‘Bountiful’ is the best word I can come up with to describe the music of Dan Deacon. It is bountiful in its sounds, styles, influences and directions. His latest album, Bromst, has the magnitude of a large piece of classical music with all of the benefits of a pop album. Deacon is often dubbed an electronic musician, which is mostly accurate. His music isn’t electronic in the pure Daft Punk sense (he uses plenty of acoustic instruments), but more in the Dan Deacon sense-that music is to be created electronically.
“Bromst”-a word Deacon made up-is the follow-up to 2007’s critically acclaimed “Spiderman of the Rings.” The result is bigger, more diverse, and as he puts it, celebratory.
Songs like “Red F,” “Of the Mountains,” and “Woof Woof” employ Deacon’s own version of the Wall of Sound approach used by Phil Spector and Brian Wilson in the ’60s. The main components of his “wall” are layers of meaty synthesizers, sharp mathematical drums and vocals.
With Deacon, no sound wave is sacred. Everything is subject to be sped up, skewed, sent through a multitude of filters, distorted or anything else. His singing is no exception. He’s got a particular penchant for the chipmunk vocal effect.
The layering on much of “Bromst” is thick and highly orchestrated in the style of the pieces “Floe” and “Rubric” from Phillip Glass’s popular 1981 recording “Glassworks.” Like Glass with his chamber music and operas, Deacon uses repetitive structures that evolve slightly and gradually, steadily increasing into cataclysmic, glorious crescendos.
Deacon is a prime example of a musician who uses the studio as an instrument. “Bromst” was recorded in the mountains of Whitefish, Montana at the beautiful Snow Ghost studios with engineer Brett Allen. Pitchfork.tv is currently featuring a documentary that illuminates Deacon and Allen’s recording process, as well as Deacon’s quirkiness as a modest musical genius.
Every song on “Bromst” has its merits, but a few stand out. “Wet Wings” is based completely around a sample of Jean Ritchie’s acappella rendition of the traditional folk song “The Day is Past and Gone.”
“Snookered” is certainly the epic of the album. It’s a sprawling piece driven by bells, drums and a reflective vocal: “Been wrong so many times before / But never quite like this / Heard all in the rain / But the rain all turned to piss.” Around the five-minute mark, the song transforms into something intense and tribal with rhythmically cut-up vocal tracks and drums.
“Bromst” is the perfect album to close out a decade of pioneering electronics-based pop music. Recent work from Animal Collective and Of Montreal has accomplished similarly innovative results. Modern recording and mixing technology provides musicians and engineers with every possible advantage to explore new sounds and establish new methods of creation.
It’s an exciting movement, and “Bromst” proves that right now, Deacon is at its helm.