DAEDELUS

Three facts about Daedelus that neatly capture the expanse of their ambition: they were sampled by Madlib on the classic MF Doom track Accordion, they’re part of the founding faculty of the prestigious Berklee College of Music’s electronic music performance program, and they’re an artist-in-residence at the SETI Institute, a scientific centre seeking extraterrestrial intelligence.

These three data points illustrate the scope of Alfred Darlington’s talents: as a beatmaker, producer, performer, professor, and innovator, they simultaneously inhabit the worlds of cutting-edge music technology and improvised, off-the-cuff beatmaking, demonstrating that in an increasingly borderless music world, there’s not all that much difference between the two.

Daedelus laid down the building blocks of their sound as part of the LA beat scene, a loose collection of artists and producers working throughout the late ’00s and early ’10s to connect the dots between forward-facing electronica and underground hip-hop, redefining both of these labels in the process. Since then, their extensive discography has expanded to encompass abstract sonic collages, jagged beat science, and hallucinogenic synth explorations.

Daedelus’ vividly realised music has long acted as a frame for ingenious lyricism, and their latest project is no exception. Made in collaboration with poet, spoken word artist and musician Joshua Idehen, known for his work alongside UK jazz luminaries Sons of Kemet, Holy Water Over Sons is centred around poetic meditations on identity that bleed into the edges of Daedelus’ restlessly shifting soundworlds, dissolving the boundaries between music and meaning.

Tell us about how this collaboration with Joshua Idehen came to fruition.

“He had come to some shows in the past – it’s funny how the music world works. It’s a very small scene in some