#1099 Daedelus - Drown Out

The album art is telling, with its little man sinking to a drowned world, exploring or returning home or dying or...

Earlier Daedelus albums were steeped in history, in dusty details, in the analog crackle of the past, samples tripping past as memory. But on Drown Out, you enter a fluid and alien world, with beats that get lost in the larger rhythms, with notes that bleeed and blend. Sampling and looping are still part of the program, but where vintage records once formed the backbone, there's now a much greater reliance on buzzy tones, sequenced arpeggios, analog/additive/subtractive synths. Little stands out, there are few big moments, few strong melodies, just swoops and whorls that swoon and intersect, and in the end it doesn't quite work. It's not as hypnotic as more traditional ambient music, not as danceable as more traditional electronic music, and lacks the heart of more traditional instrumental hip hop. You can't help but admire the guy for trying to keep moving, but here he's lost the thread of what makes his great stuff great 3/5