With the success of Dan Deacon’s 2007 album Spiderman of the Rings, came an opportunity for the electronic-music iconoclast to increase the breadth and depth of his entire musical project. Deacon moved from self-contained computer music to orchestral epics. His interactive live show, honed in DIY spaces, was taken to museums and concert halls. He
With the success of Dan Deacon’s 2007 album Spiderman of the Rings, came an opportunity for the electronic-music iconoclast to increase the breadth and depth of his entire musical project. Deacon moved from self-contained computer music to orchestral epics. His interactive live show, honed in DIY spaces, was taken to museums and concert halls. He frequently expanded his performances to include a horde of side musicians.
Gliss Riffer, an entirely self-produced record of almost all electronic sounds, is a return to Deacon’s Spiderman of the Rings-era process. He calls it “easily the most fun ever had making a record.” After a string of large ensemble projects (including 2009′s Bromst and 2012′s America).
Deacon longed for the “simplicity” of the days when he did nearly everything himself. So he made plans to sequester himself in his studio and conjure an album from the sketches and songs he had begun in the back of the van on the European leg of the America tour. Those plans were upended when he received a last-minute invitation to tour with Arcade Fire in August. Despite being predominately electronic, Gliss Riffer’s sonic palette is informed by his post-Spiderman material. The Disklavier, a MIDI-fed player piano first heard on Bromst, is present here. (This time around, Deacon ran it so hard it broke.) Cross-rhythms suggestive of America’s orchestral opus “USA” and Deacon’s art music work (including a Carnegie Hall performance and film score for Francis Ford Coppola) are also in evidence. So while Gliss Riffer is all about fun, it’s figured dramatically. It’s a euphoria tempered by yearning and set in defiance of life’s nagging anxiety. “Happiness takes time,” we are reminded by tremolo vocals in the middle of the supremely danceable “Mind on Fire.” The bliss on this record is well-earned.
FB Event
Dan Deacon – Website
Dan Deacon – FB
WUME
Wume is April Camlin and Albert Schatz. They live and work in the fair land of Baltimore, Maryland after spending their formative years in Chicago. Their music explores polyrhythmic structures through the lens of kosmische and is in a constant state of evolution and self-reflection. Albert and April began the collaboration as a development of April’s drumming and Albert’s interest in keyboards and synthesis. It became an exercise in pushing their abilities and conjuring vibes.
CASPERELECTRONICS
Peter Edwards is an American artist, musician and mentor, who as of 2000 has been active in the fields of circuit bending and experimental electronics. He combines both under the name of Casperelectronics.
Following a degree in sculpture he received an MA from experimental electronic music and the experimental design of physical interfaces on the Institute of Sonology in Haag and at STEIM in Amsterdam. He designs and produces electronic instruments, as is, for example, the famous Nova Drone) and offers them on his website Casperelectronics in form of kits. He lectures on the principles of hacking hardware (he currently lectures about DIY electronics at the Royal Academy of Art in Haag) and publishes exercise books on electronics for the American DIY tech magazine Make. He was a guest lecturer, held workshops and performed at elite universities, such as MIT’s Media Lab, Hasbro Toys, Hampshire College, Skidmore College, New York University, Bloomfield University, Long Beach University and Georgia Southern University, and on new-media art festivals across the globe, among others at Piksel (Bergen, Norway), OFFF and Pixel (Paris, France), Sequences (Reykjavik, Island), Transmediale, Dutch Electronic Arts Festival, Performa and Bent (New York & Los Angeles, USA).
