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Reviews

Daedalus, ‘Bespoke’ (Ninja Tune)

This merrily eccentric Los Angeles beatmaker plays like a Victorian tinkerer, tossing every genre into the works, while a clique of fellow pop subversives sing amid the clatter. As a riff on ’50s jazz-pop, Inara George’s “Penny Loafers” haunts with echoes of Bernard Hermann; but Busdriver’s crooning over the frantic cumbia house of “What Can You Do for Me” is just chaotic. With its breakcore pacing and woozy bass and beats, Bespoke sometimes threatens to explode in Daedalus’ face, but his willful delight in mucking things up proves to be persistently infectious.