Strobe lights flicker white hot on your skin. Ample bass beats consume your chest. You move your limbs in time with the hundreds of bodies that crowd around you, overcome by the intoxicating rhythms and melodies emanating from the stage up front.
No, you’re not at a basement rave in Amsterdam. You’re part of a giant crowd at the Majestic Theatre, raging to The New Deal, a self-described “instrumental, improvised electronic dance music” trio. Though the Canadian band has been performing and touring for almost 15 years, 2009 was its first Madison stop. Then, it put on what a Majestic Theatre official deemed one of their “wildest” nights of the year. If you missed last year’s show, fear not – The New Deal is coming to rock the Majestic again tonight as part of its GINORMOUS Fall 2010 tour.
“Expect a pretty high-energy show. We like to give people what they want, so we hammer through some pretty up-tempo dance music for two-plus hours,” bassist Dan Kurtz said, describing one of the band’s typical performances in a recent interview with The Badger Herald.
More than a decade of touring has taken The New Deal all over the world, from San Francisco to Chicago to Kashiwa, Japan. None of these performances can really be deemed ‘typical,’ as 90 percent of the music it plays is made up on the spot.
Due to this improvisation, most of The New Deal’s revenue comes from ticket sales rather than CD sales, and almost all of its albums are live recordings of their concerts.
According to Kurtz,10 to 15 melodies do travel with the band and reappear every now and then, but they mostly strike out into brand new audio territory. The lack of concrete tracks is both a hindrance and an asset to the band.
“There aren’t a lot of avenues for people to get a hold of our music,” Kurtz said. “So when that many people come out, we’re like, ‘Wow.'”
Years upon years of strictly live performances and volumes of fans that repeatedly turn out to watch them play result in one fact: The New Deal is pretty good at what it does. Kurtz himself said he is “amazed” at the way he is able to collaborate with the rest of the group, which consists of keyboardist Jamie Shields and drummer Darren Shearer.
“We have a really fluid language between us which is remarkable to me sometimes,” Kurtz said. “Wherever the limits of my musical ability lie, those guys pick up and fill in the gaps…and we pull it off like it was just all planned all along.”
This unique malleability makes a night with The New Deal much more interactive than the usual blare-at-your-face-and-go-home concert experience. Kurtz said the group has become very adept at “getting a vibe for the energy we’re getting off the crowd” and reflecting that energy back through their music. He paints a picture of three musicians jamming up on stage, generating a heat and intensity that ripples, pulses and reverberates out to their wildly dancing fans, who then charge up and radiate that intensity right back.
The picture calls to mind another familiar scene – the Camp Randall student section during a home football game. If live performance is what The New Deal does best, unanimous energy and adoration is certainly what we as UW students do best.
“Who knows”? Kurtz said. “Maybe as of the show that we play at the Majestic, Madison may become our favorite place ever to play.”
The New Deal plays with special guest Steez at the Majestic Theater, 115 King Street, tonight at 9 p.m. – doors open at 8 p.m. Tickets are $22 and can be purchased at the door.
