Bromst

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Bromst album cover
Album Information

Total Tracks: 11   Total Length: 64:20

eMusic Review 0

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Michelangelo Matos

eMusic Contributor

03.23.09
IDM goes to Toon Town
Label: Carpark

Baltimore's Dan Deacon is in some ways your archetypal IDM guy: a guy who likes to twist dance beats to anti-groovy extremes, an inveterate tinkerer with a taste for toy melodies played at candy-floss pitch and sudden, willful tonal shifts. But he's also an archetypal American artist-as-populist: vulgar, cheap, flashy, and pretty brainy about all of those things. He opened 2007's Spiderman of the Rings with the rabid, self-explanatory "Woody Wooodpecker" (the extra "o" is for extra "o"-nnoyance) and ended with "Jimmy Joe Roche," which sounded like In C performed on fading Speak & Spells. If you'd guessed that Bromst covers much of the same ground as its predecessor, buy yourself an ice cream. And if you'd hoped it might refine Deacon's rough edges without losing his nutty exuberance, get sprinkles.

On Bromst, even the willful shifts have a kind of naturalistic grace. "Surprise Stefani" starts with a 1:42 of low-level feedback-as-drone before a sample choir rolls onto the scene, humming in third-generation Beach Boys homage; from there, Deacon flits between lean Krautrock propulsion (turns out the drone evokes "Hallogallo" by Neu!) and a panoply of chiming instruments playing an incredibly pretty melody touched by the steady-state pulsations of… read more »

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Demented Electro Genius!

bagist

It's physically impossible to listen to this album and not feel happier afterwards! Wonderful, intense, complex, and barely describable . . but I'll have a go. Erm. . .Kind of like Ladytron and Fuck Buttons ripped on tartrazine backing The Philip Glass Ensemble leading a community singalong with Sufjan Stevens and Alvin & The Chipmunks, sort of. All of which would just be interestingly bonkers and possibly annoying if it wasn't for the fact that Deacon (a classically-trained musician) writes irresistibly catchy, almost anthemic, tunes that you'd be singing along to in a second if you could actually figure out what on earth the lyrics were. . . This album makes me feel better about being alive, and I can't think of a higher recommendation than that.

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THE album of 2009

fatser

this just keeps getting better on every listen. best thing from 2009.

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Get track one

Giaddon

This is far from a flawless album, and it is certainly not for everybody. But if you have any interest in music at all you should get the sublime first track, Build Voices.

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Better and Better

dutchman4life

Bromst is Dan Deacon at a 3 day campout in the woods instead of a 3 hour rave up in an inner city warehouse. Deacon speaks of how this album is supposed to create a feeling of community, oneness, etc and guess what - it does. Recurring themes, progressions, and sonic elements make this an Album rather than a series of songs, and leave me anxious to see what Deacon will do next.

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Kissed with a Fist of Sound

composeur

There's so much going on in each of these songs. Even "Wet Wings," which is composed entirely of multitracked vocal lines, is built into a wildly complex mass of sound before relenting at the end. The texture can often be harsh in timbre yet pleasant in sonority, such as when Deacon uses deep-cutting waveforms tuned in major chords. The instrumental parts are a rush. That said, the vocals are pretty unintelligible and sometimes (with the pitch-shifted octave-doubling) annoying. Still, as in his live show, I think Deacon wants the listener deeply involved in the experience, and generally succeeds. My two favorites are tracks 1 and 5 (correctly titled "Build Voice" and "Of the Mountains").

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Best Album of the Year?

leorgalil

I think so. "Bromst" hit me right from the start, and I still can put this album on and keep going for some time. Fantastic.

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Can't we all be friends...

jkohrs

This is a prime example of the kind of music classical and pop muisc lovers should be listening to and talking about together. There's a ton of good stuff here for just about anyone.

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track listing is wrong

topknacker

The first five tracks are incorrectly labled. They should read: 1. Build Voice 2. Red F 3. Paddling Ghost 4. Snookered 5. Of The Mountains. Apart from that ... top album

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Start to finish this is a great album.

nazardesign

As good as it all is, my favorite track is the brisk 8-minute "Snookered". It's like Mogwai crossed with Girl Talk crossed with Battles, but in a class altogether different. One of my favorites this year.

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They Say All Music Guide

From the first few minutes of Bromst, Dan Deacon’s second Carpark full-length, it appears he may be going back to his university days at SUNY-Purchase, where he studied electro-acoustic composition. A slow-building track, naturally called “Build Voice,” it repeats his vocal sample over and over with plenty of reverb — an avant-garde piece, for sure. Still, it’s only an introduction, and Bromst unfurls as an extravaganza of noise-pop that looks, not to the dance field, but to the slowly burgeoning indie rock fetish of voices, either in harmony or in chorus (think of Animal Collective, Fleet Foxes). Fans of Deacon’s work won’t necessarily be excited to hear that he’s moving closer to blog favorites of the late 2000s, but his production and arranging skills illustrate that he’s a powerful force no matter what the format. Although it’s just as frenetic as his breakthrough, 2007′s Spiderman of the Rings, there’s also the sense that Deacon is pulling back from Spiderman’s cartoonish mayhem; there are more pauses for breath, more experimentalism on display (and consequently, less mashing of breakbeats and signal processors), and a few meditative songs. Midway through the album, the seven-minute “Snookered” spends its first half quietly sublime before gradually intensifying into the insistent type of cut-up Deacon’s made his reputation on. Maturity can be dangerous to your artistic health, but Bromst shows the right way to mature — broaden your vision while still spending plenty of time on what you do best. – John Bush

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