What Wands Won't Break

Daedelus studio releases have included romantic, song-based suites, a conceptual trilogy about the Victorian era, and collaborations with left-field rappers, jazz-funk ensembles, and indie folk singer/songwriters. Apart from 2008s Live at Low End Theory, their recordings have rarely attempted to capture the energy of their performances, which have routinely pushed the limits of technology, from their championing of the Monome controller during the 2000s to their modular DJ sets since the late 2010s. 2020 full-length What Wands Wont Break is an intense collection of maxed-out, mutated club rhythms, arranged similar to a hip-hop beat tape, with nearly two dozen brief tracks arriving in a restless sequence. Starting off with unsteady beats and plunging bass lines, it immediately recalls the rule-breaking spirit of wonky techno producers like Neil Landstrumm and Cristian Vogel. From there, the tracks only get more broken, blown out, and lopsided, but they always keep up superhuman levels of energy. The busted breakbeats and erratic kick drums of Fettle are like Baltimore club music on steroids, and Zenith is a glitchy, jittery hybrid of footwork and breakcore. Theres a few softer, melodic elements and more relaxed tempos scattered throughout, like the synth sprinkles and dubstep-ish breakdowns of Sunflower Stems, but this is largely a breakneck set of vicious club tools and chaotic rhythm collisions. Even the tracks that most recognizably draw from hip-hop, such as Glint and Datura, are far more unruly than most L.A. beat scene output -- the album more closely resembles the D.I.Y. anarchy of Chicagos Hausu Mountain label. What Wands Wont Break is easily Daedelus most unhinged work, and continues to prove that the visionary producers career has been anything but predictable. ~ Paul Simpson