Author: August W. Zander

For the past year or so, Dan Deacon has been working closely with director Francis Ford Coppola on the score & soundtrack for the new film TWIXT, and now the public is going to finally going to get its first taste of the film this Saturday at Comic-Con where Coppola and Deacon will appear together to present the trailer to the film and to unveil other unique aspects of how the film will be presented.

Coppola will be presenting portions of his upcoming film TWIXT at a panel discussion on Saturday, July 23 at Comic-Con at Hall H. TWIXT stars Val Kilmer, Bruce Dern, Elle Fanning, and Ben Chaplin. Coppola describes the film as, “one part Gothic romance, one part personal film, and one part the kind of horror film that began my career.”

STREAM: “My Own Face Is F Word” from Meetle Mice” – Dan Deacon

Coppola and Deacon have developed a unique new approach to the presentation of the film that will incorporate live music by acclaimed independent performance artist Dan Deacon. Deacon will attend Comic-Con with Coppola to help demonstrate the interactive experience of the film. The film incorporates both 2-D and 3-D elements.

This week Deacon is also preparing to dig into the vaults and reissue two of his early LPs, Meetle Mice and Silly Hat Vs. Eagle Hat, on double LP via Carpark Records on Sept. 13. Also, limited cassette versions of Meetle, Silly as well as Spiderman of the Rings and Bromst will be issued and made available at shows and on the Carpark online shop. In October, Carpark will also reissue Spiderman of the Rings on LP.

Notes by Dan Deacon on the Reissues:

The music contained on these two albums (Meetle Mice & Silly Hat Vs. Eagle Hat) I wrote while in college (and a few while in high school) when I was just discovering computer music. I wrote them for fun, never planning on doing anything with them at that the time or expecting them to be heard outside of my circle of friends. When I was asked to play a show on campus I thought it might be a good idea to burn some CD-Rs and try to sell them at the show.

Going through my files, I found the pieces that I liked the most, grouped them into two different collections and gave them the most appropriate/absurd titles I could think of. The organization of the songs was somewhat thoughtout but mostly chaotic: make sure the granular synth pieces are far from each other; keep the songs with beats spread out; sound collages placed amongst sine wave drone pieces. They were more like compilations of my experiments than albums of compositions.

I made only 8 CD-R copies of each in photocopied sleeves with contact paper on the discs. I sold all but 1 of each for $7 or two for $10. Explosions were going off in my head, dollar signs appearing in my eyes. Making $70 from selling CD-Rs was blowing my mind. I started selling them at every show, even though the music contained on them didn’t represent what I ever performed live, since the music on Meetle Mice and Silly Hat was never meant to be performed live (except for the acoustic ensemble pieces).

The CD-Rs and artwork are riddled with mistakes. There’s digital clipping on many of the tracks; ‘Silly Hat vs. Egale Hat’ was meant to be ‘Silly Hat vs. Eagle Hat’; “copy write” should have been ‘copyright’, etc., but I thought the typos were funny and kept it with each batch of the CD-Rs. Since I was only selling them on campus or a few shows in NYC it didn’t really matter.

I hated stuff that took itself too seriously so keeping my spelling mistakes glaring was important to me. And considering the music was made in a vacuum with no intention of it ever seeing the light of day, it made sense to keep all the errors in their original state (true of this reissue as well the artwork for this reissue was scanned from the original run of 8.)

I was a very different musician back then trying to figure out how to interact with sound, what could be done with it, where it could go, learning music software for the first time. Since then my aesthetic has shifted, my absurdist mindset subdued. At times I feel like these albums are skeletons in my musical closet. Many of the song titles are absurd or toy with the idea of what is offensive and what is not, many of them created as a commentary on the super politically correct atmosphere that was Purchase College in the early 2000s.

These albums are like seeds. They sound, look and feel very different from the fruit that they’ve grown but they are still of the same tree.

STREAM: “Spring” – Dan Deacon from Silly Hat Vs. Eagle Hat