Issue No. 24 | Wanderlust
18 March 2010 10:35pm PST
18 March 2010 10:35pm PST
Moondagger
Deastro
Ghostly International
(2009)
***
Deastro is the alter ego of Detroit native Randolph Chabot, a 22-year-old songwriter who made his grand debut with a “greatest hits” compilation of demos that he produced since the age of 17. It may seem presumptuous to release a record of hits even before producing a proper album, but given Chabot’s songwriting and producing talents, we can only hope that he’ll produce enough body of work in the near future for a real greatest hits compilation. Deastro plays an eclectic brand of synth-driven music that playfully recreates fantastic worlds and mythologies that are as equally indebted to science fiction as they are culled from his own imagination. The music has the spaced-out synth sounds and echoing vocals of lo-fi electronic pop band The Russian Futurists, although Deastro’s vocals are more eighties post-punk than the Futurists’ twee-pop structures.
A survey of Moondagger’s song titles allude to Deastro’s fixation on vintage arcade cosmology. “Biophelia” sounds like a reboot of Space Invaders with epic orchestrations of drums, bass, synth and strings. Chabot’s deep tenor reverbrates with just the right frequency, as if he’s en route to some distant planet. The blissfully warm “Parallelogram” sounds like the Magnetic Fields at their most upbeat, although by song’s end, the instruments and vocals acquire the familiar and almost indiscernible noise and echo of Animal Collective. “Pyramid Builders,” with its instrumental peculiarities and progressions, have the hallucinating effect of the latter, although its focus on synth melodies are more grounded in the past than A.C.’s forward-looking aesthetic. Electric strings and synths expand and evolve into gentle harpsichords and chaotic loops, as if Chabot was imagining a baroque dance hall set in a sixties futurist utopia.
The tribute to songwriting savant Daniel Johnston, bemusingly titled “Daniel Johnston Was Stabbed in the Heart with the Moondagger by the King of Darkness and His Ghost Is Writing This Song as a Warning to All of Us,” channels the musician’s high tenor and childlike mythology, weaving an imagined battle between Johnston and Evil. Another instrumental track, “Rivers of Life” begins with a dizzying trancelike synth progression that weaves into a rhythm of shredded guitars and metal that softly concludes with a harpsichord bit. Title track “Moondagger” is a more somber addition, although Deastro’s songs never quite end in melancholy. The post-punk malaise of its opening melodies eventually give way to a more optimistic lull, as if in Deastro’s imagined world, the good win out in the end. For more good than bad, Moondagger is a collection of love songs obscured beneath their own cosmology, as if Daniel Johnston’s lyrical wit and George Clinton’s alien myth-making coalesced to ultimately form Deastro’s unique sound and imagination.
***
http://ghostly.com/artists/deastro
Comments:
[...] The Strange Boys have the youthful, wide-eyed good looks of a pop punk band, although once you start listening to their music, they are anything but twee and PG-rated. Jangly guitars, classic garage rock structures and scratchy vocals quickly make way for the kind of whiskey-fueled, devil-may-care nonchalance that bands like the Black Lips have popularized in recent years. By the time the band arrived on stage, the front row—previously occupied by flannel shirts, fedoras and aspiring groupies—made way for a younger, less suffocating crowd. While the previous opening band was all grubby, drunken posturing, the Strange Boys took the stage with a more grateful and easy-going demeanor. Cans of Tecate and bottles of Red Stripe already littered the stage amongst amps and effects pedals, with young fans of the band exchanging maudlin niceties with guitarist Greg Enlow, who amusedly likened the colorful flashing lights of The Echo to those at a rave. [...]
[...] a tour across the country, Randolph Chabot of Deastro spoke with us about his latest record Moondagger, Daniel Johnston, the Detroit music scene and his beginnings in the church. His unique brand of [...]