Aliens exist, and we don’t care. Aliens exist, and we don’t care…
Yep, as soon as the government we know and love let us in on information such as the existence of aliens for the umpteenth time, all we had to say is that it is… no longer our concern. The general, loud consensus is that if they come, they either have to take us with them or leave us the fuck alone to our sun-baked ignorance. We know that mentioning such information is almost always a childish distraction from the vile stuff people in the U.S. Government do all the time. Who cares about aliens when we are currently an accident away from being disabled, homeless, broke, and near death? We are all currently hoping that aliens either take over, blow up our planet, or, better yet, enjoy the fruits of obscurity.
But if you told me that Daedelus is making a soundtrack about the possibility of life in space, surely, we can maybe care a little bit more about that. Right?
The newly Boston-based producer and composer has for years made music underneath the philosophy of the Romantic era. Said 19th-century movement largely champions inventiveness and being inspired not by other musicians—an ideology he has stressed on Twitter to much collective confusion amongst other producers—but the non-musical aspects surrounding said philosophy. Be it the inspiration of fashion or separate wars in different countries, the biologically named Alfred Darlington has kept this practice going his entire career with the common act of mixing the electronic with the analog till you have little idea where one ends and the other begins.
This time, conversations with the SETI institute about the existence of life outside of Earth inspired Daedelus’ album Xenopocene. The album that translates into “alien age,” according to the artist, “follows a timeline from an extraterrestrial first contact thru to 10k days hence and spiraling towards the nearest exoplanet 6,000+ years away.” Beginning with “Contact – Day 0,” the harmonic and dissonant chords weave in and out as an almost sublime score to contacting aliens in the wider throws of space. The balance of both electronic (synths) and acoustic (strings and vocals) instruments blend to make otherworldly compositions with genre elements ranging from ambient—such as “Concerning the Conduct of the Search”—to classically-assisted dubstep/garage—seen on “A Considered Reply – Day 1”—to braindance—with “Lightness – Day 10k,” where pulsating bass and manipulated steel drums open up a three-minute journey of a track. Artists like The Breathing Effect on “Float” and Ruby Yacht’s chief poet R.A.P. Ferreira on “Starfire” add to the sonic tapestry with prepared alien vocals and afrofuturist poetry, respectively.
Anyone with a thing for science fiction and, or a thing for grandiose electroacoustic compositions, such as Daedelus’ own The Light Brigade, will find a lot to love about this album. Will this inspire any more serious thought about the existence of extraterrestrial life again? At this point, do not hold your breath.
