Daedelus has unveiled a new album, What Wands Won’t Break, launching on Dome of Doom across digital and cassette formats on May 8.

What Wands Won’t Break is Daedelus’ first work since joining the staff at Berklee College of Music as an Assistant Professor and Founding Faculty Member of EDI (Electronic Digital Instrument). It follows his previous album on Brainfeeder, The Bittereinders, released last year.

Tracks are “set in motion as bursts in time, hurdling through different passages of minimal harmonic components and toweringly ferocious rhythm and bass,” Dome of Doom explains. Every layer is “magnified and saturated,” and few tracks grace the two-minute mark.

In terms of process, Daedelus pushed Ableton to the edge, which is to say that signal paths were drastically altered, bringing out a sense of “frenetic energy,” the label explains.

He was inspired by Beat Lab Academy‘s short video series exploring sound hacks wherein they created a baseline from drum material using a few instances of Ableton’s Drum Buss. Across the album, Daedelus wanted to push less profuse sound sources to the brink with boosting plug-ins.

The album also nods to the late Ras G in seeking out extremes. “Every time we’d play, Ras would push each fader and every knob to the max even before hitting a 404 pad; he’d say it was ‘how it needed to sound,'” Daedelus recalls. “I’d be dubious because going ‘into the red’ induces distortion of the audio signal, it changes the harmonic content. As if amplification could ever be pristine? I’m grateful for their questioning of what we are intoning. This record is reaching for exultation and exclamation. Bass boosted. Transient inflated. Loud.”

Tracklisting

01. Cauldron
02. Chimera
03. Querent
04. Fettle
05. Clairaudience
06. Glint (feat. Wylie Cable)
07. Phoenix Down
08. Sunflower Stems
09. Narwhale
10. Noble Metal
11. Datura
12. Unyielding
13. Tynged
14. Laurel
15. Crux
16. Basalt
17. Henosis
18. Brandish
19. Chiliad
20. Mahogany
21. Drubbing
22. Zenith
23. Yew and Me

What Wands Won’t Break LP is out on May 8 via Dome of Doom. Meanwhile, you can pre-order here and stream “Sunflower Stems” below.