Berlin
The new album 'World Music Market' is out now. Available here: https://deadbearsongs.bandcamp.com/
DEADBEAR is the moniker of Berlin-based producer and electronic musician Nick Donovan.
Donovan began experimenting with electronic music as part of a university 'laptop orchestra' and later making interactive software including being commissioned to build an app for CERN's Large Hadron Collider.
After 2017's ‘ The Trees are Dancing ’, 2019 sees DEADBEAR set to release a new artistic project and record ‘ World Music Market’. The release is a concept record tied wholly to Berlin, vinyl and the migration of people and music. All profits will be going directly to charity, specifically projects that help integrate refugees into Western communities and develop new skills.
The album, ‘World Music Market ’ (also released on 16th August) was written over the course of several months after amassing a stack of vintage ‘World Music’ vinyl from MY local Sunday flohmarkt. I would go to this one same stall every Sunday and pick up something incredible - discontinued runs of
Middle East compilations, Nubian region samplers, one hit wonders from Yemen. After a while it became clear this collection needed to become more than just a Sunday listening experience. I knew I had to make a record out of it. ‘World Music Market’ collides styles and samples from 11 vinyl records (most pressed in the 50s and 60s) and 14 different countries. Korean Court music sits alongside Tibetan Folk, Syrian dances and Sudanese prayer songs. Encapsulating the spirit of Berlin through the context of electronic music, celebrations of multiculturalism and migration of people to Berlin from all corners of the world, ‘ World Music Market’ is also a record that plays with set concepts of time and place.
Berlin is very much a place of coalescing cultures and coexisting, multiple temporalities and I wanted this record to give a real sense of those aspects. This project is not a vision of a multicultural utopia. Multiculturalism, just like the music on this record, juxtaposes multiple traditions, backgrounds and different
sacred, or secular, practices in one space. Sometimes it works, sometimes it jars and creates tension or unexpected artefacts but the experience is the richer for it - and the ‘picture’ one of greater depth and colour.
I wanted to challenge our constant search for authenticity - especially in cultural areas of our present times. Exoticness, Otherness, authenticity, these are things that are inherently amorphous and flawed and playing with those ideas has been a big part of this record.
Previous releases include 'The Trees are Dancing ’, a debut EP on Art is Hard Records, garnering critical acclaim from BBC Radio 1, BBC 6 Music, The Wire Magazine, Virgin, XFM and the NME. A follow up double single was released on Cascine's CSCN label featuring Japanese producer and singer Qrion - famed for her work with Ryan Hemsworth.
● NME says: "Reminiscent of Mount Kimbie and Gold Panda at their most accessible" - NME
Radar.
● The 405 says: "meticulous attention to detail with friendly beats, in flavours ranging from spacey
chill to simply intense"
● The Skinny says: “experimental electronic pop tapestry ripe with skittering tropical beats, woven
with a kaleidoscope of vocal samples, found sounds and synths. Revealing new intricacies and
textures upon each listen”
DEADBEAR’s tracks
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