DAN DEACON

It was never the goal to be a solo performer. It was just something that made the most sense at the time.

What's completely insane to me is that people would consider music that's simple to be dumbed-down. Couldn't simplicity be a deliberate, smart choice?

You know, most people called rap stupid when it started, and it was one of the most innovative music forms of its time.

The main thing I want to do is make people feel more connected and more active.

I need to start honing in on projects that I want to devote my time to and not put my energies into the unattainable ones.

For the last three years, I've been working on 'Bromst,' and that's all that encompassed my brain. And now that it's out, it will change the way that I think musically.

I just wanted to make a record that wasn't escapism. Like, I didn't want to write another record that was devoid of meaningful content.

When I went to school, it was really just to immerse myself in listening to, studying, and making music.

If you've become a huge act and you're still doing the same music you wrote with your friends when you were making zero dollars, you're lazy.

I wanted to start working on something that had a lasting effect.

I throw ideas out into the open when I really should just be writing them down in a journal.

I've since become really good at overwhelming myself.

I thought I wouldn't enjoy the business side of music, but it's fun because it is completely - like running a DIY venue was the same exact thing but just on a smaller scale and a DIY tour is the same thing. You're just running a small business. Like we live within the paradigm of capitalism. Even if I'm going in playing these anarcho spaces, I still have to buy gas.

It's weird how people hate getting older.

I think living in Baltimore and being a part of the community and trying to be part of as many communities as possible within the city, the best thing that anyone can do in Baltimore is just to be a part of it and contribute to it and to not see it as...A lot of people from outside the city see this city for its blight and I feel like people who live within the city do the opposite and see this city for what defines it as, in my mind, the most beautiful place to live.

You can have a table full of gourmet food, but the minute you put a box of Entenmann's doughnuts out, that's all people are gonna talk about.

I'm often just writing just to write. I'm not writing with...If I write, like, sitting down with a goal in mind, it's always, like, the worst. It turns into a ska song even if I'm trying to write like a horror movie sound track or something.

It's hard not to sell out because once, you know, I grew up with working-class parents who definitely, definitely would be disappointed if I didn't take particular jobs being like, "What are you talking about? I would have worked years for that money in like, actual physical labor." So there's a privilege to not selling out. You already have to be in a position where you can look at that money and not care about it.

That's tangent, but I like the strategizing and thinking about how things are going to fall and thinking of different ways to engage with fans. Ultimately, the goal is for the music to be heard by as many people as possible.

Email is a mind-killer. Like, I really think getting a smartphone is the worst move I ever did in being a musician because while we've just been talking my phone's vibrated like 15 times and I only get push notifications for like two apps, so either like a bunch of houses are going up for sale right now or someone's like, "Why aren't you emailing me back?" It's just hard to stay in the moment. I can understand why people go to retreats to write and stuff like that but I don't have the time.

When music becomes a job, you all of a sudden have other jobs and you become like a manager of time. If you have no ability to do that, your job gets very hard very quickly.

Finishing a song is definitely the hardest part. It's, you know, you can polish it forever and then whittle it down into something it wasn't and be like, "I need to build it back up," which is why some tracks have 400 versions. But I guess you know when it's done when...I have a maximalist approach to sound when I can't find any more space to put new sounds.

I think the hardest part is figuring out what to say no to because the whole start of your career is just begging anybody to let you perform or to contribute music to something. Then it's like turning on a faucet because the moment it's on, people are like, "Oh, you can do stuff? All right. Well, you want to do it every single thing?

The smaller the instrument or more hidden it is such as electronics, the more esoteric it becomes and in my mind becomes boring watching someone go like this and that has no direct... It's just a complete abstract motion, not attach to any sound.

I think a lot of electronic musicians are drawn to starting with texture because the whole reason we're working with electronics is to try to create new sounds or sounds that cannot be created acoustically. When you're doing that, it's nice to be able to just create a different palette for every single song. I feel like a lot of electronic music sounds like...Each album sounds like a compilation more than it does a band.