On Solecast 37 I catch up with LA Based electronic music pioneer Daedelus.  Daedelus has 17 or so full length albums and worked with such labels as Alpha Pup, Ninja Tune, Brainfeeder and many others. He also runs a small imprint called Magical Properties.  He tours the world with his intense & unique live electronic PA sets and stands apart as a true innovator.  Check out/ support his music, and follow him on twitter.  (Transcript below) Topics Discussed: The life of an electronic musician in 2017 How the ruling class have weaponized absurdism  Current trends in rap and electronic music Hacking, circuit bending, & the rebelliousness of anologue music Reacting to trump and coping with it The assault on truth Economics & the future of labor Science fiction writers & the present  The role of record label The LA underground hip-hop scene of the early/mid 90s & its evolution to the LA beat scene. The transitory nature of things. Transcript: Sole (Tim Holland): Today's guest is my homie Daedelus. He's a beat-maker, a producer, an experimental artist, a performer, a pioneer, based out of Los Angeles, California. We're going to have a wide-ranging conversation about rap and electronic music, the shifts that are happening in society; we'll talk about hacking and how motherfuckers are dealing with Donald Trump and the current assault on the truth; how economics is shifting, and labor, and robots. It's all happening at once. We'll talk about science fiction, and just the transitory nature of shit that's happening right now. We'll talk about his music; we'll talk about some of the stuff he's into, his record label. It's conversations like this where we really get to crack into and get into an artist's mind, and really hear them go deep on shit. I was thoroughly impressed by how thoughtful and what a philosopher Daedelus is, as someone who says he doesn't read very much. What's new with you, man? What have you been up to? Last time I saw you was in New Zealand at that festival. Daedelus (Alfred Darlington): New Zealand is such an out-there place. I've gone back since, and I've found the scene to have developed. I've been doing the clinically insane thing of repeating processes and expecting different results: putting out a record (I've put out a few records, I think, since last we saw each other), doing multiple tours (sometimes having lots of bodies in rooms and having a lot of records sold, sometimes having very few), having projects totally disappear into the ether. And I still find a lot of relevance to it, but it does seem like an affront to the thoughtful world when you're releasing a full-length record and people just want their single little nugget of information to make all of their assumptions from. It's beautiful, though. I've always been troubled by the commerce aspect of creation. Even though desperately wanting to make a full-time living out of this life, having to balance the creation of recorded music versus the performance of improvised music or more spontaneous music, there are a lot of troublesome moments where you have to put a price tag on it and sell it to somebody and charge a cover. It's a tough line to draw. When you're just a musical soundtrack to somebody's intoxication, it's hard. The last couple years of playing raves and EDM events and just being someone's turn-up music is hard. But I still find so much to it. TH: I have the exact same thing with hip-hop, where it's I'm up there, I've worked so hard on these lyrics, I'm trying to communicate these complicated things, and yet I'm playing these shitty hip-hop shows with a bunch of wack rappers, and I'm like, I could say anything right now, nobody cares. It makes me want to be home. AD: I wonder, too—because I feel this in a pronounced way, but especially because the pendulum has really swung back toward hip-hop—I feel like the MC is really back in a strong way, like hip-hop as a genre has a different new definition. The same with the electronic versions of tha