The Californian producer Daedelus, author of an extensive avant-garde discography over the past twenty years for the labels Ninja Tune, Mush and Brainfeeder, has released his most risky album yet with What Wands Won't Break, composed in the "red zone" of the vu-meter. The record is structured as a "sonic profession of faith", according to Daedelus, who cites Ras G (a producer who was signed with Brainfeeder and died in the summer of 2019) as his main influence. "Every time we’d play Ras would push each fader and every knob to the max even before hitting a 404 pad, he’d say it was ‘how it needed to sound.’" he said. “I’d be dubious because going ‘into the red’ induces distortion of the audio signal, it changes the harmonic content. As if amplification could ever be pristine? I’m grateful for the questioning of what we were intoning. This record is reaching for exultation and exclamation. Bass boosted. Transient inflated. Loud.”
Daedelus hacked into the Ableton software with plug-ins that allowed him to boost the gain of different sound sources, which he was pushing "to their limits". We find ourselves with twenty-three tracks (breakbeat, house, techno, hip-hop...) that rarely exceed three minutes, between skeletons of tracks and DJ tools, totally raw, without any refinement except a sound inflated to the point that it’s impossible to listen with the volume at maximum unless you want to risk losing your ears. © Smaël Bouaici/Qobuz