According to Dan Deacon, being in the middle is just fine.
“I like being in the middle. I feel like I’m in the middle in a lot of ways,” says Deacon over the phone from a tour stop in New Orleans. “I’m too pop to be experimental music, but too experimental to be pop music. I make dance music electronically, but I don’t make EDM. I make music you dance to but not in a dance club.”
Deacon is speaking of a 12-year career that has seen him making the kind of records that cannot be easily classified. From his 2003 debut Meetle Mice featuring bizarre bleeps and bloops under random synthesized chaos, to 2012’s America, a grandiose, electronic love letter to the geography of his country, Deacon is impossible to pin down with any kind of label.
Deacon temporarily lost his voice in 2013, an event that changed his entire approach to making music. He began contemplating the temporary nature of the voice, an “instrument that expires”. While his work has never been predominately defined by vocals or melody, the electronic producer made a conscious decision to shift his focus toward the voice as his primary writing tool.
“As you get older, you [start to] lose your voice. I started thinking how if there was any instrument like that, I’d start writing heavily for it. Like if trombones were being phased out over the next few years, I’d start writing on trombone,” he says, matter-of-factly. “But voice is the only [instrument] that has a different parameter, which is lyrics. No other instrument has lyrics, so why would I underuse that?”
The result of this realization is Gliss Riffer, a splatter painting of synthesizers, syncopated beats and sonic textures that evoke madness, sorrow and joy all at once. But what really separates Gliss from its predecessors is the more expansive production and lyrical theme, both of which are centered around one simple idea: learning to relax. “I was very much someone who would wait till the last minute to do something, [then] light a fire in my ass and get it done,” says Deacon of his old ways. “It’s a terrible way to live, and there’s no reason to attach stress or anxiety to things I like doing.”
It is not difficult to imagine why stress is so prevalent in Deacon’s life. Not only is he an electronic producer and touring artist, but also composer, curator and multimedia artist (“Drinking Outta Cups” with Liam Lynch, anyone?). In the past few years, he has scored parody commercials for Adult Swim, a film for Francis Ford Coppola (Twixt) and even created a smart-phone synchronized-light show app for his live shows. He is a highly intelligent being with workaholic tendencies, all of which has brought him here, to the middle of his career where everything feels just right. Dan Deacon is finally learning to relax.
“A lot of people think relaxing is sitting on a beach, staring into the ocean, or meditating, and sure, that’s relaxing. But [relaxing] can also be jumping up and down with hundreds of sweaty people losing your mind.” he says. “We all chose to do these things! I’m building my own fucking boat, [so why] be mad at myself for sailing it?”
• Dan Deacon plays at Electric Owl May 7 with special guests. Doors at 8, show at 9:30. Tickets $15 at TimbreConcerts.com. Also available at Red Cat Records and Zulu Records.
