Dan Deacon
Fabric, London
16/09/2010

Kraftwerk might have those legendary robots as their avatars; Dan Deacon, ever the more DIY proposition, makes do with a vividly luminous green skull propped up on a chassis of oversized and resplendently retro disco lights instead. And yet, for all that the visuals might be a trifle Halloween – and, in fact, Fabric’s packed out to such a degree that the man himself is barely visible at all for the first 40 minutes or so – the performance itself is awash with the unalloyed delirium of a seven-year-old’s Christmas, resulting in a blissfully tired’n'emotional crowd hootenannying like it’s Hogmanay. On record, of course, he might be prone to fiendishly sketchy genre-jumping to a degree seldom seen since those early Badly Drawn Boy singles (and, perhaps not so coincidentally, there’s a definite ramshackle air to proceedings that calls to mind Damon’s pre-hat genius-or-japester?-YOU-decide bonanzas), but here he’s essentially playing pass the parcel with an abundant package of electronica so giddy we’d recommend the Samaritans using it as hold music.

And so it is that the BPMs have sputtered flyswattingly up the walls within a matter of minutes, dousing joint-endangering dancers by the scores in sweaty technicolor bonhomie as Deacon draws breathtakingly abrupt lines between the shining utopian synths of prime New Pop and the jagged claustrophobia of hardcore dynamics – of the ravier variety, naturally, although there’s a mildly metallic wallop in play too – at their most speedily ravenous. Little wonder, then, that when he asks the whole audience to kneel before him (in a tone that tends more towards the communal than the supervillainly), there are no refusals, and that punters aplenty are more than happy to take him up on the challenge of having a dance-off to ‘Paddling Ghost’. It makes sense, too, that his calling card, to which the evening builds incessantly, proves to be the mighty, ductilely twanged ‘Woof Woof’; really, nights out could barely get more barking than this…

Iain Moffat