Dan Deacon

Islington Assembly Hall, London on Mon 16th Feb 2015

It's hard to envisage a dude with a few synths and some effects pedals creating one of the finest live experiences in recent memory but Dan Deacon is one such maverick renegade who does just this.

The first thing that strikes you about him is that he speaks with eloquence and exuberance that immediately has you thinking, "This guy is a champion. " He is endearingly dark as he has us put our hands in the air and channel our negative energies up to the roof so they bounce down and become someone else in the room's negative anxiety ridden fears instead.

He launches into a blisteringly frenetic 'Paddling Ghost' full of squelched out beats and a lightshow suitable to induce a wave of epileptic fits with the bulk of the crowd ready to rave it up from the get go.

Deacon has mastered how to create a communal gig experience from years of solo touring and perfecting ways of making his one man show as fine tuned and participatory as possible. He has the crowd create a giant circle near the front for a dance comp which even sees everyone surrounding the dancers take a knee like a proper old school dance off on the street. He tears through 'Sheathed Wings' and this kind of silly frivolity becomes par of the course throughout the gig.

This includes getting the entire capacity crowd to split in two and have a mass dance off, getting the capacity crowd to stand at one side of the venue and run and touch a rope on the opposite side as if it was a school gym class featuring abrasive and abstract electronica, getting everyone in attendance to form a gigantic human chain with each preceding member of the chain having come through the bridge formed by the previous persons. Pretty damn impressive seeing 500 odd people doing this and the bewildered look of rage and amazement etched upon the faces of the security in attendance unable to comprehend what was happening.

This all happens in between Deacon's two minute diatribes between songs which includes gags about his 22nd birthday and Woodrow Wilson's femur, he later explains these diatribes are to adhere to decibel level guidelines that mean we cant have anymore than 15 mins of really loud noise. Bullshit or not he plays the crowd nicely between songs with grace, humour and a silliness that have you rooting for him throughout.

It's almost easy to forget that the music is at times utterly brilliant as well with 'Feel The Lightning' from his upcoming Gliss Riffer album showing the kind of blissed out electronic pop even the most stone hearted man would find hard to resist.

article by: Paul Mullin

published: 19/02/2015 14:47



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