Deastro is twenty-three-year old Randolph Chabot, from the techno spawning city of Detroit.
He is currently in the process of setting free Deastro’s ethereal electronic space-pop from the basement of his parent’s house where the demos for his first major release ‘Keepers’ was constructed. Having played a handful of well-received spring shows in the UK in support of current album ‘Moondagger’, Chabot is presently touring the States and finding a very appreciative audience for his new work, now with complete live band.
‘Moondagger’ has seen Chabot expand Deastro’s remit from his own private sonic experiments to a wider, more expansive sound. “My other stuff was made mainly by myself but ‘Moondagger’ was more of a collaborative effort,” he informs me, “I wrote all the songs, but the guys were more involved with the parts to add over the top of it. It’s sometimes scary but always inspirational.”
As something that started out so personal and private, the Deastro of ‘Moondagger’ is embracing the live arena with vigour. “It feels really good, I love performing, I love being able to interact with the audience and trying to break down walls between participator and performer. I try and include everybody, dragging people on stage or singling out one person in the audience to kind of mess with them a little bit. It’s just something to make people feel connected.”
Naturally, Chabot picks up the same influences that residents of Motor City going back to Motown have drawn upon: “I think a lot of that is that the people of Michigan are really amazing people. I remember being seventeen and one of the first songs I ever wrote was a song called ‘Dark Water Bayou’. It’s pretty much a song saying that I’m so proud of the people of Detroit that they wake up every morning and keep going. I think we’re really onto something here and that’s where a lot of my inspiration comes from.”
Deastro has a signature sound of otherworldliness and optimism that Chabot explains by saying, “I get in this really weird mood when I play, I don’t know what happens, but something comes over me when I play. I like to get people to put their hands in the air and promise never to do certain things, never to be afraid about being alive again, and I hope that they walk away with the courage to keep doing what they’re doing and to keep loving people. I think it was Francis Bacon that said that the hope for humanity rests in the fact that we can take the good and leave the bad, and I hope that people walk away from our shows feeling inspired to do just that, to leave with something a little bit more encouraging.”
It’s a bold statement, but one listen to ‘Moondagger’ will add some much needed enrichment to many listeners’ lives.
Words by Karl O’Keeffe
