Sean Redmond

Back to the Future

Baltimore’s Dan Deacon leads the Future Shock scene

By Sean Redmond

Dan Deacon is a busy man. Between organizing shows for the B-more scene, recording music and extensive touring (he’s hot off the heels of a European jaunt), it’s amazing that he’s found the time to talk, not to mention play not one but two Chicago shows for September 8, one as part of the Hideout Block Party, followed by a show with O’Death at the AV-aerie that same night. We’re seeing him a mere two months after his stint at Pitchfork this year was cut off due to safety concerns—and who knows, with a little luck, he might even get to play his song "Wham City" this time around. The song refers to not an actual burgh, but to the Baltimore collective of "future shockers" including Deac, Jimmy Joe Roche, the Videohippos and more.

Wham City and its future shock artists have taken Baltimore from the humble home of Cal Ripken and transformed it into a haven of new and exciting music and art. Much in the same vein as the Northeastern Paper Rad collective’s work, Deacon’s bunch create kaleidoscopic works of rainbow-colored, ADD-addled brilliance, taking the last twenty years of pop culture and mutating it into something wonderfully familiar and yet decidedly new, exciting and, depending on the sensitivity of your eyes and ears, downright shocking. "Future shock" is an interesting term, dating back to the 1970s book of the same name, written by sociologist Alvin Toffler (which was itself an extension of an article Toffler had written for Playboy earlier that year). But while listening to Deacon’s brand of 8-bit hyper-electro-pop may be somewhat of a jolt, the label "future shock" has less to do with shocking the listener as with the shock that results from rapid technological change. A buzzword of futurists and transhumanists for some time now, Deacon and his gang appropriated the term not as a means to describe the styles of their songs, but as a way to illustrate their views and approaches to music in general.

"This is the future-shock era," Deacon explains. "The music industry is going through a complete future shock because they can’t keep up with technology." Basically, his philosophy is that, with the advent of mp3s, file-sharing networks, MySpace and the like, music will have no choice but to "go back to not existing in a physical form, but in a live form." Recorded music, in the words of Mr. Deacon himself, "is useless."

"Before, [recording] was a precious commodity, very few people could get [their music] out there," he continues. "But in terms of history, recorded music is a blip on the radar." Which is why, he reasons, artists like Girl Talk (and himself, for that matter) can completely eschew the Billboard charts and still sell out shows all over the country. As the Pitchfork Music Festival has taught us, the guy’s a whole lot more popular than album sales might lead you to believe. "I called [the Pitchfork fest organizers] and told them [my show] was going to be kind of crazy and they laughed, they said ‘We’ve got a lot bigger acts and bigger things to worry about,’" he recalls. Yet, Deacon’s performance turned out to be quite possibly the most intense, jam-packed show of the festival, even leading Deerhunter frontman Bradford Cox to proclaim that he had "stolen the weekend."

That said, however, Mr. Deacon does have a few releases in store for the near future. For one, the Ultimate Reality DVD he created in collaboration with Jimmy Joe Roche (and which has been displayed at such gatherings as the Whartscape fest in Baltimore and the New York Underground Film Festival) will finally see an actual release come November, and he’s got a whole new LP lined up for Spring 2008. "The songs are mostly written," he says, explaining that all that’s left is to choose which will make it onto the new album. Also, "The whole thing has handwritten notation for each part," and getting that done is apparently quite the process. But other than touring and recording, Deacon’s got one big project left in store—albeit, one that fans probably won’t ever get to lay their eyes on.

"I’m trying to set up my room," he confesses, without a hint of humor lingering in his voice. "I’ve been living here since May but I haven’t unpacked yet. My next big project is to unpack."

Dan Deacon plays September 8 at the Hideout Block Party, 1354 West Wabansia, (773)227-4433, at 4pm, and at the AV-aerie, 2000 West Fulton, at 8pm.

(2007-09-04)

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