimy beats of 'Exquisite Corpse' - and whilst a similar strain of structure is evident, the samples are much less conspicuous, leading the man himself to tag it as "Daedelus naked". Opening with 'At My Heels', Daedelus submerges the listener in a fog of multi-instrumentation that invokes the messy clatter of The Avalanches - but where they relied on an endless cycle of crazy samples, Daedelus has crafted everything from scratch, lending proceedings a frenetic intensity that is as syrupy thick as it is appealing. Pulling in strands from all his previous releases, 'Denies The Day Demise' rattles along at a fair old pace; with the Brazilian bloc-party of 'Sundown', looped-lament of 'Viva Vida' and chopped bass-clarinet of 'Bahia' all hitting the spot with a level of kinetic charm that propels you on throughout and recalls the sun-bleached aspects of Nobody's 'And Everything Else...'. Elsewhere, 'Sawtooth EKG' takes a juddering set of strings and builds a swooping delight around the solipsistic core, 'Like Clockwork Springs' pulses like a mosquito-light on a summers evening, whilst album closer 'Never None The Wiser' is a blast of vitamin C orchestration after a proper gorgeous build-up. Denial is futile...