“Imagine if all LSD ran out tomorrow...there’s a part of you that thinks ‘I should try it’ - that’s how you should treat the idea of seeing Cats.”
The elusively comedic composer Dan Deacon braced himself for yet another show at the very home of the ‘cult-classic’ musical Cats - a stark thematic trope to tonight’s concoction of postminimalism and comedy.
Through the recent release of his latest LP, Mystic Familiar, Deacon has gained a fervent following over the past decade of displaying ethereal, psychedelic electronic landscapes of music - honed and crafted to a compelling extent on his latest single ‘Become a Mountain’. Forming the inception of this evening’s set, Deacon further pursued his latest set of tracks with ‘Sat By a Tree’ and ‘Fell Into an Ocean’ - with the former containing a well-spaced dance-off between revolving members of the audience and the latter consumed by a left-side-versus-right-side, interpretive dance sequence. These waves of ambient psychedelia inevitably enveloped Deacon’s care-free, free-spirited world with the crowd gripped in a state of orgasmic participation.
Reminiscent of other psych-pop acts such as Animal Collective, The Flaming Lips, and Black Moth Super Rainbow, Dan Deacon has inextricably conjured a ‘nerdly’ entourage through such juxtaposing musical tropes - bizarrely collaborating tonight in a revelling rave of rainbow rhythms. Typified by the mid-section of his latest LP, Deacon’s midway junction of his live set consisted of his 4-part ‘Arp’ series churring through gears of minimalist hooks and musical phrases underpinned by Deacon’s omnipresent vocoder-effected singing.
At last ridding the room of external cynicism burdened by our Trump-ridden, Brexit-fuelled world, Deacon enlisted the crowd into a ‘wall of life’ - comically inverting the ubiquitous ‘wall of death’ prominent amongst Scandinavian death metal festivals. With the mandatory high fives clapped throughout London’s Scala, Deacon transcended into his 2015 LP, Gliss Riffer, with such notable tracks as ‘Feel the Lightning’ and ‘Learning to Relax’ - proving as an albeit less refined revisit to his earlier works of such ambiance.
Yet for the latter and final track of tonight’s exhibition of common humanity, Deacon’s bow-out came from the instructed human-formed tunnel - traversing from the dancefloor to the outskirts of the venue. With the multi-faceted composer rushing through such a triumphant tunnel of reciprocated love, I can’t help but feel the future may be all the more brighter with Deacon in it - as well as Cats. Of which I will watch immediately.
8/10
Dan Deacon's latest LP, Mystic Familiar, is out now and can be found here.
All photos are courtesy of Liv Rook, whose work can be found here.
This review is courtesy of Gigwise.com
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