Drown Out

Vinyl LP pressing. 2013 release from Electronic producer/musician Alfred Darlington AKA Daedelus. Drown Out is a heart-on-sleeve meditation devoted to loss, coded language and the maddening failures of communication. And yet one can still bob one's head to it. There's a sadness that courses through Drown Out. During it's gestation, Daedelus grappled with the deaths of his grandmother and close friend and collaborator Austin Peralta, and the debilitating illness of another family member forced him to take a sabbatical from touring. The grief is exorcised not through overwrought builds and releases, but through quiet ripples and agnostic hymnals - a winding and unraveling of nerves. It can be alternately intense or mellow, melancholy or ebullient, danceable or introspective. Genres ransacked and sublimated include '90s West Coast gangsta rap, rave, classical, jazz, footwork, juke and the heavy beats that crop up out of the Low End Theory. There are neither speed limits nor straight paths, but there's always a voice and a roadmap.