How Bill Murray and Laryngitis Helped Create Dan Deacon's New Album

The video for “Feel the Lightning”, the lead single from Dan Deacon’s new album Gliss Riffer, is pretty odd. It’s kinda like an episode of Sesame Street but directed by Mike Leigh, as a menagerie of unremarkable domestic items jolt into multi-colourful life once their owner has left for work. Before long, the armchairs are fucking each other and an Oompa-Loompa-esque backing dancer is trying to ride a caterpillar on the sofa. This liberal application of the surreal echoes much of what Dan Deacon is all about. For the past eight years, since the release of his debut LP Spiderman of the Rings, Deacon has been producing the sort of wildly ambitious electronic music that has constantly rebuffed convention.

His latest record is no different. The album has pop sensibilities at heart, with Deacon taking his most realised stab at vocals and lyrics to date. Pair this with a sonic palette that contorts and reimagines the instrumentation in every way possible, and the project rises to something that, although electronic, is undoubtedly alive. The production has seen him strip things back massively, looping and reworking synths and samples from his laptop. Then, given the sudden opportunity to tour with Arcade Fire last year, Deacon was forced to go full lo-fi and take the recordings on the road, adding many of the final touches on the album from hotel bathrooms — a dynamic present in how easily the record shifts from intricate to expansive.

His Boiler Room set in East London a few nights ago was equally explosive with this nervous joy. Deacon spent half of his set playing music and the other half bonding with the room, splitting his crowd down the middle, demanding dance-offs and congas. Much like Gliss Riffer itself, it was big dumb fun with a tide of awesome profundity rolling underneath it.

So with luscious computer choirs still ringing in our ears, we caught up with the electric wizard to find out more about how laryngitis and Bill Murray have helped him create all of this.

Noisey: Yo Dan. So, you’ve said that this has been the most fun you’ve ever had making a record. What’s so great about it?
Dan Deacon: It was just fun to be in back in my studio and working freely, no schedule, no direction, nothing but my ears and thoughts finding a trail and taking it. I hadn't made music like that in a long time. It was really liberating and helped me realize how much of my life is fixated around stress and anxiety. Then I saw this video of Bill Murray (below) and it really changed my life. It helped me finish the album and start clearing my life of stress, allowing me to start being relaxed and welcoming boredom.

How in hell did you record while touring with Arcade Fire, in a different hotel every night?
When I got the offer for the tour I had already scheduled the time to record and had been at it for a few months. I didn't want to stop and lose the momentum, so thats why I worked on it during the off days in studios or after the shows in the hotels. It was a crazy process but being on that wild tour really helped to inform the sound and the process.

What were Arcade Fire and their enormous butt load of fans like to play for?
The tour was totally insane. I had no idea how big of a band they were, or that bands that big even existed, unless it’s like U2 or something, but that's basically no longer actual music and more of a broadway show if you know what I mean? AF’s show was really inspiring in many ways and their audience was great. It was the first time in a really long while that I had been an opening act, which is a very different way to perform.

This is the first of your records to feature your own voice so prominently. I read this was a result of you suffering from laryngitis - that doesn’t sound like something that would want to make you use your voice more?
I realized my voice was something that expires. I won't have my voice always, and if I had another instrument that I knew was going to vanish on me, I would try to compose for it as much as possible before that vanishing took place.

Well, that’s probably the most beautiful response to a laryngitis question ever. There are some female-sounding vocals on “Feel the Lightning” but word on the street is that’s you?
I don't hear sounds as gendered, they aren't male or female. The pitch of an instrument or timbre of its sound can exist anywhere throughout the gender continuum and low voices or high voices do not need to be assigned to the gender binary.

I feel stupid now, but I’m not sure why.
Basically, I've always been fascinated with changing the pitch of the human voice with the manipulation of hardware. I mainly used a whammy pitch shifter in the past but on this record I experimented with varispeed techniques paired with a throat length changer, which greatly modifies the harmonic content. When paired together they create, what sounds to me, like a very naturally unnatural sound, one that I quite liked and employed on several tracks, the most extreme usage being “Feel the Lightning”.

A side effect of more vocals means more lyrics. Do words come naturally to Dan Deacon?
Lyrics are the hardest part for me. With music I can get lost in the mix and let the sounds take me out of my mind and I can just mentally drift with them. With lyrics I'm always present, and my more up front vocals on this left me feeling more vulnerable and I think that comes across in the anxious tension or longing of the lyrics.

Anxiety or not, it sounds amazing. Cheers Dan.

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‘Gliss Riffer’ is out on the 23rd of February on Domino.