In over a decade, Dan Deacon has gone from rocking Baltimore house parties to paying tribute to avant-garde composer John Cage at Carnegie Hall. His experimental and DIY take on electronic music has made him a modern icon, granted his own unique space in the musicphere. As he finishes up his follow-up to 2012’s America, he’s making a quick jaunt our way for his first Mainland tour, stopping off at Yuyintang on December 4.
He’s going back to his one-man band roots for the show, performing solo with a seemingly endless array of toys. While his music has morphed, his reputation for euphoric live performances filled with audience participation and interaction remains.
When asked for a preview, the 33-year-old is elusive. “I’m not sure how I’ll be interacting with the audience but time will tell,” he says. “The live show is pretty loud and hopefully people dance.”
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He does confirm that “most of the shows are crazy,” and is excited to delve into his shapeshifting discography. Deacon has always been diverse. While studying classical composition at the Conservatory of Music at the State University of New York, he was moonlighting in an array of groups ranging from grindcore to ska to chamber music.
His first releases were sonic experiments, self-released on CD-Rs. They mixed live ensemble recordings with computer music, including a series comprised of sine wave compositions.
In 2004, he moved to Baltimore and co-founded the Wham City Collective with local musicians, visual artists and comedians. They routinely held popular underground parties in the city throughout the decade and Deacon wrote their unofficial theme song, ‘Wham City’ on 2007’s Spiderman of the Rings.
His first full-length album to be commercially released was an unexpected detour towards accessibility. Full of melodic keys and hyperactive drums, the album defined Deacon’s aesthetic, which he describes as “electronic music that’s more rooted in the punk or rock of new wave side compared to other ‘electronic musics.’”
Each subsequent release burnished Deacon’s underground cred. Now he tours across America with hip contemporaries Deerhunter and No Age in a customized vegetable oil powered bus. His composition skills caught the ears of The Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola, who asked Deacon to score 2011’s Twixt.
Deacon’s become increasingly active in the contemporary classical scene. The Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony in Canada were the first to perform one of his orchestral works and he describes his Carnegie Hall show with Matmos and So Percussion as laid-back.
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He’s beginning to merge both sides of his musical personality, hinting at adding more classical pieces to his next album. 2012’s America capped off with a titular four-song suite, an astonishingly sprawling soundscape littered with wild synth riffs, cooing vocals and the orchestral heft of added woodwind and brass.
The album was praised for its blend of electronics sounds with live instruments and Deacon’s heightened song craft. While retaining a pop flourish, he slips in plenty of political musings inspired by his frequent cross-country tours of the country.
“Most of my lyrics are introspective and tend to be on the darker side of my personality, while the music is more a method of dealing with those mindsets,” he explains.
While he confirms he’s working on America’s follow-up, he’s mum on the details. However, looking back at his career, he’s astounded by the changes in the music industry. He praises the current climate for “the endless amounts of available music,” predicting “many inspiring changes to sounds and cultural merging of music.”
He worries that he’s the last of a dying breed though. In an increasingly corporate world, he sighs, “many people aspire to be like what they hear on the radio, rather than a direct rejection of that.”
// Dec 4, 9pm, RMB120-140. Yuyintang, tickets.
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Image by Shawn Brackbill
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