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A lot of people are associating you with Steam Punk right now.

All too much, their two basic tenants are Victoriana and invention which I borrow heavily from. It’s like you cross Alice in Wonderland and Edwardian and Victorian ideas and you got it. I’m a sucker for a well made suit and some high collars. Then again I’d never say I’m a champion of the movement, I reject some of its premise, its revisionism, its fun though, really fun.

Big fashion labels, are they buying into Dandyism?

There are odds and ends in fashion houses, but you know it can get quite expensive when Versace or one of these o brandy brand labels dips in with their feet for a second, sometimes I just have to have one of those pieces but most of the time I’m buying vintage. So with Steam Punk there is a lot of mixing, the true vintage items can get really pricey but that’s the case with all fashion, you pay for what you get. I’m really against buying things because of the brand, but to get the right cut is worth its weight in gold...wait gold is expensive nowadays.

You must have some spots you go back to for vintage...

I have some spots, for sure. A lot of cities in Canada are amazing for true Vintage especially for the periods I’m looking in. Barcelona is actually incredible and I found out funnily enough the UK is not good for Victoriana. You’d imagine it would be totally the opposite?

Suppliers always try to shift stock from different countries to keep it exciting.

I think it’s also a weird evolutionary thing people were just small back then. Well, they were mal-nourished which means anytime you find an awesome waistcoat; it’s basically made for a child. Oh and I almost forgot LA, it’s amazing because don’t forget we have this whole weird Hollywood movie apparatus so every time there’s a cast of thousands in period piece, you can see people like myself salivating because about two years down the line all those pieces are up on a rack somewhere, it’s fantastic. I mean this sounds ridiculous but certain plays, certain operas I’ll be there looking out for the pieces which the thespians wear. [A fan comes in with a Darlington tea towel gift for Daedelus] Why thank you...my wife will be ever so pleased.

How is it working together with your wife in your new band ‘The Long Lost’? Do you get competitive with each other?

It’s true I do get a little envious of her success sometimes. She’s been on two of the Flying Lotus records, actually she’s been on all the Flying Lotus records, she’s on the new LP that’s coming out, I mean ‘Fly-lo’ is an awesome friend, he’s basically in the LA music family doing really well and it’s fantastic, happy competitions. Mainly I just envy her time. She’s at home making wonderful things right now, and I’m on the road a little bit, and that’s how it is at the moment, but she’ll be on the road sometime and I’ll be at home ...someday...someday! I love touring around and being in new places but it is a job and her work right now is being creative so I envy that a little but, in the best possible way.

Apparently you discovered Rave music in a YWCA? Inspiring?

It was one of those first moments when I first heard it being played like it was supposed to be. I had been buying a few records randomly, ‘trip to the moon part one’ for example, it flipped my wig, it was amazing. I was way too young though, I had bought it because it had a pretty picture of the moon on it, so when I played it on my parents turntables it was like ‘what is this?’ anyway so when I heard pirate radio with someone yelling stupidly over it, it was like the best thing I remember in my adolescent mind.

Joe Strummer said that Rave was a synthesis of punk and hippies coming together.

I reject that, for me all the tracks are about an urban experience coming together with technology. I appreciate Joe Strummer’s background, he’s a lot more qualified to talk on such subjects...the punk influence is definitely there but if you think about it rave music started with two seconds of sampling time to having a minute. Then you have the new urban experience which had just begun to express itself. I mean acid house, it’s more like punks and hippies coming together, but real rave…real like hardcore music started out sampling artists such as Ultra-Magnetic MCs right the way to old film soundtracks. They were allowing a much wider synthesis and I think that’s more interesting.

How is the use of the Monome different from using DJ decks? Are you trying to do a lot of cutting up of tracks with the Monome?

Completely, very much cutting. I very much feel with the Monome you’re playing an instrument. With DJing there is a different art-form where you mix two things which are recognizable while you’re also trying to push and pull them together. The Monome allows for DJ action as well as instrumental play, because it allows you to take tiny bits of songs and chop them further. So you can sustain a single moment, say take a sentence and chop up the words putting them in a different order, while mixing two tracks. Then again that’s just the way in which I’m using the hardware, the hardware is open source, so people can design and mix software to do anything they want.

Are you still trying to chop 2 tracks or do you like finding sounds within sounds?

I chop four samples at a time, but then the way in which you can in-disperse and cut between those, allows for a lot more than four sounds, because you can constantly replace, implace, implode. Finding new sounds is absolutely the best, when you take something known and clichéd and fantastic and you rip it up and make something new out of it or you find combinations that work in these queasy, effective ways, it’s part of the game of it but...I don’t know, the kind of thing I like most, actually, is finding melodies within melodies, and especially when you could be playing the most hardcore Drum n’ Bass track mixed with some dub-step, but then you can find a little melody that can creep out of it, that’s my favourite moment.

Your album ‘Love To Make Music To’ sounds completely different to your live sets.

Well, there are bits and pieces in there. In some ways the live show has become a different type of celebration, whereas the records are a sort of half in half out kind of thing, and that’s really supposed to be for listening, deep repetitive listening, whereas the live show is immediate, on a good night it’s really about paying attention to what the needs of the moment are, it could be more requests or more visceral; a moment, or a rhythm, it’s nice to have a sing along once in a while.

Which style suits the Edwardian fashion more?

Well my wife and I like to dress up Victorian on the live show. People forget the way things move, they always see these static black and white images, and they don’t realise that during 1830s to there was all this colour in fashion. Basically it was bananas. Dye technology finally caught up with peoples ‘mild’ abuses of hallucinogens. The death of Albert, when everybody wore black was ‘the ultimate bummer’. But before there were all these dances that were going on and people, also clothes were made to move, so I like testing what’s possible with my weird creations.

Interview conducted by Maksymilian Fus Mickiewicz of Haus Magazine