I'm gonna start reviewing the music I listen to. Here's a review I wrote about Dan Deacon's newest, "Bromst":
A famous music critic once described Steve Reich's "Music for 18 Musicians" as being like a framed picture of a river that retained all the qualities of motion and change that a real live river would have. "Steve Reich has framed the river!" the reviewer exclaimed. Now Dan Deacon's newest album gets a lot of unfair comparisons to Reich's music, probably because these days anything with mallet percussion in it gets a Reich reference from any critic who supposes themself to be knowledgeable about music (see Pitchfork reviews for this album as well as Why?'s "Alopecia," ctrl+F, "Steve Reich"). If Deacon's music bears any resemblance to minimalism, it shares far more in common with the crowded soundscapes of the Philip Glass ensemble circa "Einstein on the Beach," the technicolor psychedelia of Terry Reilly's early tape pieces, or the shape-shifting harmonic drones of LaMonte Young, whom the Deac-ster recently name-dropped in a magazine interview ("I wonder how the world would have been different if Kurt Cobain had worn a LaMonte Young t-shirt").
But Deacon's new masterpiece "Bromst" has something more important in common with Reich than vibraphones and marimbas: Deacon's music has effectively "framed" the "river" of technology, the constant flow of information through fiberoptic cables and invisible waves in the air. "Bromst" is an unending assault of technological information that sounds like music, a super-saturated day-glo blanket of beeps, boops, whirs, and whizzes. The album envelopes you much like the crowd at a Deacon show does: warm, loving, pulsating, sweaty, and on all sides. In fact, that sounds a lot like sex. Ear sex. With strangers.
Of course the appeal of the hallucinogen-fueled neo-techno pow-wow noon pop-up book of the Dan Deacon Experience is the main draw for many fans. But the power of this album is undeniable. It's as inclusive as any good crowd will ever be. It is the power of hundreds of bodies filtered through a computer and manifested in sound. It's as if the collective electronic power of Twitter or Facebook fuels the wall of sound. The cables coming out of your laptop replace the strings of Deacon's "guitar." Sometimes, cables break, creating distortion or rapid choppy tremolo. Voices try to emerge from the hoopla, crying out desperately, like every blog-post or Tweet, to have their opinion heard over the milieu of voices and noises. But every now and then, the bombast retreats and moments of pure transcendence emerge. Notable examples include the MIDI-powered player piano (another stroke of innovative mechanical-technological hybridization) that codas the tracks "Build Voice" and "Slow with Horns," and, most chillingly, the vocal dog pile phase-piece "Wet Wings."
But no matter how epic and zeitgeist-y this album may prove to be, it will always be initially compared to his previous work, "Spiderman of the Rings." Many try to oppose the two, calling "Bromst" the serious artwork to "Spiderman"'s pure pop pogo stick. But "Bromst" can be just as bizarre and nearly as fun; for instance, the beginning riff of "Woof Woof," a chopped-up bassline accompanied by one of those chippy dog-noises you'd find on a "Learn to Spell" toy made for yearlings (he stole my idea!), is as boppy and jumpy as any moment on "Spiderman." But what "Bromst" lacks is its "Crystal Cat." There's no discernible classic track here. But of course, when your whole album is a classic, it's hard to point to one track that beats them all. There's no potential bonked-out YouTube videos here (though let's pray there shall be), but there is a veritable monument to be seen. This album will endure beyond the hipster thing and become one of our touchstones. Or maybe I'm wrong. But that's what the internet is all about, right?
