Bromst
The art made by Baltimore artist Dan Deacon is about community and how to organize and inspire it. From founding a now well-known art collective (Wham City), to organizing and running an annually sold-out DIY music festival (Whartscape), to conceiving, planning and curating a massive 60 person/30 band tour (Baltimore Round Robin Tour), it’s clear to see that community and bringing people together is the major theme of his work. Bromst is the embodiment of that way of thinking. For the last three years Dan Deacon has been working on Bromst. Fusing together the growing intensity of his live performances with his background in electro-acoustic composition, the outcome is a collection of pieces that are intense and epic and at the same time down to earth and welcoming. Bromst embodies the same energy and excitement as Spiderman of the Rings, however the craftsmanship and composition on Bromst have a wider scope and richer palette. Unlike the completely electronic Spiderman of the Rings, the instrumentation on Bromst is a mixture of acoustic instruments, mechanical instruments, samples and electronics. The player piano, marimba, glockenspiel, vibraphone, live drums, winds and brass give Bromst a much richer tone than his previous work. The intricate and complex parts, skillfully executed by the performers, are woven together into a rich, dense, noisy dance pop that has become Dan Deacon’s signature sound.
After breakthough Spiderman of the Rings, Dan Deacon returns with another great record whose palette is richer, the samples smoother, the space larger.
As breakthrough records go, Dan Deacon’s Spiderman Of The Rings was hard to ignore, but limited. Who can’t futz around on a single-key thumb piano, loop Woody Woodpecker’s cackle, and pile some synth on top? Instead of “Who could?”, the primary question posed by those songs was “Who would?”, and the oversimplified…
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Long live the proverbial ‘neek’, for it is thanks to him that we can justify electronica. It’s not moronic and mind numbing, it’s highly intellectual and far too complicated for you; you could never understand it. And <b>Dan Deacon </b>is the king, mainly ‘cos he’s friggin’ cool too.
From the first few minutes of Bromst, Dan Deacon's second Carpark full-length, it appears he may be going back to his university days at SUNY-Purchase, where he studied electro-acoustic composition.
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