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Baker's Dozen

A Controlling Cacophony: Dan Deacon's Favourite Albums
Dom Smith , June 9th, 2015 09:28

With his fourth album Gliss Riffer released earlier this year and a European tour just started, the Baltimore electronics wizard tells Dom Smith what the gems in his record collection have given to his own musical creations

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Lightning Bolt - Ride The Skies
I feel like I heard all three of these [albums] around the same time when I was in school. What I liked most about this one was that again it fell into that realm of 'not dance music' dance music, it created this need to move your body. I think compositionally what I liked most about it was this absolute use of space. There was no room to breathe between the percussion and the bass. Every single frequency spectrum was taken and every single instant had a sound or multiple sounds. It was a very controlling cacophony. I never really thought about drums that way before, being a melodic element. It's very easy for me to fill out a spectrum with endless arpeggios and tons of density. Percussion was different for me and I like how [Brian] Chippendale uses his kit as a melodic instrument as well.

Amongst all the chaos there's these patterns that emerge as melodies underneath the noise. That really resonated with me. This record definitely had an impact on the way I thought about music.