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In this release for Flying Lotus’ up-and-coming label Brainfeeder, Daedelus presents a soundtrack-of-sorts to the Boxer Rebellion. What, you ask, could make such ancient history an inspiration for modern electronics? Well, Daedelus has found a strange relevance to our modern malady in these epic events of long ago…
After seventy years of China’s opium-related subjugation by Queen Victoria and her allies, a force of resistance fighters — termed “Boxers” by the British — rose to the challenge in 1898. Calling themselves “The Righteous Fists of Harmony,” this secret society of martial artists felt they held magical powers: they believed themselves bulletproof, able to fly, and capable of raising the dead (who would then fight alongside them). And so began the brief Boxer
Rebellion, three years later 100,000 Boxers had fallen, their magic helpless against the cutting-edge machinery of war. The British prevailed only to face ultimate defeat, as their empire rapidly declined.
Daedelus endeavors to compose a requiem for the end — of beliefs, of lives, and of an era. This elegy for a bygone battle sheds light on our own contemporary conundrum: will our faith in modernity be our downfall? Are we blinded by this age of wonders, doomed to be destroyed by our ingenious inventions? Although Daedelus’ music has always juxtaposed organic and electronic elements, they war as never before on “Righteous Fists of Harmony,” a portrait of a tumultuous era that came crashing to a close.
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