Bromst

We Say...

Review by Michaelangelo Matos

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 Glass or Reich, which appear as well in the soaring "Slow with Horns/Run for Your Life." Deacon still loves cheap effects like the chipmunk voices on "Baltihorse," but this doesn't sound cheap — just expansive, ambitious, and like further evidence that early 2009 is a hell of a time for psychedelic music.