Music Blogs

It's Friday, after all, and if you can't let your freak flag fly high and greet the umpteen possibilities that the magic weekend presents....well, then I just don't know what to say. I seriously advise that you download today's offerings, seeing as how they will either lighten your load or drive you simply barmy. The following is nut job, glee-inducing electronic music, the kind of underground sample spew that made Madlib a "star." And considering that today's first MP3 comes courtesy Madlib collaborator Daedelus, you better get your mouse finger moving.

Daedelus, aka Alfred Weisberg-Roberts, has released a handful of extremely experimental, adventurous and should-be-influential recordings that lie somewhere between hip-hop satire and lo-fi electronic treatise. Trained as a clarinetist and upright bassist, Daedelus has achieved that rare thing in electronic music, a unique sonic idea that is fun, curious, and eminently listenable. He perfectly blends his penchant for leftfield experimentation with blatantly daft hip-hop beats. 2003's Rethinking The Weather, 2004's Of Snowdonia, 2005's Exquisite Corpse, and 2006's Daedelus Denies The Day's Demise showcase his marvy skill set and forward-thinking approach.

Love To Make Music To (Ninjatune) is billed as Daedelus "most playfully accessible album" to date.  But that's not altogether a good thing. The album retains nuggets of Daedelus' masterfully warped style, though the MP3 I am legally bound to insert below ("Fair Weather Friends") doesn't quite measure up to the rest of the album's varied menu. "Touchtone" has the moronic feel of a NERD track, but it's followed by the beautifully bittersweet "I Car(ry) Us," which could be Pink Floyd draped over the beats of Madlib or even Aphex Twin or Four Tet. Daedelus's trademark bog-in-the-mist sonic lushness returns on "I Took Two," which glows like an alternate soundtrack to Alien.  Love To Make Music To is decidedly more vocal heavy than previous records, but Daedelus's use of lovingly crafted samples manages to make the record hang tough.

Daedelus: "Fair Weather Friends"  (MP3, 3:06)

Infinite Livez V. Stade's Morgan Freeman's Psychedelic Semen: Shrouded in mystery and PR blather, this sample wrecking crew are apparently of Cockney (UK) origin, and have received effusive praise in the local press, which bears repeating here. Eminent electronica sociologist Simon Reynolds compared Infinite Livez to "Andre 3000 to the power of 1000," while Vice simply stated, "Demented Cockney bashment."

Imagine Marvin Gaye mixing it up with Sly and Flavor Flav. Or perhaps Curtis Mayfield records rescued from the trash and then fed, sample by sample, into a slice and dice machine with equal doses of NASA space babble, BBC sci-fi radio broadcasts, Pierre Kingsley and master DJs the Chemical Brothers. Morgan Freeman's Psychedelic Semen (Dada) is old school electronic cut-up, the kind Plug or De La Soul used to make--all the hail the kings!  "Slack Babbath" matches a crow's howl against questionable vocal females and a big fat beat. "Clapped Out Datsun" is pure cartoon theater, all doubled helium voices and clipped beats of steel.  A dizzy Theramin rises against a wheezing beat and insect like sound effects in "LOL to the Depths of Hell."  You can't make up this stuff.   

Infinite Livez: "Man Machine"  (MP3, 3:47)