Daedalus in detail

The Victorian dandy garb and paradoxical blinky Monome grid isn’t the only thing that stands out. If you allow your ears, they’ll also pick up a range of surprising sounds. “At best I’d say my music is romantic,” says Daedalus. “Not in the conventional sense perhaps, but rather the sickly sweet feeling when falling hard for someone. But that goal has morphed over the years to include feet, head, and heart,” says the musician. Growing up in the heart of modern skateboarding – Dogtown, South Santa Monica, all things foreign at Los Angeles inspired him to get the heart beating behind his electronics. It was this love affair with all kinds of sound that compelled him to make noise, “But the freedom of electronic music made me pursue these loud possibilities,” adds the 37-year-old, who graduated from the USC Thornton School of Music in jazz and double bass, opening up a world of opportunities. “My parents have always been supportive and kind, but the sounds itself haven’t always won them over,” he confesses, adding that his mother would say it was too noisy, as his father fell asleep to the crescendo of synths. “Both are teachers and I believe have been waiting for me to hang up my touring shoes and get a respectable job in education,” he quips.

With 15 albums in his 13 years, Daedelus has collaborated with the likes of Californian experimental multi-genre producer Flying Lotus, American alternative hip-hop producer The Gaslamp Killer and British-American hip-hop artist MF Doom among others, while being a regular on line-ups for music festivals like Coachella, Lollapalooza and SXSW. “Taking nothing for granted that I get to be there, how circuitous the journey,” says the DJ, getting poetic, springing right out of a Jane Austen novel. “I do appreciate all things sartorial preferring to dress up, that being said the heat might kill me first, so less cravats and more t-shirts sadly,” says the coffee-obsessed Daedalus who even played John Lennon in an Erykah Badu’s Honey video because he had the sideburns for it! Aside of liking music too much to be a party person, Daedalus also collaborates with his high school sweetheart (now wife), Laura Arlington as The Long Lost.

More tours and music is definitely on his up next list, and of course, making new machines. “The Delaydelus is a recent instrument just completed,” says the musician who even draws his name from Ancient Greek myth’s greatest inventor, Daedalus. “A creator of wax wings, and labyrinths, this character is an aspiration of mine. I don’t think that I’m such a great inventor myself, but someday perhaps I’ll be worthy of using the name,” he clarifies. But for now, he’s plunging headfirst into Bengaluru’s music scene and, “I’ll be keen to eat every delicious morsel of authentic regional flavour,” he smiles.