Daedelus and the 256 Bits (or: Buttons)

This past Friday, I caught Daedelus at Loda, a weekly event at Gallery in Silver Spring, Maryland.

There were other artists performing and they were all quite good, but I went to see Daedelus and I was not disappointed. Well, not entirely. There were some sound issues that dragged his set downwards, but otherwise, it was an excellent performance.

One thing that I thought very impressive was his set up- only a Macbook and two Monomes, one with 64 buttons and another with 256. To say only is a bit of an understatement. All three are impressive pieces of hardware by themselves. Strung together, they're even more impressive.

Daedelus was running his beats off of the 64 button Monome and all of his melodies, samples and various noises of all types off of the other, mashing any number of the 256 buttons to create each song. Watching him, it almost seemed impossible that he might remember where anything was- the buttons on the Monome carrying no indication, save for a basic on/off feature whereby the user knows if a sample is active, if an LED is lit or not. All real, specific indication of use comes from the software used, which can be anything, really. I'm not sure exactly what Daedelus was using on Friday night, but he was getting results.

The crowd was bouncing around, even with the sound problems and going wild for nearly every stitch of sound that tore through the air.

An excellent show, all around.