Dan Deacon

All Light Everywhere & Ascension

published in The Wire No.458, London, 2022

Excerpt

The last track on Dan Deacon's score to the documentary All Light, Everywhere is titled "Totality". Its 29 minutes makes it an impossible cue. Long musical passages are rarely allowed to flow uninterrupted in films. But on record, audiovisual sense can be reprioritized to allow listeners into a film's sound world heard by the composer. "Totality" superficially sounds (warning) 'neo-classical' and 'minimalist' due to its haze of Phillip Glass arpeggios and post-Eno washes of harmonic froth. It's so much more. Its Reich-meets-Nancarrow patterning of MIDI player-pianos is more 'pop' than 'serious', bursting with energy inherited by Deacon's complex frenetic studio albums like Bromst and Gliss Sniffer.

(...)


Text © Philip Brophy. Image © Milan Records.