Dan Deacon

Interview: Dan Deacon on the importance (or lack thereof) of formal music education

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Dan Deacon: AmericaDan Deacon: America (Domino, 8/27/12)

“Lots”

Dan Deacon: “Lots”

In a police lineup of today’s most unique young composers, Dan Deacon would be easy to spot: big, red hipster glasses and a big, red half-moon beard. But despite the “charming doofus” look, Deacon’s blend of synthesizers, vocal effects, and acoustic percussion is some of the smartest electronic music around, and he owes its complexity at least in part to his time studying composition at the Conservatory of Music at SUNY Purchase. Here he discusses what his education meant to him, the enormity of student debt, and forcing musicians to study math.

ALARM's 50 Favorite Albums of 2012

ALARM’s 50 Favorite Albums of 2012

Another year, another torrential downpour of albums across our desks. As always, we encountered way too much amazing music, from Meshuggah to The Mars Volta, Converge, Killer Mike, P.O.S, and many more.

Matmos

Review: Matmos’s The Ganzfeld EP

Matmos: The Ganzfeld EPMatmos: The Ganzfeld EP (Thrill Jockey, 10/16/12)

“Very Large Green Triangles”

Matmos: “Very Large Green Triangles”

You’re in a chair, wearing headphones, with white noise hissing fuzzily at you from either side. Ping-pong balls have been scissored in half and set over your eyes, with a purplish light beaming at you from just inches away. You can’t see. You are told that the experiment will last 30 minutes. It may not work.

Dan Deacon

Review: Dan Deacon’s America

Dan Deacon: AmericaDan Deacon: America (Domino)

“Lots”

Dan Deacon: “Lots”

It takes a certain type of self-confidence to Sharpie tits on a map of the United States and call it album art, or loop the sliced-up laugh of Woody Woodpecker for three-and-a-half minutes and call it an opening track. It takes a very different type of self-confidence to craft something as complex, varied, and yet wholly likeable and listenable as “Prettyboy,” one of the most intrepid compositions on Dan Deacon’s newest release, America.

North Coast Music Festival 2012

Contest: Win two three-day passes to Chicago’s North Coast Music Festival

Living here in Chicago, we’re not ready to give up summer until we’re good and ready. So even though the electronically inclined North Coast Music Festival purports to be “summer’s last stand” from August 31 to September 2, we’ll be living it up until the autumnal equinox.

Semantics aside, if you’re here with us, you can enjoy North Coast too, seeing artists such as Pretty Lights, Atmosphere, Big Boi, Girl Talk, The Rapture, Dan Deacon, YACHT, Rebirth Brass Band, People Under the Stairs, and many more in addition to some of dance music’s biggest names. See the full lineup here.