Go Review That Album #1: Daedelus - Rethinking the Weather (Mush, 2003)

The start of a new feature here on the blog, this one called Go Review That Album. The germ of this came several months ago, when looking over my collection and deciding which album to listen to next. Often, I'll pick something I'm familiar with, or something that will fit the mood of what I'm doing. Too often, music fans and reviewers fall into the trap of continually listening to what they are familiar with. This might soothe one's ego, but it doesn't expand one's range, nor does it challenge one's perceptions. This series is going to look at albums in my collection I rarely listen to, and, indeed, some that I have copied, put onto my iPod and forgotten about.

I picked up this album at Ebenezer's in Vernon, BC, a couple of years ago, along with Daedelus' 2005 album, Exquisite Corpse. Daedelus is the alter ego of Los Angeles-based electronic musician Alfred Weisberg-Roberts or Albert Darlington. Interestingly, he took his wife's name (Laura Darlington), both of whom play in the band The Long Lost. Sadly he is not the maker of the labyrinth that caged the Minotaur, nor is he the devious flying wizard from the Mighty Hercules cartoon.

Without knowing it, I've chosen a remix album for my first review. This is a remix project or, perhaps more accurately, a re-imagining of The Weather, an album Daedelus did with alt-hip-hop artists Busdriver and Radioinactive. As a result, this album has the "throw everything in a blender" style of genre-bending that was so prevalent in the late 90s and early 2000s. Listening to an album like this in 2017 is a nice breath of fresh air. Modern electronics takes itself too seriously, is too weighed down by the (faux) constraints of it's micro-genre, or money-grubbing cash ins to mainstream radio (cough David Guetta! cough). Instead, this album throws together glitchy and spacy electronica, crazy, soulful hip-hop beats, a bit of rapping, some rock guitar squeals and some tasty vocal samples into a short album of engaging and fun electronics. It's not exactly danceable, nor is it particularly catchy, but it is fun and entertaining. It reminds me to that hip-hop used to be fun. Again, too many rappers, especially on the college radio side of underground hip-hop take themselves way too seriously.

Without hearing the original album, it's hard to make of how it compares to it. Needless to say, this album is entertaining and deserves a few listens, especially if you like the old-school end of underground hip-hop.

3.5 stars out of 5