Juuuuust a reminder that Dan Deacon is at Higher Ground tonight, Tuesday May 12th. Here’s footage of Dan’s first show he played with his ensemble back in December. With a bunch of gigs under their belt, I can’t wait to see what new degrees of tightnicity they have acheived.
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.
Phew, this solves it all. Turns out that the actual quality of any music is not something merely relative to the personal tastes of the listener. Thank God, this solves all my best-of-the-year arguments. Around 2001, Tim Midgett, bassist for Silkworm, wrote The End of Subjectivity: A Guide to Musical Correctness. Read the full thing here: http://www.matadorrecords.com/escandalo/6/subjectivity.html
The formula is such: (c@ + E) X (rP + iP + T) = mc
c@ = coherent aesthetic… The degree to which a subject is capable of formulating and understanding (not necessarily explaining) a singular theory that lies at the heart of the subject’s work. E = execution… The degree to which a subject is capable of applying its aesthetic. rP = real or true power… The degree to which a subject is capable of creating a substantive product of lasting importance by applying its aesthetic. iP = imagined power… What the subject believes to be its rP. T = tension adjustment… The degree to which the subject’s musical correctness quotient must be modified to compensate for misjudgement by the subject of its abilities. Derivation of T: If rP = iP, then T = 0… If rP > iP, then T = 1/2 (rP – iP)… If rP < iP, then T = 2(rP – iP). And finally: mc = musical correctness… The degree to which the subject is musically correct.
The scores can range from -140 to 400 but by his calculations the highest ever was 361 for the Lou Reed led, pre-reunion Velvet Underground, and -126 for the Eagles reunion. Or Velvets (10 + 9) X (10 + 8 + 1) = 361 and Eagles reunion (8 + 10) X (1 + 10 – 18)= -126.
Some of my own calculations: Dan Deacon (10 + 9) X (7 + 5 + 1) = 247……. Turkey Bouillon Mafia (6 + 9) X (6 + 7 – 2) = 165………. GNR: Chinese Democracy (10 + 6) X (5 + 10 – 10) = 80. That’s right, due to Axel’s twisted head, my own party band is more than twice as musically correct as the new Guns N Roses album.
