I’ve been a fan of a lot of different kinds of music over the years. My first real love was The Killers, and then Muse became my object of obsession. I was lucky enough to have a good friend who exposed me to a lot of new and different music; Deathgrips, Clipping., Run the Jewels. These were artists who could make music that forced my attention in really gripping ways, and I was enamored by their confident lyrics and experimental beats. They made my body feel like it was encased in steel.

And then I discovered Dan Deacon. Most easily described as “electronic” music, his work features many recognizable sounds, usually from percussion instruments, but these are always in conversation with a host of electronic noises that have no corresponding instrument to make them. These different sources are always on equal terms, blending and forming a song much like any normal track would, but the effect creates something crazy and wild in ways I’ve never experienced before. And when vocals are mixed in, it can become something altogether transcendent.

One of Dan Deacon’s most well-known songs is “When I Was Done Dying,” which was the first song I ever heard from him and captures the magic and whimsy of his music astonishingly well. The song begins as the subject of the song has stopped dying, as their “conscience regains”, and we follow them as they proceed to go on through a series of essentially meaningless encounters through a world where any and everything is possible. This sense of wonder and possibility threads through nearly all of his songs, somehow imbued within the very sounds themselves. At one point in “When I Was Done Dying,” the protagonist is gazing up at the mouths of two gigantic steeds that are floating up into the night sky, and huge vibrational sound sweeps through the song as the chorus of human voices increases in strength to show the awe and majesty of such an utterly bizarre, completely unexplainable sight.

Something about Dan Deacon’s music resonates with something deep inside me; his music feels as though it starts from the depths of a cavern deep within myself, as if the music is a part of me before it even begins. I think that one of the most rewarding aspects of his music is that with this ability to make the music feel like a part of you, he doesn’t ask anything of you in return. He doesn’t make you feel sad, or guilty, or buy into a specific view of the world. Most of his music is instrumental, and if there are lyrics they’re so beyond anything we could experience in our everyday lives that it can only speak to our imaginations. Deacon is willing to put so much work into creating music that makes us feel as if it’s awakening parts of us that have never opened their eyes, and to make that music simply beautiful at the same time, no strings attached. That’s something wild and rare, and it makes me smile.