You may be familiar with The Bob Lazar Story from such albums as Baritonia, Vanquisher, Ghost Of Foodstool, and several others you can find by using yon search facility on our website.
The late and sorely missed Jez Rowden and I have got behind this musical entity because its creator deserves fame and fortune. But what does this have to do with Dronestool? I’m glad I asked! Dronestool is another musical entity that has sprung from the musical loins of one Matt Deacon. For my part, I believe Matt Deacon to be the epitome of progression in the context of music, so the aforementioned reviews are quintessential reading, and you can find them: HERE
Recently, New Zealand resident Matt Deacon, being the corporeal manifestation of The Bob Lazar Story, reached out to me about his latest release as Dronestool.
This is how it started:
MD: Matt Deacon Hiya Phil. You know what to do.
PL: Phil Lively Affirmative.
But I was riddled with unanswered questions like:
What’s the craic? What happened to The Bob Lazaar Story?
The Bandcamp page states that this is the tenth release by Dronestool! So, you know – Uh?
I may have been following Matt as The Bob Lazar Story but quite clearly, I am the worst deranged fan-come-stalker ever! The only rational explanation is I’ve slipped into an alternative reality. I am now in the Kelvin Musical Universe in which extra-terrestrials have travelled through time in response to the US Government’s meddling with reversed engineered alien technology. Aliens have halted this ill-advised technological tinkering that will ultimately end in the agent of our destruction, devised by our own hand, manifesting not in AI, as is commonly feared, but in the form of a trans-temporal portal with a gravity well centred at Area 51. So strong and yet insidious is this portal, it has sucked me from the universe where there was no Dronestool, into a parallel realm of existence, leaving my prime reality in an unrecognisable, almost intangible state that can no longer sustain existence, like, while I slept. I mean, here’s both the evidences:-
1. I woke up with a runny nose this morning and that wasn’t there when I went to bed.
2. There are two artistic entities now that are related to stools, when for me, yesterday there was only one.
Clearly something has changed fundamentally, so that’s the simplest and only explanation. (What is? I’m confused – Ed)
In search of The Truth, which is out there, I was compelled to contact the Stool Architect, with questions. He generously responded with answers, which is how these things work, apparently. My ulterior motive was to manipulate the answers into some kind of critical assessment of the new album partly derived from the transcript of this impromptu Q&A session… a “review”, if you will. So, I asked Matt if he was up for it. What follows is what happened.
MD: Let me ask my manager
(one nanosecond later)
Yes.
PL: OK then, here’s Question 1:
You know I’ve been following you as The Bob Lazar Story, but somehow, to my shame, I was unaware of Dronestool. What’s the relationship between Dronestool and The Bob Lazar Story?
MD: Good question.
I guess they are 2 sides of the same coin. The coin being me. The Bob stuff is heavily composed/constructed, but the Dronestool stuff is 99% improvised then sometimes built upon. At the beginning, they couldn’t be more different. Now, there’s a little more Prog creeping in, particularly on Tabularum Tidy – Hey! – that’s the title of the album! But there’s also more bleep bloops. I’m on a modular synthesis journey. Both also contain stools.
PL: Be careful, Matt. Being a coin, someone will try and spend you.
I totally saw the Stool connection. I’m a trained observer. Interesting that you use the word “prog”. I usually balk at that term because for most people it is no longer short for progressive, as in, experimental, innovative… but your stuff clearly is progressive.
Here’s Question 2: Do you ever think in terms of having a target audience?
MD: I don’t think so. I think I’m my target audience. I think there is an ambient/experimental audience out there somewhere. But that’s not why I do the Dronestool stuff. I just love messing around with delays and reverbs. Finding an audience has never been my strength. There’s not enough hours in the day for me to be doing that stuff.
PL: I get that! Who said, “Time is the fire in which we burn”? (Delmore Schwartz (December 8 1913 – July 11 1966) – American poet and short story writer. Ed.)
So you’re simply acting on a compulsion to make music and releasing it is just an adjacent activity?
MD: Yep. I went down a pedal rabbit hole, and this is what came out. Chase Bliss Audio make all sorts of crazy pedals, and I became mildly obsessed with the Mood Mk2. It’s sparked all sorts of mad ideas. But like I mentioned before, the Dronestool stuff is continually evolving.
The Bob stuff has evolved as well over time, but that is still very much in the rock band territory whereas Dronestool can be absolutely anything. Blank canvas.
PL: That really adds to the answer you gave to the relationship between the two stools. (And then, in an attempt to sound like a proper music journalist), What was the last album you listened to?
MD: Bent Knee – You Know What They Mean.
PL: Oh, good choice! Ben Levin is a bit of a genius, I reckon. I love his YouTube channel. He’s one of the most interesting “content creators” out there, and he’s absolutely bonkers, but in a good way.
I can’t deny that I derive inspiration from my favourite musical artist(s). I sometimes listen back to my stuff hear things that have crept in that I’ve subconsciously nicked. Is this a thing for you? (if it is, then I’m showing my ignorance, because I don’t hear it in your music).
MD: Sometimes. Miriod With Children off the new one is named because there’s one second of it that reminded me of a Miriodor bit. But then it veered off into a Married With Children vibe for half a second. Normally if I think I’ve subconsciously ripped something off I’ll scrap it. Oh, to be truly original.
PL: I’m not sure it’s possible to be truly original AND listenable any more! You need to have a bit of something that people will feel comfortable with, or the listener may end up being more discombobulated than they are satisfied!
Anyway, I’ve taken up enough of your time. I’ll let you go after this one, singular, final, last question, which is what all your fans will want me to ask: What is your favourite colour, what colour are your eyes, and do you ever experience existential dread?
MD: Green. Hazel. Most days.
Thanks Phil. Feel free to ask more. I’m just off to work though. The Maersk Rio India waits for no-one. What?
And there we have it. Answers.
So, to the album:
Much of Tabularum Tidy is just so bloody groovy, in a weird but satisfying way. It goes without saying, you cannot trust me with assigning genres to musical styles, but this little collection of songs is quite eclectic. There are clearly experimental tracks and some that I could imagine being played in a Las Vegas restaurant by a small jazz combo. My Dad, a fan of Bebop musician, Gerry Mulligan, would have particularly loved track 6, which if you increase the playback speed by 33⅓ is pure Bebop. Of course, at its native speed it sounds to me like a fusion of instrumental rock, progressive rock, and free improvisation, which is a neat trick in a track that’s under 2 minutes and twenty seconds. The album closes with an ambient number, that number being 8 and the title being Udder.
Udder… sorry …Other tracks feel improvised, but perhaps paradoxically, extremely well structured. My favourite tracks, like seq3001, score Pangolin°C on the Weird scale, which I don’t have to remind you is measured between Unplasticized-Drainage-System and Purple – so, yeah, I know – that’s pretty damned high!
My favourite track? Track 5, Doops East. This is a no-nonsense, pithy, and in my mind unpretentious track, despite – or perhaps because of – scoring Cloud on the Weird scale.
In summary, OK, I may have called this an album, but at under 13 minutes, it’s more like an EP. But there’s so much packed into that tiny timeframe I think it qualifies as an album! Should you open Audacity, configure it to record “what you hear” and steal the album from Bandcamp? The answer is no. That is very naughty. You are a bad person for even thinking that. You should buy it, because Matt Deacon deserves your support so that he can squeeze more music out of his brain – and as you musicians would know, he needs to recoup some of the money he must have spent on Chase Bliss and their analogue pedals with full MIDI control and presets in standard-footprint enclosures.
Do it.
TRACK LISTING
01. Miriod With Children (1:37)
02. Bouncetastic (0:52)
03. BlakeSourceSeven (0:52)
04. El Sackico 42 (1:26)
05. Doops East (0:23)
06. Tabularum Tidy (2:19)
07. seq3001 (0:55)
08. Udder (4:22)
Total Time – 12:46
MUSICIANS
Matt Deacon – All instrumentation
ADDITIONAL INFO
Record Label: Independent
Country of Origin: New Zealand
Date of Release: 23rd March 2025
LINKS
Dronestool – Bandcamp
The Bob Lazar Story – Facebook | Bandcamp | X
