Dean Spunt’s all-new Basic Editions, out September 27, is an excursion in electronic sound that instrumentally unpacks his fascination with language — in this case, the syntax of systems and processes of various 64-voice E-MU modules. Against the traditional sonic manipulations of No Age and other Spunt projects, Basic Editions is a meditative, compulsive, and consumptive record in Dean’s non-aesthetic aesthetic that delivers further unexpected hard-turns in his two-decade career. Hear the first single today: “Gonzo Bop”.

Track one on Basic Editions, “Gonzo Bop” is a hybrid signal of celestial ambient synths and percussive break-beat incursions. An unlikely synth-bleat of tin-whistle breaks into a jolly sailor’s jig, atop sudden hardcore flourishes of a funky digital bass — truly, the sound of a new language being born! The music video for “Gonzo Bop”, also a Dean Spunt joint, springs the viewer in and out of reality, bouncing our point-of-view against a trampoline and rolling us into the lawn with a newfound wonder. Humanity’s nu electronic phase has begun: bop, kids, bop!

For Basic Editions, Dean IDs his process as “using sounds, rather than making sounds”. Steering toward wacked digital soundscapes that bounce colorfully across the stereo azimuth, Dean makes a kind of post-ambient neo-exotica that hinges upon a giddy conflation of cosmic and comic, reflecting Hassell’s Fourth World with the otherworldly shapes of Nuno Canavarro and General Magic & Pita. It all happened thanks to a glimpse of an E-MU Mo’Phatt online, a dance synth module that was made great use of in hip-hop productions around the turn of the millennium — but the important takeaway here is that Dean got it for fifty bucks! Generating a finite amount of very circa-2000 sounds, ideas quickly flooded in; Dean’s inclinations soon took the wheel, pouring a cornucopia of possible ambient moods and EZ listening impulses backwards through a funnel to mold Basic Editions.

Courtesy of Dean Spunt, Basic Editions launches September 27, 2024, on the rack for counter-insurgent sonic wanderers everywhere! Check out tour dates below and catch Dean Spunt on the West Coast starting this September and Europe in November.

Dean Spunt 2024 Tour Dates

Sept. 30 - Los Angeles, CA @ Zebulon*
Oct. 7 - Atascadero, CA @ Dark Nectar*
Oct. 8 - Oakland, CA @ Stork Club*
Oct. 10 - Seattle, WA @ Black Lodge*
Oct. 11 - Portland, OR @ Zero Wave*
Oct. 12 - Olympia, WA @ Le Voyeur*
Nov. 6 - Chicago, IL @ Judson & Moore
Nov. 7 - New York, NY @ Union Pool (w/ Chronophage, Nuke Watch)
Nov. 8 - New York, NY @ Francis Kite Club (w/ Eric Copeland, Itch Princess)
Nov. 12 - London, UK @ New River Studios
Nov. 13 - Amsterdam, NL @ Occii (w/ Mark Cremins)

*w/ The Split Bell Chime