DAEDELUS
THE QUIET PARTY
PLUG RESEARCH
The gurgling bong sounds and gentle piano of the opening track “Playing Parties” takes us into the realm of yet another electronic music subgenre. This one's called plunderphonic, and LA-based genius Daedalus digs deep into his record library to find its Holy Grail, apparently attained by smushing together tons of mismatched samples, thereby sculpting a revolutionary new song. Seem like a variant of Public Enemy's towering wall of sound? Maybe. The best of plunderphonic is found here on track called “Touch of Spring,” pushing the strident synth noodling of the Cure's “The Walk” with some sunny but obscure Brazilian pop. Daedelus also coats the avalanche of samples with his own instrumentation on many songs—hey, isn't that cheating some unwritten plunderphonic rule? But a bigger taboo is broken on “Girls,” where avant-garde Daedelus gets downright accessible as guest MCs Abstract Rude and Busdriver rap about finding the right girl over an optimistic '70s soul horn riff and a resonant bass clarinet. Beautiful. Electronic music by any other name should strive to be this experimental, this swinging.
