DAN DEACON TOURING AUSTRALIA 2009!

SUMMER TONES SYDNEY - Friday Feb 27 @ Oxford Art Factory w/ High Places, Lawrence Arabia, Beaches and Mark Barrage. Tickets $32 + BF on sale Fri 21/11 from Moshtix.

SUMMER TONES MELBOURNE - Saturday Feb 28 @ The Espy w/ High Places, Lawrence Arabia, Ruby Suns, Beaches, Kes Band, Ned Collette, Fabulous Diamonds, Mark Barrage, Panel of Judges, Qua, The Smallgoods + 10 more over 3 stages. Ticket details soon.

SUMMER TONES BRISBANE - Friday Mar 6 @ The Zoo w/ High Places, Lawrence Arabia, Beaches and Ruby Suns. Tickets $32 + BF on sale Fri 21/11 from The Zoo and Oztix outlets. 

GOLDEN PLAINS FESTIVAL - Saturday March 7

PERTH FESTIVAL - Sunday Mar 8
Dan Deacon on Myspace

MP3: Wham City

Video: Perth Festival performance & interview courtesy of Radio Dingbat 

Video: Okie Dokie

Video by jimmy joe roche: Crystal Cat

Video: Dan Deacon live at the Pitchfork Music Festival, Chicago

From Citypaper:
Arresting Development: Dan Deacon, Myth, and Magic: Some Notes On Exploding Up From The Underground
by Rjyan Kidwell

I’ve seen Dan Deacon many times on his home turf, the warehouse show. After moving to Baltimore in 2004, he mastered that setting over the course of three years of ambitious touring and regular local performances in his living space at the Copy Cat, the old artists’ dojo three blocks east of Penn Station. As his blade got sharp, the crowds grew and grew, eventually exceeding what the space could support, and it strained his relationship with the landlord. I was supposed to play a show with Deacon one night last August, a show on his 26th birthday intended to break a yearlong abstinence from performing in the building. After the first two acts, though, Deacon had to get on the microphone and tell everyone–at least 300 kids–to leave. Something to do with the police, I think–I was never totally clear on the details, but I know neither of us got to play that night. Now Deacon is a very positive guy, but I could tell it burned him, returning from a few immensely successful tours to be hassled trying to play in his old home. That was the first night that I started to see the outline of Deacon’s heroic mission, and I began to truly understand how his destiny and our city had intertwined. I could also see that the last challenge rising up between him and that destiny was the very sort of beast he had to face Friday, May 30, in the big room at Sonar: an enormous mob of voyeurs.

You’re probably curious as to how I knew that virtually all of the 900 people at the club that night were voyeurs, and I’m tempted simply to explain about the kind of sensitivities you develop over 14 years of working in establishments that combine strangers and alcohol and loud music. But in the interest of full disclosure I must confess: I’m actually part voyeur myself. Not a big part, but it does run in my family. Between nature and nurture, my voy-dar is pretty damn reliable.

I went down to Sonar and, as I suspected, the voyeurs were swarming. Most were dressed to blend in and dancing like horny zombies, all of them animated by expectations drawn from the images and video and sound they found with their computers: digital glimpses of Deacon’s show made accessible by today’s efficient compression algorithms. While waiting for his set to start, I got bored and tried to buttonhole a few random people; it’s about as fun as poking pill bugs, but feels less cruel. Both of the hulking, frat-tastic gentlemen I tried to engage just gaped at me as if I had asked them to hold a severed penis until I walked away. I had better luck with a smaller guy named Ian, a recent transplant who works in the video-game industry. I asked him if he loved Dan Deacon, and he said yes without any hesitation. When I asked why, Ian squinted and looked up at the ceiling and thought about it. After a minute or two, standing there watching him think started to make me anxious, so I waved my question away and changed the subject to video games.

Meanwhile, the wisest parts of the mob were clumping in front of the stage. Deacon, as usual, set up his table of gear on the floor, and, normally, if you don’t push up for a good spot you won’t be able to see much other than a couple of flashing lights in the middle of a churning sea of hair. As Deacon began his performance, I thought about penetrating the mob for a closer look but quickly reconsidered when a better view appeared projected on either side of the stage. A layer of psychedelic video effects obscured some of the details, but settling for the screen made it less likely I’d have to enter a teenager’s personal space.

Before playing any music Deacon addressed the crowd over the PA, leading them through a maniac warmup routine that involved stretching and pointing and kneeling down, and then a series of contradictory gestures and light stranger-interaction. This continued for almost the length of a song, and the crowd was enthusiastically participatory.

Then the music started, and it sounded immense. You could feel the kick drums in your throat and behind your ribs. Deacon does very upbeat material, and positive music is always much more convincing when it’s loud as hell. The voyeurs were convinced immediately, and they pushed like crazy right up onto Deacon’s table and at every side of him. His songs are four-fifths climax, so they don’t have to stop pushing until the song is over, and they get especially riled when Deacon sings dramatically, his voice transposed up an octave or two by a Digitech Whammy IV.

The music itself sounds like Lightning Bolt covering John Philip Sousa on Nickelodeon–and I’m not just playing the “this sounds like that” game here, either: This is crucial genealogy. Deacon and his Wham City crew’s warehouse shows have always drawn heavily from the mythology surrounding Lightning Bolt and its productive Providence, R.I., art space, Fort Thunder. The Fort Thunder building was demolished in 2002 to make room for a Shaw’s supermarket parking lot, but in the six years prior, the artists who lived in Fort Thunder created many bands, comics, posters, costumes, and video work that would gradually be discovered and adored by younger aspiring artists. Their eccentric aesthetic mixed dystopian anxiety with youthful energy. Deacon’s music definitely seizes way more on the latter of those two aspects, but when you hear his jams blasting out of a big-ass system, the gnarlier part of the Providence aesthetic peeks–and peaks–through, too.

At the end of the first song Deacon tried to convince everybody to spread out and use more of the space in the room, but most people appeared to assume he was talking to somebody else, and the mob pretty much stayed concentrated around him. As the set continued, he alternated songs with more surrealist calisthenics and two rather complex group activities: an unfortunately short-lived two-man dance circle and a much more successful dance “gauntlet.” He shouted out the rules for the complicated games clearly and concisely, but with the kind of urgency often encountered with instructions about how to exit a flaming aircraft.

It built gradually in the tone of his entreaties, and then halfway through the set Deacon confirmed the scent of tension I detected when he announced that he felt “like a second-grade teacher.” He was putting it all down, but those voyeurs, they weren’t picking it all up. In that great big sweaty great time, there was a dramatic struggle happening just under the surface. Deacon alluded to this struggle in a recent interview with Pitchfork, explaining how his new compositions focused on “mass movement” instead of conventional “dancing at a party.”

“As long as the crowds don’t become too rowdy or violent, I’m excited for my audience to grow,” he said. It sounds clear to me that Deacon has big ideas about what can happen when large groups of people get together in one room, but that he expects the audience to trust and commit completely to his leadership if something transcendent is to be achieved. The crowd that night was undeniably happy, everything was good and fine–the set certainly fulfilled the expectations aroused by the internet images many times over, and that’s good as it needs to be for a voyeur. But the underlying tug of war was never completely resolved–it didn’t seem good enough for Dan. I have the feeling it won’t take many more shows in rooms like that one to teach Deacon that the voyeurs–even when they appear to resist–truly and deeply desire to be bossed around and made into instruments of action. They just sometimes need something more forceful than a friendly invitation to get there.

When voyeurs start to realize they’re affecting the thing that they desire, the protective barrier that defines voyeurism begins to crumble. Walls coming down, outside coming in–always a scary thing, and most people’s instinct is to pull back. But if you wanna go skinny dipping, you have to jump in the pool: Trying to wade in a little at a time is for suckers; it just doesn’t work. It’s happening on both sides, too. I sense that Deacon might still be a little scared of the power that comes with conducting enormous crowds–it can taste a little bit fascist. He’ll get used to it, though. I mean, Superman is a little bit fascist, too, right? And look at the symbolism underlying the title of Deacon’s most recent (and most popular) album, Spiderman of the Rings: Peter Parker, the ordinary boy who gets superhuman powers and decides, despite the challenges presented by his ordinariness, to dedicate himself to the well-being of his fellow man; and Tolkien’s epic tale about the little man-child whose bravery saves his whole world from apocalypse. These aren’t just cheeky references to popular culture. I think Deacon, Frodo-style, is creeping his way up the mountain to face the very evil that decimated the home of his artistic forebears and has interfered with his own attempts to set up a stable location for Wham City: the forces of greed and gentrification that are cannibalizing American cities and culture.

Back in Providence, in 1999, after persistent rumors of the Fort Thunder building’s sale eventually proved to be true, members of the Fort and others sympathetic to the cause spent more than a year trying to influence the process, meeting with preservationists, community activists, and politicians. Despite an outcry of support from far and wide–I personally heard about the threat to Fort Thunder when a Japanese record label mass-mailed a call to arms to every band that had ever performed there–the out-of-state developer Feldco demolished the old mill building and built its strip mall. Later there would be rumors that Feldco slyly bought its way out of promises to set aside a certain number of affordable studio spaces in the new property, the main concession that was made to those protesting the development plan.

The story of Fort Thunder and its frustrating ending looms heavily over the artists and performers in Baltimore today–in every major city, really. We’ve watched the condos follow us around long enough now to know that we are the unwitting pawns of opportunistic entrepreneurs. We go to “undesirable” places, places the bourgeoisie fear and avoid, because that is where rent is affordable on an artist’s wages. If we do not thrive there, we are ignored, but if we do, developers and speculators quickly buy up the neighborhood, erect prohibitively expensive luxury housing, and whine to the police and politicians about the crowds at our shows and the noise made by our bands. Deacon is easily one of the most famous one-man bands in the country right now, but so far he’s been powerless to settle the score with the inhumane elements that mercilessly reshape our city around their materialistic ambitions–and so Deacon knows that conventional success is not enough. He knows he’s still approaching the climax of his own story, that his destiny lies at a higher altitude. I honestly believe that this man, whom some might call “wacky,” aspires to the kind of heroism that far exceeds what it requires to get over with Pitchfork.

When Deacon is comfortable and in control of a crowd, he makes it appear quite easy to turn a familiar situation into a unique and empowering experience. He makes it fun to believe in him. The stretching and pointing, though–that’s just a warmup to the real “mass movement” I expect from him. It might only take the symbolic step of raising his table up off the floor, for all to see, and commanding the crowd from an elevated position, or perhaps it might come with the transition from prerecorded electronics into a live band, a plan he described excitedly near the end of his set. But when he does master these 1,000 capacity clubs the way he mastered the warehouse setting, I think Dan Deacon and his army of acolytes are destined to face off with the real estate-obsessed parasites who have been exploiting the artistic community for years. And wouldn’t that be wacky?

From The Age newspaper: Electro-shockwaves

Inventive Dan Deacon stays cool despite fame, writes Guy Blackman.

DAN Deacon, a 27-year-old composition graduate from New York’s liberal Purchase College, is not your average nerdy music student.

Instead of band camp and flute practice, Deacon favours beaten-up electronic gear, visually affronting fluorescent outfits and a manic, piercing sound that has come to be described as “electro-shock”.

“I like stuff that’s kind of, not exactly stupid or cartoony, but simplistic,” he says. “When I grew up I was really into comic books and superheroes.”

So the rarefied likes of Bach or Mozart are not for Deacon, who prefers eccentric composers including Cornelius Cardew and electronic pioneer Raymond Scott.

And like his heroes, Deacon takes a fiercely independent approach to music. At first, Deacon self-released his records and sold them only at his increasingly raved-about live shows, but eventually his DIY principles had to give way to practical thinking.

“I’d be going on tour with copies of my old CD-Rs and selling out real quick, and I thought ‘this is ridiculous’,” he says. “At the time I was freaking out — ‘if I don’t actually do every step myself, I’ll be selling out’. But I was just biting off more than I could chew. So I went with a small local label, and it turned out really well.”

The result is the endearingly dorky Spiderman of the Rings, released in America on Baltimore’s Carpark Records and locally on Mistletone. The gratingly catchy album of feverish electronic pop has launched Deacon into the limelight, bringing him everything from hipster blog credibility to write-ups in the stuffy New York Times.

Overall, the response has been gratifying but Deacon seems remarkably unaffected. As a member of DIY art collective Wham City, he has dedicated himself to creative unemployment and communal living, undergoing financial hardship for the sake of artistic abundance.

“Before the album came out I’d just play as many shows as I possibly could, sell CDs and not buy anything but bread and cans of beans,” he says. “Now I still need to buy a bed. I’ve been mooching off my girlfriend’s bed for the past two years and I think she’s starting to get pissed!”

After graduating, Deacon and a group of like-minded friends deserted New York for the more affordable surrounds of Baltimore, where Wham City turned a succession of rundown warehouses into combined living quarters, studios and performance spaces.

“None of us really wanted to move to New York city, ’cause it’s way too expensive and the art scene is very clique-ish,” says Deacon. “We were also very, very broke, and New York’s probably one of the most expensive places in the world. It didn’t make sense to move to a city to try to become an artist, just to become a waiter.”

Economically depressed Baltimore, with its combination of racial tension, drug problems and violent crime, seemed like the perfect destination.

“As much as there’s all that nasty shit, there’s definitely a lot more good going on,” Deacon says in the town’s defence.

“There’s a lot of pride in Baltimore. We’re like a little league team that never wins any games but has a lot of fun playing.”

Despite his recently increased profile, Deacon is still living as he always has.

“It’d be nice to own more than one pair of pants, and another pair of shoes,” he says. “It’s not amazing when you’re on tour for a month — I definitely need to wash these pants.”

Dan in The Big Issue:

Congrats Dan Deacon for taking out the # 24 spot in Pitchfork’s Top Albums of 2007!

“Spiderman of the Rings is the most joyful album of 2007. And it wants to share that joy, to seep its DayGlo cartoon giddiness into the darkest recesses of black-clad hipsterdom. Why fold your arms when you can paint the town neon? Why pout when you can bounce? It’s impossible to feel like a mature adult listening to Dan Deacon’s hyperactive opus. The Woody Woodpecker cackling, the lyrics about “ghosts and cats and pigs and bats with brooms and bats and wigs and rats that play big dogs like queens and kings and everyone plays drums and sings,” the entire “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse” aesthetic– this music zeros in on the basest childhood impulses towards things that are bright and shiny. In Deacon’s world, the drugs are replaced with Kool-Aid, everyone’s friends, everyone likes to dance, and nobody cares how they look. Naïve? Sure. Refreshing? Definitely.” - Pitchfork Media, Top 50 Albums of 2007

From Three Thousand:

So far as children and Dan Deacon are concerned, music exists primarily to be enjoyed, and enjoyment is directly proportional to a listener’s involvement. Whereas most major indie acts attempt ‘connection’ via excessive personal detailing and a general non-listening attitude, this Baltimore party-in-a-man does it the old-fashioned way - less talk, more action - with unflinching concentration on arresting, fun sounds and a now-famous participatory, hipster-destroying live show. Wherever the gig, Deacon sets up in the middle of the audience, exhorting manic dancing around him like a milk-fed Lux Interior or Melbourne’s beloved Talkshow Boy.

Spiderman of the Rings combines the mass-consciousness sounds of childhood - cartoons, video games, electronic home instruments, hyperactivity - with the serious fun-pop of B-52s and pared-down, DIY experimentalism of homemade punk. Songs ‘Crystal Cat’ and ‘Snake Mistakes’ are packed with speeding keyboard arpeggios, non-stop drum machine, squiggly oscillators and ridiculous, effects-twisted vocals, while instrumentals ‘Big Milk’, ‘Pink Batman’ and ‘Jimmy Roche’ are Ambient dream-popped through a grinder. It’s a giddy, absurd atmosphere, catchy to the point of fitting and rainbow laced with amphetamine.

By Mark Gomes

DAN DEACON AUSTRALIAN TOUR, FEBRUARY 2008
Mistletone presents for the first time in Australia, Baltimore party performer and indie-dance cult hero Dan Deacon, bringing his hyper-fun, DIY electro mayhem to the Laneway Festival and a string of action-packed side shows.

Dan is the founder of Wham City, a utopian art and music collective based in Baltimore, and frontrunner of the Future Shock genre emerging from Baltimore’s growing underground music scene.

Dan’s high-energy performances whip audiences into a delirious frenzy as he constructs his manic pop songs with a mess of old-school electronic equipment such as Casio keyboard, computer, vocoder and other devices to process his voice, signal generator, etc. Armed with a fluoro green skull, stupid glasses and a bunch of schizophrenic and apocalyptic-sounding party jams, Dan destroys hipster inhibitions and incites a ridiculous amount of dancing.

Since 2004 Dan has been touring almost nonstop throughout the United States and Europe with the likes of Girl Talk, Spank Rock, Lightning Bolt, Cat Power, Kool Keith, Diplo, Blue Oyster Cult, Wolf Eyes, and many others.

Dan’s music is often compared to Devo, due to his masterful combination of a lo-fi electronic sound with an absurdist pop sensibility and a punk rock lust for noise. Also influenced by Talking Heads, Scratch Orchestra, People Like Us and Raymond Scott, Dan’s mission is to take contemporary experimental composition and electronic music out of the circle of the esoteric intellectual gangs and hipster communities, and into the more informal “fun time.”

“I think people relate to it more because it lacks pretentions,” Dan says of his music, ”whereas so much electronic music can be very sexual and very pretentious, putting a lot on the line. But I try to put a lot on the line in another regard; so it’s more like fuck you, I’m the nerdy guy in the stained shirt, you can dance if you want but you don’t have to”.

mX review:

Dan Deacon interview from RAVE Magazine:

DAN DEACON parties like its 1999, everytime. Armed with a fluoro green skull, stupid glasses and a bunch of schizophrenic and apocalyptic-sounding party jams, he’s lowering your inhibitions through his ridiculous/amazing electronica. RICHARD MACFARLANE hears all about it from the one man Baltimore party machine.

It’s true! We’re all gonna die! Not just because of old age, silly, but because of George W. Bush and aliens and John Howard and Australian Idol and global warming. There’s only going to be one hot season in a few years time: the fucking hot one! So lap it up, party like it’s the new millennium, chuck on Baltimore musician Dan Deacon’s Spiderman Of The Rings because its entirely suitable; a post-apocalyptic romp through hyperspace with a healthy dose of amphetamines or whatever the kids are on these days.

“The venues seem to hate it when people go completely crazy at the shows. The last show I did was in Baltimore with about 300 people in this venue that could legally probably only hold about 50. Everyone was dancing. It was totally insane. In a very good way; shows are never violent, the audience becomes one large organic unit, some visceral body of sweaty people just having fun together”.

Okay, that first bit might sound a little crazy but I didn’t think this until I spoke to him and he ranted to me about the state of the world (in a friendly, endearing way, of course) after blabbing about music a fair bit. It makes sense, though; Spiderman of the Rings does sound a little bit like it’s played by the DJ playing the last songs on a sinking cruise ship but it’s also just full of party jams, a lot of which are ridiculous in their nature. Most of what I’d heard about Dan Deacon was that his live shows are fucking wild and involve a green skull, some weird glasses and one super nerdy guy jumping around a lot. He’s not the only one, though; stage invasions are frequent, he’s breaking down the barriers.

“I think people relate to it more because it lacks pretentious, whereas so much electronic music can be very sexual and very pretentious, putting a lot on the line. But I try to put a lot on the line in another regard; so it’s more like fuck you, I’m the nerdy guy in the stained shirt, you can dance if you want but you don’t have to”.

Like tour pal Girl talk, Deacon’s live shows have attained cult status. Expect a ridiculous amount of dancing. Minds will be blown by this experimental brand of new dance music. Fitting somewhere between Devo and Mouse on Mars but more towards the gleeful end of the schizophrenic pop spectrum. It’s fit very well into the Pitchforkmedia.com indie world, even if it’s much freer of pretension than all that.

“It caught me off guard that it was popular with sites like that. I really like the album and I’m proud of it, I’d shown it to a bunch of friends who seemed to enjoy it. That indie media sometimes doesn’t really like guys like me who are at the sillier end of the spectrum. It’s a party orientated sort of record, just not in a traditional way. It’s fun based, more than anything. People are still like ‘are you for real?’ when they hear this stuff in a club.”

The Weekend Australian review:
Looking like Brains from Thunderbirds, whilst playing an orchestra of scavenged machines, a sine-wave generator and “classic” Casio keyboard, Baltimore’s Dan Deacon uses his classical training and masters degree in electro-acoustic composition to conjure up unusual and compelling music. Like Devo, Deacon masterfully combines a lo-fi electronic sound with an absurdist pop sensibility and a punk rock lust for noise. Singing through a Vocoder permits Deacon to inhabit multiple personalities and implant a distinct Looney Tunes element within his music. Despite this playfulness, song structures never approach traditional. Woody Woodpecker starts with a loop of the animated character’s laugh and becomes more layered with furious beats and keyboard licks until implosion seems inevitable. And Wham City may have a delicious singalong chorus, but its sprawling 12 minutes defeats any suggestion of radio friendliness. Big Milk does offer an island of calm, but then the six-year-old in Deacon takes over again and says no, sing about a rattlesnake gun instead. There, that’s much more fun.
- Sean Rabin (four stars)

InPress review:
You can hear the classical in the chaos from Baltimore-based electronic artist Dan Deacon. There’s a frenzied, mischievous, almost stupid blast of noise in his off-kilter electropop, yet whilst it comes across as careless or just dumb fun, it’s very carefully honed with an ear for dynamics and a certain rigour in structure. So it may come as little surprise to learn that Dan Deacon is apparently a classically trained composer. It’s just that he prefers lame keyboards, samples and electrics and would rather be making banging party music for weirdo nerds than be enticed by the mannered acclaim of the concert hall. There’s something anthemic about his tunes, yet he’s not afraid of a little tenderness, such on the inspired glockenspiel opening to Big Milk, which begins cute and folktronic, yet his inability to rein himself in has him increasingly treating the sound and alters his playing style until he comes across like a petulant four-year-old banging away on his first toy xylophone. These kind of compositional decisions don’t carry much weight in the concert hall, yet Spiderman of the Rings is brimming with this kind of unconventional creativity. The humour in this music comes not so much from gags or vocals, rather it’s in his desire to push things on occasion just a little bit further than is commonly acceptable. He holds onto the noise at the end of the bar or ramps up the beats to stupid bpm’s, then nonchalantly kicks into the next verse as if nothing happened. It’s definitely idiosyncratic music, quite experimental, yet it never loses touch with its pop roots. It’s catchy pop fun, even when it begins to get abrasive. Yet it’s also really quite inventive. If you can imagine the outcome if Ministry met the Smurfs then you’re halfway there.
- Bob Baker Fish

Rave magazine review:
Mr. Deacon has been eating too many skittles
As the title of the album suggests, Spiderman Of The Rings is about interesting mixes. Web shooting heroes and effeminate elves? Not quite. Chipmunk vocals and keyboards like space lasers? Much closer. The album opens with the looped maniacal laugh of Woody Woodpecker and seldom lets up in this slice of persistently urgent candy-coated insanity. The album’s immense centerpiece, Wham City, is the masterful fusion of Deacon’s dense electronica and Danielson-esque Dr. Seuss choir chants. The listener’s only reprieve is Big Milk, a fragile xylophone piece that builds gorgeously. The crisp yet crushing keyboards fly around the erratic beeps and chimes in a chaotic and wonderful flurry. It all feels very much like the cast of Sesame Street hijacking Hot Chip. Deacon’s vision is refreshing, bursting with energy and infectiously fun. Deacon’s (very) brightly coloured electro-pop may be too sweet at times for some, but it will never bore.
MICHAEL PINCOTT

Three D World review

What is this mad, mad music? Dan Deacon somehow manages to coax a beautiful cacophony from a mess of DIY electronics – all wires, knobs and circuit boards heaped on a table. Deacon appears like some idiot savant standing grinning foolishly behind his crazy invention wearing big sticky-taped glasses, but don’t be fooled by his demeanour, this man may just be a twisted musical genius. What seems like dayglo mish-mash of childish noise is actually highly nuanced and clever composition. Good quality speakers or cans are a must if you want to fully appreciate Spiderman of The Rings and all its freaky frequencies. Deacon is part of the Baltimore scene of musical pranksters called future shock – his music is near impossible to categorise but it might be found at the point where absurdist noise-art, electro-pop, lollipop-rave, punk and children’s cartoons collide on the dancefloor. It’s musical mayhem full of twisting sine waves, manic toy-drum beats and helium-vocodered vocals. But Deacon’s masterpiece is the 12-minute psychedelic epic Wham City at the album’s heart, with its insanely catchy sing-along chorus about a fountain of gold, goats, bats, pigs and cats in wigs or something. But be warned, Deacon is not for everyone and can hurt your head and test your patience: Woody Woodpecker on loop anyone?

- Simon Kirby (8/10)

Pitchfork interview:

Dan Deacon created mass mayhem at the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago when a crazy number of people mobbed the stage for his set. Mad scenes ensued with crowd surfing and tree climbing hysteria until the fire department showed up and cut his set short. Check it out here

Pitchfork interview
[Interview by Tyler Grisham]

Dan Deacon: Things have gotten so weird for me over the past year. So much has changed in my life.

Pitchfork: Like, getting popular?

DD: Yeah [laughs], it’s weird. It’s been slowly happening, over the past few years. Like, people have seemed into it, crowds grow bigger. That’s something I miss: the community aspects of my shows. I would go to towns and see the same people, plus new people, but everyone seemed to know each other. And I still see those same people at shows, but it’s just weird.

[Just before our interview, we were interrupted by Deerhunter frontman Bradford Cox, who told us that nobody could stop talking about Dan Deacon’s abbreviated set the day before, and that he had “stolen the weekend.”]

Pitchfork: How do you react to the statement that you stole the weekend?

DD: Well, the weekend’s not even over yet. But I’m flattered that anyone would think that. I was going up against Clipse, so I was really nervous that anyone would even be there, and the fact that the space was over capacity, it was a little daunting. I never really stand up on anything during my shows, but I thought, there’s going to be a lot of people there; I think people would probably be disappointed if they didn’t get to see. So I stood up on this box and the crowd just went so far back, it was just insane. It just felt really cool.

Pitchfork: What song did we miss yesterday? [Deacon’s set was cut short because of safety concerns.]

DD: “Wham City”.

Pitchfork: I figured. Did you bring the whole crew for the choir?

DD: Yeah. Not the original, I couldn’t get the bus for the originals. I made these huge blow-ups of the lyrics for the crowd, and I think 500 lyric sheets. That’s why I was most bummed. It would have been the piece that most involved the audience, especially the people who couldn’t see, because they would have had the lyric sheets and heard the other people singing the rhymes, and I was really looking forward to hearing that many people, when everything drops and it’s just the chanting part. I was really looking forward to that. I was going to open with that, but I thought opening with a 12-minute epic might not be the best idea [laughs].

Pitchfork: What’s the biggest crowd you’ve ever played?

DD: That was definitely the largest crowd, certainly. I mean, I usually play houses and basements and stuff. If there were a basement that large… well, it would be turned into condos [laughs].

Pitchfork: What are you most excited to see at the festival?

DD: I’ve never really heard Klaxons, but I’ve just heard so much about them. I’m really looking forward to that.

Pitchfork: What have been your favorite shows so far?

DD: I really enjoyed watching Deerhunter. And Girl Talk– although I had just gotten forcibly removed from the stage– I was in the back, and it was crazy. It made me really excited for our upcoming tour. We have a seven-inch coming out, which we’re not sure if it’s going to be a complete collaboration or a partial collaboration, but we were talking about doing it here: having our sets blend together, like, at the end of my set go right into his set, but…we obviously didn’t do that. I don’t know if we’re going to do that on the tour. I really like starting and ending a set, and you know, Greg [Gillis] has a very definitive introduction to his music, sort of the game show host coming out in his suit to the music, it’s amazing. But I think we can come up with something that can match the theatrics that both of us currently have, and mix the floor and the stage.

Something that, as an artist, I’ve been involved with for a long time, has been recontextualizing show spaces and trying to turn them into a different space. Part of the fun is going to a space where you don’t know anything about it and saying, “How am I going to make it not this…brewery. How are people going to be like, “I didn’t go see this show at a brewery, I went and I saw this…thing.” You know what I mean? Context is so important. So many rap clubs and bars, especially, are just disgusting. And I think that’s a big reason why we started [Baltimore venue] Wham City, just to see shows in an environment that you want to be in.