When this record started I thought I was Mogley from the pages of the jungle book loosely draped in a cloth rag. I’m foraging in this slow burning noise and what sounds to me like an array of tribal field recordings of all kinds. This full length from the head behind Ammoncontact and many other outings is a delight of space jazz and folk.

There is a great deal of head music in this record with well constructed soundscapes but it’s all perfectly balanced, lending some of that expanse to little rambling folk strings, melodies and other sonic nonsense best heard rather then read about!

The highlight for me comes with vocals, on ‘Rabbit Island’ which conjures up a a sound of a deflating traveling carnival carousel.

Lonely meets happy for sure!

Nice cover too!.

Soul,Funk and fun!

Well this gig has come and gone…great little night this one! In fact it was a most enjoyable weekend all round.

Flevans got in Friday afternoon, we got a few beers in,  a bit of food and headed down to the venue.

Noel played some cracking tunes for us after Beckett did some warming up and some sound engineering to get the monitors working, and the man Flevans killed it at the end with a booty shaking selection of funk, soul and beats.

As is the usual story, Richie and Kev and his lovely assistant did a smashing job with live visuals.

The aftermath resulted in a glorious score of food from a late night eatery on the Ormeau Road, and a beer round in Andy’s.

Big hooray for Flevans in general.

Massive F*ck You to Ryanair, who are thieves. Boycott ‘em.

Some photos from the night:

Flevans

Date: 29th May

Venue: Menagerie

Time: 9.00pm

Adm: £5

Gloriously catchy songs, infectious hooks and dancefloor-delighting beats from the multi-talented instrumentalist, composer, producer and sometime vocalist.

Flevans began making music in his home town of Brighton using a 4 track cassette recorder on which he’d spend hours looping breaks and hooks to create tracks. It was on the back of a demo created solely using this and a 10 second sampler that Tru Thoughts initially snapped him up, recognizing his innate knack for crafting irresistibly infectious hooks, and commissioning a number of EPs and an album. After a string of sold out 12″ singles, Tru Thoughts released the highly successful ‘Make New Friends’ album in 2004. Combining disco and funk with cut and paste sampling sensibilities and infectious basslines, the album – a collection of Flevans’ EP singles – was instantly likeable and irresistibly danceable. It proved very popular on the so called ‘electric-soul’ scene, with the piano tinged, disco infused “The Notion” scoring a place in the Unabombers’ highly respected Electric Souls Vol. 3 compilation.

Find out more at: http://www.flevans.co.uk http://www.tru-thoughts.co.uk

DAEDELUS (buy tickets online here)

http://www.cqaf.com/2009/m_daedelus.html

Plus Men In Speedos & Rudimentary Djs

3rd May 2009

Black Box Belfast

Tickets: £6/£8 on the night

Live electronic performance with support from Belfast based trio ‘Men In Speedos’ and Rudimentary Dj’s.

Daedelus will also be on hand for a short talk/workshop during the day all inquires should be directed to info@rudimentaryrecords.com or richard@queensstreetstudios.com

Music and Videos (which are really cool)

http://www.myspace.com/daedelusdarling

DAEDELUS – BIO -2008

Alfred Darlington isn’t your average cookie-cutter musician. From how he looks (early Victorian Dandism),to how he makes music, to how he expresses himself and views the world, his is a very individual, a ‘bespoke’ outlook.

Alfred was born in Santa Monica in 1977 to an artist mother and psychologist father. Musical from very early on, as a child he was classically and jazz-trained in a number of instruments, but his interests were broad and varied – less a prodigy than a renaissance boy whose obsessions ranged from Greek legend to the mountains of Wales. As a 15 year old he finally persuaded his parents to take him to the Principality. Whilst in a YMCA in London he flipped the radio dial, found a pirate radio station and taped some UK rave and hardcore. “It was my first ‘Eureka!’ moment in music,” he says.

Back in the US he joined local rock bands, jazz bands and ska bands, which he enjoyed but felt limited by,too. At home he was listening to Warp, Ninja and your harder electronic stuff. He started DJing out the more leftfield side of drum and bass and making his own rudimentary productions. They were meant to be drum & bass but they kept turning out different and from his outsider’s experiments his own style was born. He chose the name Daedelus as he had a childhood obsession with invention, and what was he doing, after all, if not tinkering and fiddling and experimenting like the “gentleman inventors” of old?

In 1999 he started DJing on Dublab.com for his “Entropy Sessions” and began dropping in his own early demo productions. Carlos Nino (of ammoncontact) had the show after him and usually pushed Alfred out the studio as quickly as possible as he was not so into Daedelus’ confrontational DJ style, but when he heard a tranquil Daedelus production he took, in typical Nino style, Daedelus under his considerable wing around the LA scene. Nino placed Daedelus tracks on two influential compilations and then persuaded Plug Research to release his debut album, “Invention” in 2002, Remixers included Madlib, who later took Daedelus’ accordian parts and used them on the Madvillain record, closely followed by his “The Household” EP on Prefuse 73’s Eastern Developments label.

In 2003, he was booked to play a show in San Diego by Brian Crabtree and Peter Siegerstrong and they asked him to test out an early prototype of the Monome box. “It’s a Non-traditional electronic instrument,” Daedelus explains. “Basically it allows for massive improvisation.” Since then Daedelus has continued to use this revolutionary box, bringing much genuine liveness to the sometimes static world of performed electronic/dance music.

In 2003 he did “The Weather” album with Busdriver and Radioinactive and the remix album “Rethinking the Weather” on Mush records (home of cLOUDDEAD, also on Big Dada/Ninja Tune). 2004 saw the release of “Of Snowdonia” on Plug Research, the album with which Daedelus says he first “felt true artistic confidence, finding a true voice. I was finally in the right zone.”

There was certainly no let up in his creativity. Also in 2004 he released the concept album “A Gent Agent” on tiny German label Laboratory Instinct. The 2005 album “Exquisite Corpse” on Mush album featured the likes of TTC, Mike Ladd, MF Doom. Ninja signed Daedelus for UK/Europe (a relationship which has reached its full expression on “Love To Make Music To,” his first album for the label worldwide and put together with the help of their team). In 2006 “Denies the Days Demise” came out, a record showcasing his love of Brazilian music. Last year he released his first live album, “Live At the Low End Theory,” and “The Fairweather Friends EP”. Later this year will see the release of his collaboration with his wife, Laura Darling, as Long Lost!

And while his reputation has grown internationally, his place in the LA scene has also solidified. The musician that many of the hottest names in the city turn to for everything from bass clarinet licks to advice on obscure electronics, Daedelus has worked extensively with Taz from Sa-Ra, the pair of them opening for the likes of DJ Assault, Justice and Two Live Crew as well as appearing in Erykah Badu’s most recent video.

Men in Speedos

http://www.myspace.com/meninspeedos

“They wandered aimlessly along the streets, ignoring the looks that
passers-by gave them. ‘Could all red armbands please leave the pool?’  the
strange voice had said. They had been wearing red armbands so the voice had
obviously meant them … ‘Men In Speedos’. It was time … they had been
called … into the light before them … bleeps, squeaks, buzzes and bass
were now in control.”

Men In Speedos are a Belfast based trio and some say have similar powers to The Incredible Four or The X-men, except there are only three of them…. With a soft spot for film samples, the tracks have a definite sound track quality, some with dance floor appeal. We thank kindly all the various record stations & DJs round the globe who’ve played our music … and for those who’ve said they loved it, the bottle of whiskey is in the post. Our style is very diverse, and remarkably difficult to pinpoint in terms of genres, so just listen to it, and enjoy!

Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival

For more information on the absolutley stellar Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival please visit the official website:

http://www.cqaf.com/

Over the years Mark has been involved in a humbling array of acts such as Global Communication, Jedi Knights and Harmonic 33 as well as going under the alias of Troubleman, Link and Reload.

Whilst adding a “1″ to alias HARMONIC 33, Mark presents new music exploring the relationship between old and new – pulling influences from US hip-hop a la Jay Dee, detroit techno, Kraftwerk, dubstep and grime. The result is an EP which is rich and warm, resonating the vibrant Detroit sound. Of course.. 313 is the Telephone Area Code for Detroit.

www.myspace.com/officialmarkpritchard

http://www.harmonic313.com/wordproblems/

Mark will be bring us the noise to Belfast on Monday 16th March. Its a bank holiday so you can rest your dancing feet the next day.

Venue: McHughs Basement

Time: 9.00

Door: £5