In Baltimore, we’ve recognized for years now that Dan Deacon is a multi-talented artist. Within the early aughts, the native digital musician helped put Baltimore on the map along with his infectious, ingenious dance music, and within the years that adopted, he’s launched a number of acclaimed albums, composed scores for award-winning movies, and collaborated with main symphonies, together with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. He may now add one other knack to his spectacular resume—radio host—with the launch of his personal weekly collection on beloved indie station WTMD.
“This present brings out a completely totally different facet of Dan that almost all of his followers haven’t seen earlier than, or maybe have solely caught glimpses of,” says Sam Sessa, Baltimore music coordinator at WTMD. “It’s like hanging out at his home and listening to his report assortment. That’s one of the thrilling points: the way in which it challenges Dan, and the way in which his music challenges us as listeners.”
Launching at midnight on Friday February 19, Distorting Time will function two hours of airtime devoted totally to unabridged long-form music—a pure theme for an artist who has spent his profession pushing the boundaries of the sonic expertise, as heard within the latest seven-minute observe, “Bumble Bee Crown King” off his newest report, Mystic Acquainted, or the 22-minute, five-piece suite “USA,” featured on 2012’s lauded America.
“A lot media, particularly radio, is optimized for time, to attempt to squeeze as many songs right into a present as potential,” says Deacon. “This present is attempting to do the precise reverse. I’m attempting to play as few items of music as potential . . . I hope listeners discover the present each helps go the time and permits ideas to linger in it.”
Deacon traces his love of long-form music again to childhood, when he would attempt to add all eight minutes of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” or “Kashmir” right into a do-it-yourself mixtape. He finally studied musical composition in faculty, the place he gravitated towards fashionable composers like Terry Riley, whose minimalist works typically exceed 20 or 40 minutes. “All of it spiraled from there,” he says.
Distorting Time has been a number of years within the making, propelled into existence by the COVID-19 pandemic and its ongoing cancellation of live shows and excursions. The title comes from the Indirect Methods deck by Brian Eno, which Deacon makes use of as a artistic instrument—seeing this explicit card, in relation to the present, as “a useful reminder that point, or moderately our perspective of time, is topic to fluctuation, and the way sure issues can elongate or expedite a second,” he says.
“We’ve all handled the madness of the previous yr in several methods,” says Sessa. “A present like that is a technique for us to destress—simply tune in and let your thoughts drift. Distorting Time is a life raft in a sea of doom scrolling and different distractions.”
The after-hours present will air on Friday nights into Saturday mornings, from 12 to 2 a.m., that includes “longer-than-song songs,” as Deacon places them, like American jazz pianist Herbie Hancock’s 1973 “Rain Dance” or German futurist folks artist Lyra Pramuk’s 2020 “Cradle.”
“I like being on tour and driving late at evening and stumbling on an awesome station enjoying odd sounds and listening to it till the sign turns to static,” says Deacon of late-night radio. “Figuring out that it’s actually shifting via the air, protecting the largely slumbering environment however discovering its method into the receivers of each of us tuning in with intention, in addition to these which might be simply cruising the dial, it’s only a distinctive legendary beast so far as music-listening goes.”
Tune in stay through 89.7 FM or the free WTMD app.
