Photo by Mike Manewitz
Alfred Darlington doesn’t just play electronic music; he thinks about it, taking it apart and putting it back together in strange, inventive ways. Since 2019, he’s been a teacher at Berklee College Of Music, helping to launch the college’s electronic digital instrument program and shine a light on the musicianship of electronic production. That academic side comes after over two decades of crafting and performing music under the name Daedelus. Working out of Los Angeles, he’s collaborated with everyone from Flying Lotus to Death Cab For Cutie, and depending on how you count, he’s just released his twenty-second album, What Wands Don’t Break.
Recently, Soundfounder talked to Daedelus about the new record, but the interview quickly digressed into even bigger ideas: how to think of electronic production as performance, how musical distortion has a racialized past, and how modern electronic music is upholding the rebellious roots of rock and roll.
