Montreal resident and New Age Composer D'EON has had an extraordinary life leading up to the release of his new 12" Palinopsia, available for pre-order from Hippos In Tanks. A trained musician from birth, he originally planned on staying in Pakistan to learn Sufi Music when a "bunch of really awful shit happened" in Pakistan. D'eon opted instead to go to India where he lived for a year near the Tibetian border until he found what he was searching for in the form of a Tibetian monastary where he learned the dranyen and tibetian music under the tutalidge of monks. D'eon returned to Canada only to find the economy had collapsed. "things were ok, and then I went to India and hid out in seclusion for a while, and then I came back and the world had like completely disintegrated" says D'eon in his interview with Dummy Magazine "In Montreal a lot of people are really really bummed out you know, nobody has a job in Montreal. You know, people don’t have any money. So I don’t know, I guess it’s not really that bad, you know, relatively. But I think that the whole album [Palinopsia] is really just about the fact that any inner peace I may have gained in the mountains has pretty much been whittled down to a tiny little box of what it used to be because of the bullshit that is going on around us all the time."
D'eon - What We Wanna Be
D'eon's particular style of electronic music is refreshingly restraint, layering tracks at a calming and natural pace. We here in the western world have such short attention spans but Palinopsia takes its time and doesn't feel rushed or padded for length. The keyboard licks and synthesizer melodies that Palinopsia is built on do not feel repetative despite repeating usually many times during the course of a song. From its opening intro washed in twinkly lead to the lil-wayne-esque beat of "To Kill A Man With a Joystick In Your Hands", D'eon's infectious brand of eastern-influenced house music had me dancing all the way through.
D'eon - Kill A Man With A Joystick In Your Hand
"Recession Proof ($40 paycheque) is one such song with a rock-solid hook and poignant lyrics. "The ocean is a sewer, the city is a whore, money in the toilet, oil on our shore... we don't live here anymore". Yes a $40 paycheck, how the fuck is someone suppose to live on that? "2040" features arpeggio keyboard, woody bass and deceptively simple drum programing which give it a most pristine sound. "What We Want To Be" is possibly the most positive song on the record continues the incredibly catchy and danceable electro-pop that still hasn't got the least bit repetative. D'eon's compositions are constantly changing adding elements where they are needed and returning to familiar melodic themes at exactly the right moments. "To Kill A Man With a Joystick in Your Hand" is extremely potent lyrically, "everybody wanna fuck with the taliban, from kabul to pakistan", this track combines gangster-rap style drums (think new school) with eastern sounding vocal harmonies and sliding nasal tones characteristic of Asian and Middle Eastern music. Whirly synth and 80's drum n bass accompany D'eon's unique vocals on "Keep The Faith", Reminiscent of some lost Isley Brother's Track and "Across The Sea" is a dream.
D'eon - Across The Sea
This album is generally such a joy to listen to, it finds a way to stay refreshingly human despite the fact that most of the sounds here are quite artificial. 8.4
reviewed by Mohamed El-Darwish RADIATOR COLLECTIVE 2010
wow. now all i want is to read an interview with him
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