photo by Laura Darlington, via myspace.com/daedelusdarling

Daedelus, Nosaj Thing & Jogger
Le Poisson Rouge, New York City

Let’s preface this MOOKS Report by saying this: Los Angeles producer Daedelus is the most humble, polite and all round chivalrous gentleman in the music biz. And Saturday night not only confirmed our suspicious, but cemented them. There he was, the headlining act, manning the merchandise stand for his relatively new imprint label Magical Properties, all dandy-clothed and armed with gracious smiles.

Alfred Darlington’s (a fitting name if we ever heard one) welcoming presence had a similar effect on the crowd; despite being so full that this writer could only manage blurry photos from afar, the potential aggression generated by two-piece Jogger’s metalcore-meets-folk-meets-drum ‘n bass-meets-whatever was diffused only via dancing.

It was an unusual pairing between a long-haired metal type stage right, and a brill-creme, thick frame glasses-wearing fellow stage left, that comprised the two halves of Jogger. Their mixing of musical territories is incongruous at times and certainly not for everyone, but the sighting of hippie dancing (i.e. dancing predominantly with one’s arms) not once, but twice, suggests that people were down with it. Plus glasses played the violin with his mouth, which counts as impressive.

Meanwhile, sliding into the hour of one, unassuming beatmaker and Flying Lotus affiliate  Nosaj Thing twiddled knobs to pair together shuddering walls of electronic and hip-hop sounds. His double-punch combo of sonic chunks and spices willed the crowd into dancefloor existence, causing even the most stoic of characters (i.e. the nuggety bouncer next to us) to exclaim “Unh!” on multiple occasions.

The young LA producer is an interesting contrast within himself. Nosaj Thing’s face read silence while the rest of his being animatedly yo-yo-ed back and forth, splicing together remixes on top of original material (look into his excellent debut LP Drift if you haven’t already) and back again.

Daedelus continued to unwittingly display his thoughtfulness towards the audience, setting up his intruiging monome while Nosaj Thing was nearing the end of his onstage noodling. The transition between the two was as good as seamless, and two screens were pulled down to show us the true mastery of Darlington’s live show. In his mustard tailcoat he looked like a sonic madhatter, efficiently executing samples as lights tracked across what looks like, to the untrained eye, a mysterious box of magic.

Everytime Daedelus plays he almost always baffles the crowd. His high energy sets are so furious that it’s near impossible to dance to them, so instead everybody just watches curiously on. And just like those previous times, that’s what happened tonight. All the while Daedelus wearing a grin of pure joy on his face.





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