Dan Deacon “my own face is F word” by Carpark Records
Dan Deacon “Spring” by Carpark Records
This week Dan Deacon reissued two albums from his back catalog, announced a run of Fall tour dates, as well as details on the Wham City Comedy Tour 2011. Dan Deacon will be performing solo on his Fall tour, it will be the last opportunity to see his solo set for awhile as his 2012 tour plans will involve the Dan Deacon Ensemble. For the past year or so, Dan Deacon has been working closely with director Francis Ford Coppola on the score & soundtrack for the new film TWIXT, the trailer for which recently premiered at Comic-Con (the film itself just premiered at the Toronto Film Festival).
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This week Deacon dug into the vaults and reissued two of his early LPs, Meetle Mice and Silly Hat Vs. Eagle Hat, on double LP via Carpark Records on Sept. 13. Also, limited cassette versions of Meetle, Silly as well as Spiderman of the Rings and Bromst will be issued and made available at shows and on the Carpark online shop. In October, Carpark will also reissue Spiderman of the Rings on LP.
Notes on the Reissues by Dan Deacon:
The music contained on these two albums (Meetle Mice & Silly Hat Vs. Eagle Hat) I wrote while in college (and a few while in high school) when I was just discovering computer music. I wrote them for fun, never planning on doing anything with them at that the time or expecting them to be heard outside of my circle of friends. When I was asked to play a show on campus I thought it might be a good idea to burn some CD-Rs and try to sell them at the show.
Going through my files, I found the pieces that I liked the most, grouped them into two different collections and gave them the most appropriate/absurd titles I could think of. The organization of the songs was somewhat thoughtout but mostly chaotic: make sure the granular synth pieces are far from each other; keep the songs with beats spread out; sound collages placed amongst sine wave drone pieces. They were more like compilations of my experiments than albums of compositions.
I made only 8 CD-R copies of each in photocopied sleeves with contact paper on the discs. I sold all but 1 of each for $7 or two for $10. Explosions were going off in my head, dollar signs appearing in my eyes. Making $70 from selling CD-Rs was blowing my mind. I started selling them at every show, even though the music contained on them didn’t represent what I ever performed live, since the music on Meetle Mice and Silly Hat was never meant to be performed live (except for the acoustic ensemble pieces).
The CD-Rs and artwork are riddled with mistakes. There’s digital clipping on many of the tracks; ‘Silly Hat vs. Egale Hat’ was meant to be ‘Silly Hat vs. Eagle Hat’; “copy write” should have been ‘copyright’, etc., but I thought the typos were funny and kept it with each batch of the CD-Rs. Since I was only selling them on campus or a few shows in NYC it didn’t really matter. I hated stuff that took itself too seriously so keeping my spelling mistakes glaring was important to me. And considering the music was made in a vacuum with no intention of it ever seeing the light of day, it made sense to keep all the errors in their original state (true of this reissue as well the artwork for this reissue was scanned from the original run of 8.)
I was a very different musician back then trying to figure out how to interact with sound, what could be done with it, where it could go, learning music software for the first time. Since then my aesthetic has shifted, my absurdist mindset subdued. At times I feel like these albums are skeletons in my musical closet. Many of the song titles are absurd or toy with the idea of what is offensive and what is not, many of them created as a commentary on the super politically correct atmosphere that was Purchase College in the early 2000s.
These albums are like seeds. They sound, look and feel very different from the fruit that they’ve grown but they are still of the same tree.
TOUR DATES
9/21 HOBOKEN,NJ Maxwell’s
10/29 ASHEVILLE, NC Moog Fest
11/05 AUSTIN, TX Fun Fun Fun Fest
11/30 OAKLAND, CA New Parish
12/01 LOS ANGELES, CA Echoplex
12/02 VANCOUVER, BC Rickshaw
12/03 PORTLAND, OR Branx
12/04 SEATTLE, WA Neptune
WHAM CITY COMEDY TOUR 2011
10/28 Raleigh, NC Kings Barcade
10/29 Asheville, NC Moogfest
10/30 Knoxville, TN Pilot Light
10/31 Atlanta, GA Eyedrum
11/01 Athens, GA 40 Watt
11/02 Birmingham, AL Bottletree
11/03 New Orleans, LA Zeitgeist
11/04 Houston, TX Super Happy Fun Land
11/05 Austin, TX Fun Fun Fun Fest
11/06 Austin, TX Fun Fun Fun Fest
11/07 Denton, TX Dan’s Silverleaf
11/08 Norman, OK Opolis
11/09 Kansas City, KS Paragraph Gallery
11/10 Iowa City, IA The Mill
11/11 Chicago, IL Empty Bottle
11/12 Detroit, MI TBA
11/13 Pittsburgh, PA Garfield Artworks
11/14 Annandale-on-Hudson, NY Bard College
11/15 Troy, NY 51 3rd St.
11/16 Purchase, NY Purchase College
11/17 Poughkeepsie, NY Vassar College
11/18 New York, NY 285 Kent St
11/19 Baltimore, MD Courier Theater
Dan Deacon
Meetle Mice
(Carpark)
Street date: Sept. 13, 2011
Formats: Double LP, limited cassette
Dan Deacon
Silly Hat Vs. Eagle Hat
(Carpark)
Street Date: Sept. 13, 2011
Formats: Double LP, limited cassette
Links: Wham City Comedy Tour//Myspace//Press Materials//Press Kit for Reissues