INTERVIEW - Dan Deacon

Flavorwire did a great interview with Dan Deacon and I was particularly struck by his explanation of his use of audience participation as a way to engage people as an electronic artist:

Electronic music is difficult to translate live. A lot of bands and performers struggle with it, and fall back on things like projections to engage the audience. I didn’t want to be someone standing behind a laptop, but I did need accompaniment. I started thinking about a way there could be a physicality to the sound; I wanted to (no pun intended) put everything on the table, so people could see what I was doing. When a drummer hits a drum with a drumstick, you see that, and you hear the sound. I realized that the voice is very important. I think the voice is an instrument that most people relate to, because most people have voices. But I wanted it to still be very synthetic, very electronic.

Most of the electronic acts I was playing with at the time weren’t really rhythmic, or dance music at all. So the goal was to take an audience that was completely not dancing and get them to dance; to try to turn an esoteric and sort of pretentious noise show into a dance party. As soon as there was an audience, I could use the audience as a compositional element. I started thinking of how to use the audience as an instrument, and as something that influences itself, like a feedback loop.

Read the whole interview here:
Flavorwire Exclusive: Dan Deacon talks collapsing clubs and the end of his on-the-floor antics

-ca