Daedelus @ Nectar
When Daedelus came through town last year, on tour with Caural, he ended up playing a pretty sparsely attended show on a Sunday night at Chop Suey, and despite the lack of bodies in the room, he turned out an excellent, high energy set. I wasn’t sure how this show would turn out; the day before Thanksgiving, one of the worst travel days of the year, bitterly cold. There were plenty of reasons for people to skip out on this show, and it would’ve been pretty shitty for an artist as talented as Daedelus to play two consecutively undersold shows in Seattle.
I was pleasantly surprised when the main floor at Nectar started to fill up during the opening DJ set. I didn’t catch the name of the DJ, but his set of quirky hip-hop and electro was a nice intro to the evening. By the time AntiMC took the stage, the venue was getting to be well filled out. Sadly, AntiMC didn’t really keep the momentum of the evening going, with an uninspiring but mercifully short set of aimless hip-hop instrumentals
But the room was packed when Daedelus took the stage, armed with a laptop, a controller keyboard, and his famous Monome prototype, a “machine that runs on good will, so make some noise, as the hip-hop kids say.”
Noise was certainly made. He kicked his set of with a reinterpretation of “Pure Imagination,” from the Charlie & the Chocolate Factory soundtrack, and then proceeded to burn through 45 minutes of loopy hip-hop built around samples from old movie scores, samba beats, acid bass, and assorted sonic detritus. It was a similar set to the one he played last year, but way more refined and confident. He’s got his Monome set-up down cold, and plays it like an old familiar instrument. It’s great seeing live electronic music performed with such gusto, and in a way that’s somewhat accessible, exposing some degree of the inner workings to the audience. Definitely cuts down on the “he’s just checking his e-mail up there” jeering from the rock kids.
We didn’t even bother sticking around for Busdriver. He’s good, but I don’t think he could have topped Daedelus that night (as one audience member yelled, before Daedelus’ encore: “I came for Busdriver, but I was wrong!”). And I wasn’t looking forward to hearing AntiMC doing the backing beats. Oh well, it was definitely a worthwhile show, even without seeing the supposed headliner.
