Review:
It must be great to be Alfred Darlington. The tweed suits, the PG Wodehouse-esque name... all awesome. But what must be so extra lovely is the complete freedom he enjoys. In a musical way of course, not in a "eating a jar of Nutella for lunch" way. From indie-tronica, to the dank hip-hop of his Exquisite Corpse album, to his 2006 sample-fuelled Denies The Day's Demise LP, Daedelus has covered a huge amount of ground already in his career. His move to Ninja for 2008's Love To Make Music By saw another sea change - a concerted application of house music tempos and instrumentation to his scattergun songwriting that resulted in the wonderful Make It So single and a brace of highly engaging hypnogogic mindfucks. Bespoke picks up from those learned lessons, but this time he's created an even wider scope for himself. His distinctively choppy production style lends itself to having 3 or 4 competing styles going on at any one time, in the manner of Japanese Pico-Pop artists like Plus-Tech Squeeze Box. "What Can You Do" featuring Busdriver is a case in point - though underscored by a simple kick "n' clap, the sheer crazed randomness of his drum sequences opens the space up to allow things like clarinets, acid-pianos and torch song vocals to actually sound normal working together. The mythological Daedelus was well aware of the dangers of flying too close to the sun. As Bespoke proves, the more lifelike version should never be subject to any such constraints.