httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ysUbo4bED4

I think we’re entering the HAL-3000 phase of electronic music, in so much as saying that manipulated tones are starting to breathe. Now first off, I loathe techno. The few raves I attended as a teen were definitely not for the purpose of the music. The whole DJ house-beat, communal sweat-off thing never grabbed me, and I’ve kinda always looked down upon so-called “electronic” music. And I only mention this because in laymans terms, Dan Deacon‘s latest album, Bromst, would be classified as electronic music, and quite simply it’s already one of my Top 20 albums of all time.

As I did a full interview with Deacon for State of Mind, (viewable at www.stateofmindmusic.com) I’ve had a few months to continually redigest the early copy of Bromst I received. Now if you’re familiar with Deacon, you know that his live shows are absolutely rediculous, and essentially just involve him making a bunch of crazy looping tones and patterns with structured chaos ensuing. Well this new album was made with the intention of Dan performing the music live with a full ensemble – thus, there is a thickness and far more tangible quality of these songs than anything he’s ever done before. It sounds cliche’, but this album is overwhelmingly organic. He’s using real instruments for the first time, all be it they occasionally get recycled into something brand new and unfamiliar, but he’s never before used piano riffs, for instance. The result is a massive new era wall-of-sound. Each song climbs and reforms into huge moments of beautiful modern psychadelia. And these tunes really are beautiful, they have the power to bring stashed emotions to your brow, they cause a sonic release, a relaxation from a tenseness you weren’ t even aware of.

“Snookered” is frankly amazing. It’s a movement of build and release, but in a completely unexpected way – when all the patterns interect towards the end, it’s utter euphoria. As Dan said, “I wanted this album to be more of a celebration and less of a party.” If you’ve already taken Animal Collective‘s latest Merriweather Post Pavillion as your guiding torch into a new modern era of emotive, manipulated sound, then Bromst will quite frankly knock you on your ass. Gonna be tough for something to come out to beat this for “Album of 2009″ in my book. Here’s “Snookered” – sorry, Youtube is the only thing I’m good at embedding.