Dan Deacon & Ensemble

Fri., April 3, 8 p.m., $10-$12, with Teeth Mountain and Future Islands, First Unitarian Church, 2125 Chestnut St., 866-468-7619, r5productions.com

by Brian Howard

electronic/pop

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We all know Baltimore gadget freak Dan Deacon makes great music for running in circles, making human tunnels and jumping around to the beat of strobe lights. His shows, wherein the bearded, bespectacled kewpie embeds himself, his tables of circuitry and his green flashing skull light among his sweating, adoring fans, are the stuff of legend. But does Deacon — whose body of spazzy, seizure-mimicking songs and corresponding performances reside at the intersection of melody, rhythm, loopy gimmickry and flash mob performance art — make great music? You'll find the answer on Bromst (Carpark), Deacon's follow-up to 2007's spastic-fantastic Spiderman of the Rings. Three years in the making, the record incorporates actual instruments — acoustic, mechanical — into the electro/sampling mayhem with amazing results. It's one thing to hear the calculated fade-in to Spiderman's epic "Wham City" and quite another to feel the crescendo from silence of Bromst's opener "Build Voice" with its slowly thundering percussion and glittery piano. For as big and dense as Deacon's compositions can feel, there's something just a bit more gigantic about Bromst. And the reason is that Deacon, an artist whose medium is the masses, will be performing with a 14-member ensemble, meaning that for once, there might be action on the stage at a Deacon show. Which we hope doesn't preclude the usual action off it.