Song Exploder - Daedelus - Experience

Episode Date: March 17, 2014

Alfred Darlington, better known as Daedelus, takes apart his song Experience. This early track of his is made with only acoustic sounds, but Alfred still considers it a piece of electronic music, and explains why. He also talks about the unexpected life the song has had since he recorded it, after being sampled by Madlib for his collaboration with MF Doom, Madvillain. Experience became the beat for Madvillain’s Accordion, the first song on their highly acclaimed album, and later referenced and resampled by artists like Drake and Kitty (aka Kitty Pryde). Daedelus deconstructs the song and discusses what its legacy means to him.

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hurway. In this episode, Alfred Darlington, who's better known as Datalus, takes apart his song Experience. This early track of his is made with only acoustic sounds, but Alfred still considers this a piece of electronic music. My name is Alfred Darlington, and I record under the name Datalus. We are going to get into the song Experience, which comes from my debut record, Invention, from 2002. It is a melody that was haunting me throughout my college career that was at USC, the Thornton School of Music where I was studying jazz bass.

It's hard to describe necessarily how a melody comes to us. For me, it just was out of the blue. I don't come from a background on keyboards, and the song came out of just fidgeting, literally sitting around in like, I think it was a piano 101 class trying to figure out how to play, and this strange little rolling melody came out. It haunted me for years, and then finally with my first record, I knew I had a chance to express something. Okay, so the intro is an example of Fisher Price plastic record player, but I'm playing it wrong. I'm not using a plastic record on the player.

I'm actually playing the stylus of the Fisher Price plastic record player. It's like a music box. On one of those players, there's kind of no wrong notes. It's just a scale. So I'm plucking the tines that would normally be hit by the Pips on the plastic record. You can hear little resonances kicking around and stuff. and those are the things that I was aiming for, like the little weird sounds. That's the piano 101 part.

So this is this automatic accordion kind of instrument. This is like a harmonium, basically, but automatic. So rather than having to billow it with your knee or with your arms somehow, it just billows for you. There's another part that's the counterpoint. That's just like a little fugal figure, just back and forth. It's very repetitive. There's other versions of the song,

there's primordial versions that are more like on MIDI keyboards. and all these other instruments, and in the end it was best served. Where I played the melody first in this kind of weird instrument that only would be in tune with itself. So I had to play the next part of the melody or that kind of counterpoint on the same instrument. And then no rigid tuned system would work. So no MIDI keyboards, no synthesizers

that were on like a standard scale would work. So saxophone made sense. And if you listen carefully, you can hear the little break up the edit mark where the breath is interrupted. It's one of those things where it's not perfectly done. The player is amazing. This guy, Ben Wendell, he's a phenomenal saxophoneist. I am not using his best take. Yeah, I'm sorry, Ben. I'm using a vibey take, which is important. And then the other saxophone part. So in that same spirit of things that aren't quite right,

but are right for the song, I do some vocals on the track. In isolation, I mean, I don't know if I even could bear it. I've seen on other tracks, but this was really early on for me, and it was definitely one of those things that it was unconsciously kind of in the background and recorded. And then sewn in so, so, like, so buried in the mix that I wasn't as sweating it. The way it repeats and loops and kind of refrains, it's like an electronic song. It's like this chunk that then progresses and it opens up a little bit, but then it quickly dies off. It doesn't have a traditional song flow. And a lot of times for me, electronic music is about subverting expectation. So even though the song doesn't use synthesizers

or drum machines, to me it's about these kind of soundscapes. I wanted to be an electronic producer, so it's like aspirational, but is it electronic? Well, not really, but aspirational it is. So let's say that. And now here's experience by Daedalus in its entirety. Stay tuned after the song to hear what happened next with it. The song is remarkable for me for a number of reasons, and some of them have to do with the before and some of them have to do with the after.

The strange world we live in with music means that your legacy isn't something you always choose. Sometimes it's chosen for you. My very first record was remixed. A different song, Playing Parties was remixed by Madlib. unbeknownst to me at the same time he remixed that he remixed other songs off the record years went by and then suddenly this record called mad villain was released and it featured kind of without my knowledge this remix of my song living off borrowed time the clock tick faster that'll be the hour they knocked a slick blaster dig dastily and mutely with sick laughter

a gunfighting they come to cut the mix faster so experience became accordion and although So there is the accordion sound played by me, it's not really an accordion per se. But then you have M.F. Doom rapping about it being an accordion, so suddenly it has this life outside of my intention. Slip like Freudian, your first and last step to playing yourself like accordion. I've actually performed this song on stage with M.F. Doom and Madlib on a few occasions. And now it's been recorded by so many other people, Drake. I got money on my mind and I can't get it off so I gotta get on my crime gotta get on my ducks in line

My bills in order need crack I'm taking order Kitty pride Kissing in public or holding boys hands but I want to with you you know how silly I am a little freckily fake but I'm My name's kitty my version of accordion was like one of the first songs I ever made at all I was really into like mf doom madlib and I never thought about what the sample was or anything I was just assumed that all of those guys found old vinyl records and took little pieces of them. Daedalus went on tour with my friend Ryan Hemsworth. I had never even heard of him.

I was like listening to all of his music because I was like really intrigued. It was really pretty and then it started in with an accordion. I was just like, wait, wait, wait, I know this. That's definitely my favorite daylo song. It's like so beautiful. All these other people have put their spit into it. I'm the only sample credited on the Mad Villain record, and that's partially because they just gave me that opportunity to kind of decide how I wanted to be billed on that one, which is really nice of Stone's Thore who originally released the Mad Villainty record. Over time now, it's been sampled by other people in very different ways.

It's gone into R&B songs. So it's almost like you have like three lives for this song. You have the original life on the invention record. And then you have this very beefed-up version with Madlib's baseline and the vocals of MF Doom and a kind of subsequent versions that was so remarkable. And then now a third version that just totally puts into outer space and makes it seem like an electronic composition. It really feels like it's gone full circle.

All my early work is very short because I didn't have the confidence to make a song that was longer for than two minutes. The song goes by way too fast. It doesn't really even barely break into a memorable tune this way. I am amazed and honored again that it was sampled by somebody else because it actually has a longer life than being a one-minute 30-second song on a record that was from 2002. It's just not mine anymore. It's in the world, but it's really nice to look back at it. Living off borrowed time, the clock tick faster.

That'll be the hour they knocked a slick blaster. Dig dastily and mutely with sick laughter. A gunfighting, they come to cut the mix master. I-C-E-cold. Nice to be old. Y-2 G-D twice to three. fold. He sold scrolls low and behole. Know who's the illest ever like the greatest story told. Keep your glory gold and glitter. For half of his niggas to take him out the picture. The other half is rich

and it don't mean shit to filling a mixture between both with a twister liquor, chase it with more beer. Tasting like truth or dear when he at the mic is like the place get like, oh yeah. Visit songexploder.net for more info on Daedalus. You'll find links to all of the different songs that sampled experience so you can hear them in full. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about 15 years since I last put out a full length. And this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishi Kesh Her Way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career.

And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music, talking to other artists. And it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product. of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabon, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Wine Rope. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city,

like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzukas, Josh Malina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage, and then I'll play with my band. The album is called In The Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website, rishikash.co, or just go to songexploder.net slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks. You can find all of the past episodes of the podcast

and subscribe to future episodes at iTunes.com slash SongExploder. You can also find Song Exploder on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. I send out mixtapes on Fridays on my newsletter. You can find links to all of these at SongExploder.net. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX. My name is Rishi Kesh Hereway. Thanks for listening.

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