Coachella 2011: Daedelus reflects on his performance

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By the time it was his turn to step up to the Gobi stage Saturday, Daedelus had publicly confessed, and apologized, for his all-but-lost voice. That’s what happens when you spend all day Friday screaming while your favorite bands perform. On more than several occasions, L.A.’s sideburned beatsmith traipsed the Polo Field with his wife-collaborator, singer Laura Darlington, like any other fan.

Luckily for him and his voice, the man born Alfred Weisberg-Roberts (though he prefers Alfred Darlington) let his tech toys, rhythms and sound sculpture do the talking. And don’t let that flashy, Willy Wonka/steampunk presence fool you: The man is far from a showboat. In fact, the lynchpin of his late-night set involved a rotating background full of mirrors reflecting away from him and onto the crowd.

Just after midnight, a dapper-dressed Daedelus faced the Gobi masses, hands squarely placed on his laptops, monomes and other miscellaneous gadgets. Not only did the flashing mirrors twist the fans’ perspective upside down, but they also signified one of Daedelus’ main goals: Turn any genre on its head and kick it around a bit. For R&B fans, the 33-year-old reconfigured rhythms from Al Green’s ‘Still in Love With You’ and Ne-Yo’s ‘Say It’ to make them rave-appropriate.

By the same token, he was quick to turn the sonic scalpel on his own stuff, making some notably eloquent brushstrokes to new material such as ‘Tailor-Made,’ a single from his album ‘Bespoke,’ to be released on Ninja Tune on April 26.

-- Nate Jackson