DEUS

Label:	Cooperative Music
Latest Album:	Vantage Point
Tracklist 1. When She Comes Down 2. Oh Your God 3. Eternal Woman 4. Favourite Game 5. Slow 6. The Architect 7. Is A Robot 8. Smokers Reflect 9. The Vanishing Of Maria Schneider 10. Popular Culture   ... lees meer

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dEUS return with “Vantage Point”, their boldest album to date, featuring guest vocal appearances from Karin Dreijer Andersson from The Knife and Guy Garvey of Elbow.

“Vantage Point” finds dEUS at their most adventurous and self-assured. The brooding grandeur of opener ‘When She Comes Down’ precedes a confident left-turn, the anxious squall of ‘Oh Your God’, Tom spitting wisdoms over tremolo guitar drone. “Eternal Woman” follows, highlighting the more emotive side of dEUS, before the propulsive rhythms and menacing guitars of “Favourite Game”. Icy synths combine with dark, smouldering bass on the noirish “Slow”, featuring a stellar guest vocal appearance from Karin Dreijer Andersson of The Knife, while The Architect finds dEUS in early 80s NY punk-funk territory.   The album draws to a close on an emotional note, the beautiful piano refrain on “Smokers Reflect” framing it’s lyric of love’s regret. This is followed by the epic sweep of ‘The Vanishing Of Maria Schneider’, a lilting meditation upon the transitory nature of beauty which features the aching harmonies of Elbow’s Guy Garvey on guest vocals. ‘Popular Culture’ closes the album out with raggedy choirs singing philosophical choruses over strings and a veritable Phil Spector Wall Of Sound. A suitably grand exeunt for an album that plays large. A record that will provide a soundtrack to both nocturnal adventures as much as the wide open skies of festival season.   dEUS – Past and Present…   When Tom Barman put his group dEUS on hold in 2000, he only imagined it would be a short break, for the members to pursue extra-curricular activities. Barman would spend the early 00s recording as Magnus with techno producer CJ Bolland, and directing his acclaimed debut feature, Any Way The Wind Blows. “We were all busy, those years flew by,” he laughs. “But afterwards, we realised that, in rock music, that many years out is like an eternity. The response we enjoyed when we returned was unbelievable… That people remembered us, and came to the shows, and that we were playing to larger audiences, in many places, than before we took that break... It was more than we could ever have expected.” But then, as dEUS’s storied career has always taught us, it pays to expect the unexpected.       Their debut, 1994’s Worst Case Scenario, greeted an unsuspecting world with the gonzoid punk chant of ‘Suds & Soda’, the off-kilter pop sensibilities of ‘Via’, the elegantly turbulent heart-break of ‘Hotellounge (Be The Death Of Me)’. This was followed in 1996’s with In A Bar Under The Sea, produced by Eric ‘Drew’ Feldman, a Captain Beefheart Magic Band veteran who had also played in PJ Harvey's band and The Pixies, who nurtured the band’s grand ambitions. By the time Barman and co recorded 1999’s The Ideal Crash the chorus of approval the group enjoyed now included the praise of REM and Radiohead   dEUS played a handful of special shows during their downtime but it wasn’t until a spate of performances before the Christmas of 2004 that their return became a concrete reality, with the promise of a new studio album, their fourth, the following year. “The mindset wasn’t, Oh, here’s the dEUS ‘comeback’,” remembers Barman. “It was more, Let’s go back to work.” The end result “Pocket Revolution” was a confident and assured return that reminded us all just how much we’d missed dEUS while they were gone.   Following a year of sell-out shows, Barman and his bandmates felt energized enough to go straight back to work. They woodshedded from September 2006 through to the Spring of 2007, writing and rehearsing their new material, before building a new studio in a converted apartment. The studio was called Vantage Point, and of course went on to become the title of the new album.   Energised by the response to their recent live shows, emboldened by building Vantage Point, the album that follows is the band’s most exciting to date, stretching themselves further and remaining, as ever, profoundly adventurous. “After a while, you get tired of singing about yourself,” smiles Barman, of the songs that make up Vantage Point. “On songs like ‘Slow’ and ‘The Architect’, I’m writing stories about other people, which I’ve never tried before. I interviewed Nick Cave the other day, for Belgian TV, and he’s one of my heroes. And he said, ‘It’s too easy to write about yourself’, and that’s so true. It’s exciting to try new ideas, that’s always been at the heart of this band.”   With “Vantage Point”, dEUS have produces a career-best release and staked an early claim for one of the finest albums of 2008.