Friday, March 16   11:00 p.m.
The Tap Room at Six   (117 W 4th St)

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  Dan Deacon - The Crystal Cat
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Standing in a Greyhound Bus station, wearing a Sylvester t-shirt and huge duct taped covered glasses, Dan Deacon doesn't invoke an image of a composer to the other bus riders. The two suitcases he loads under the bus, which accompany him from city to city, hold the sweat-and-grime-soaked electronics that he uses to craft his raging, maxed-out party music and light show. After 12 tours and 300+ shows in little over 2 years, the gear is beaten and battered, but the show and the energy it produces is anything but.

Dan Deacon has garnered a reputation in the underground as an intense performer and classic showman. The table top full of pedals, sine wave generator, vocoder and Casio blasting through the PA, joined by a makeshift light board with various bulbs and green skull strobe light, make his all out dance-til-you-drop performance a complete experience. The shows he performs in his native Baltimore, namely those at Wham City, (the live-in artists collective and DIY venue/theater that he calls home), are especially notorious for their frenzied crowds.

But it isn't all fancy feet and bouncy beats. Deacon is a classically trained composer with a Masters degree in electro-acoustic composition. He released seven albums from 2003 to 2006, but those self-produced recordings do not contain the vocal based experimental pop that he has fine-tuned in live performance. His latest full length, "Spiderman of the Rings," is the first album bridging the gap between party performer and genuine composer. A mixture of his live show dance anthems, intricate instrumentals and epic psychedelics, "Spiderman of the Rings" establishes Dan Deacon as a new direction in the contemporary underground.

Recently Deacon has been composing and performing works for various ensembles at notable museums and galleries, including the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington DC, the Walters Museum of Art in Baltimore, Anthology Film Archives and White Box Gallery in New York.