DAN DEACON - MEETLE MICE (LIMITED EDITION 2LP)

Dan Deacon Meetle Mice on Limited Edition 2LP + Digital Download Card

The music contained on these albums 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 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. 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.

The organization of the songs was somewhat thought out 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 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, and discovering many more genres of experimental music than what I was exposed to in my youth on Long Island. It was an exciting time! Since then my aesthetic has shifted, my absurdist mindset subdued and I’ve been exposed to a global audience. At times I feel like these albums are skeletons in my musical closet, knowing how easily parts of them could be taken out of context by a media that loves to take things out of context. But these records were made without knowledge of that media world. There’s an innocent ignorance to them that none of my other records will ever be able to have, an ignorance lost to experience.

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. I hope you enjoy listening to them as much as I enjoyed making them. - Dan Deacon

Dan Deacon Meetle Mice Track Listing:

1.  BJI Aii Hmhp #14
2.  Never Do That (Mars)
3.  Biggle Hat Was Ice Cream Time (Card Shark Nose Nose)
4.  30 (from 21 through 35)
5.  Electronics With Clarinet and Bari Sax
6.  Song For Dina
7.  My own face is F word
8.  Drinking Out of Cups
9.  sdahgsfdgh3frgha3wffhjdvbjs4uh
10. The Adventures of Mr Bumbershine
11. That’s A Nice Shirt (Dad)
12. Aerosmith Permanent Vacation 24162-2
13. Plums
14. I’m So Gay with The Boner
15. Aw Ah Ah Ah (Party Cakes)
16. My Weasle Is Married Worm Married
17. I Have AIDS
18. 005 September 22 BE