Plastic Acid is 'rock art' orchestra

Conductor-turned-gliding instructor-turned-cellist of anti-orchestra tells his story to The Peak

Dress Led Zeppelin up in a crisp white shirt and tie and you get Bryan Deans of Plastic Acid Orchestra. Sipping espresso in JJ Bean, Deans revealed the mechanics behind the 45-piece orchestra that blends Soundgarden with Shostakovich.

     “It’s rock-art fusion. A full symphony sound but with an edge,” said Deans as he described Plastic Acid, accurately named after the collaborative, wacky mixture of elements the group employs. The orchestra is an evolving amoeba of sound, and will soon be fused with the folksy artistry of Maria in the Shower.

     Deans began conducting for the graduate students of the University of Victoria’s music program after he was asked if he could switch up his style to accompany some new songs that were weirder than their usual repertoire. “I was like, what does it require, a chainsaw and a little bit of rock and a weird thing here, a weird thing there? So I said yeah, what the hell.” After conducting for three years with UVic, Deans was able to meet tons of student musicians and eventually figured he could do his own show. This spawned the beginnings of Plastic Acid, and the upcoming collaboration with Maria in the Shower.

     Martin Reisle, frontman of Maria in the Shower, came to Deans with the idea of collaborating in an unusual place.

     “I’m actually a glider pilot. I teach gliding in the Columbia Valley. I was flying gliders up there and this guy came out, this really skinny, little human comes out and said he heard that I played the cello,” Deans relayed. Reisle was looking for someone who was innovative with the cello. After singing the song he had in mind out loud to Deans (one can only imagine this scene occurring on the edge of a cliff somewhere, gliders in the background, two quirky musician cartoon characters humming to each other), Deans agreed.  The song, “Train of Pounding Hours” is now done with the full symphony, tying up the end of the show.

     Plastic Acid has gone on to play in various bars and clubs in Vancouver, including Caprice. A video online shows the smoky, cramped club filled with music stands and Deans, standing in a corner swinging his conducting baton as the crowd shouts along to “Black Hole Sun”.

     “I wanted to change it up so people can see it in a bar environment. Really trying to stay away from standard big time. We have a different setup overall, different genres.” The unique experience of Plastic Acid is meant to be as the name implies: semi-akin to doing acid. The aggressive, brassy pieces are not meant to be absorbed passively in a plush theatre seat, with arms crossed and eyelids drooping; but to be rocked out to and engaged with. This time though, they are moving back into the theatre, taking the stage of the Vogue. “We really want people to yell out and scream and participate,” Deans says.  Plastic Acid, infused with Maria in the Shower’s cabaret folk, is anything but your standard, classical orchestra.  It’s the rejuvenation of a tuxedo -filled theatre, but in this scenario, audience members are more likely to be donning faded Pink Floyd T-shirts.

     Now that the group has come full circle, acquiring a large enough fan base for the Vogue, the anti-orchestra has reached out to be a service group for the Junos. “The organizers want to see interest in the group, as well as a concert series lined up before they do anything.”  It’s immediately clear that if Plastic Acid is going to make as large an impact as they should, it’s going to be up to the audience’s participation and adoption of the genre-defying symphony.

     “Let’s say Plastic Acid has a few pieces, our own songs.  Or we play for other artists.  I’d pick Arcade Fire, or Mother Mother, and we arrange some pieces together, so when you’re nominated, we can back you up.  Or even go with Maria in the Shower.  A bit of a Canadian play.”

     Plastic Acid belongs in the group of innovative Canadian artists, slowly making their mark on the international market. Arcade Fire is one such colourful mix of musical geniuses, utilizing every instrument under the sun.  The beauty of Plastic Acid is its ability to transform; it’s a moveable creature, adopting sounds and genres and vaudeville along the way. “Already, people are coming up to me with ideas, asking how we can arrange it.  A heavy metal band approached me for the year after.  It’s already developing and we haven’t even gotten to this show yet.”

Plastic Acid Orchestra plays the Vogue Theatre with Maria in the Shower February 25.

Originally published in The Peak, February 20, 2012

Rotary Dial

“How terrible it is when you say I love you and the person on the other end shouts back ‘What?’

- J.D. Salinger, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters

It was one of those nights that called for bourbon and an intimate phone call.  The hotel bar was long and grimy and the best place to fulfill self-loathing.  I swirled the liquid in the short glass and considered the last time her and I had spoken.  I believe her last words had been precisely:

            “Don’t forget to grab laundry detergent, dear.”

            And that was precisely two months ago.  I don’t know quite what had happened.  I had stuffed my hands into my trouser pockets and walked down the street, eyes skipping from light post to light post, meditating on the way the laundry detergent bottle would feel when I rescued it off the grocery’s shelf and whisked it off the to Maytag awaiting in our basement.  Next thing I knew I was buying an old Cadillac with the urgency of a heart attack and speeding south.

            The stain on the collar of my shirt loomed large and invasive.  I thought of the shape of her lips and coffee mug rims and cigarette burns.  I fingered the few dimes I had left in my pocket – the ones that would have gone towards clean socks and underwear - and held them hard in my fist.  The fellow beside me wore his fedora tilted down over his large pockmarked nose and smoked profusely.  I watched him for ten minutes as he continued to pull cigarettes out of his pocket, smoke them half-way, then grind them savagely into his empty glass.   I had the sensation that I knew this man, not that I’d met him before but that I knew him in a deeper, more profound way; like we had been Buddhist monks together in the year 1234.  Eventually he saw me looking and offered me one.  I declined. I felt I’d smoked those cigarettes that he had, and I’d had enough.

The phone mounted on the wall seemed obtrusively mounted, like anyone walking to the restrooms would undoubtedly walk right into it.  I staked out my bar stool, set my eyes on the narrow hall, fully expecting to see the next person run into it nose first, blood spilling down the front, black like wine.

It had been the freedom of moving my feet forward at first, like the fantasy of driving a car off a bridge: the exhilaration of the fall.  There was no plan, there was no next step.  It had been purely instinct all the way through.  I worked as a ranch hand for thirty days, long enough for it to feel normal. I wandered around the streets of New Orleans, long enough to get a taste for proper bourbon.  I barely spoke; I entertained the thought of never speaking again.  Maybe I’d be one of those monks who wore white robes and shaved their heads and kept their eyes downcast.  I’d wander through the brick alleyways and study strangers and never say a word in response.

I didn’t know what she thought of it - of me.  I’m sure she loathed me.  I’m sure she remained at home like the dutiful wife and mother she was, bathing our daughter in soap that smelled of bubble gum.  I’m sure she continued to make lunches, just in case I’d sneak in through the door late at night and snatch the paper bag, head to a regular day at work.  I’m sure my tie and pale blue shirt were laid on the bed after she’d made it in the morning, as if she expected me to just saunter in with the laundry detergent, nothing out of the ordinary.

I thought of movement as I swirled my glass.  I thought of the way smoke wafts above, not below.  I braced myself for a bloody nose.

After my second glass the feeling had gone.  The feeling of falling, of aimlessly groping had evaporated.  I was now just holding an empty glass and wearing a stained shirt.

It happened the way it does on film: the tunnel vision, the frame of black around that damn telephone.  Still no one had walked into it.  Perhaps I had inaccurately gauged its distance from the wall.  The perfectly circular limitation of view was unnerving.  Was it the bourbon, was I going blind? Is this what extreme cataracts felt like?  I looked away.  Blinked.  The bartender was looking at the phone too; my spirit-animal chain smoker was fixated on it. 

I had to take a piss.  I blinked twice and shoved the glass away, groaned, walked away from my stool.  Avoiding eye contact with the fucking telephone.  Looking down at my rounded brown shoes, I walked forward towards the men’s room, but stopped just in front of the phone.  Picking up the receiver, I just wanted to feel the way the rotary dial clickity-clacked.  I just wanted to feel something cold in my hands. 

I dialed home.  Listened to the dial tone, timing my breathing with each pause. 

“Hello?”  The jingle of a voice I hadn’t heard for two months.  A voice asking for white bread and non-homogenized milk.

“Ah, Alice, it’s me.  I couldn’t find the detergent you like.  I’m coming home now.  I love you.”

“What?”

“I said I love you.”

“What?! I can’t hear you, it’s loud in here.”

She shouted over the loud jazz music in the background.

[we were so young]

We were so young

when marriage flooded our town

and drowned us all.

One after another,

swamped

by champagne pyramids

and pink silk.

“But he’s the one”

each droned on,

weary hand

on soft cheek.

“It just makes sense,”

those wild eyes,

purses filled with plans.

And then I find I’m knee-high in a crowd

of blooms,

quite happy to be stuck in this melancholy state,

quite sure that their youth

was far too unblemished.