I would rather be in the place your music takes me

“One of the things that makes us stand out,” said Pace Rubadeau, “forget all that other stuff about being able to play three hours nonstop and improv the whole time. I mean, that’s beautiful and that’s awesome, but what makes us stand out is the kind of ears we turn on.”

Like for the gauged-eared headbanger from Ash Street Saloon, the uptight white-collar bicyclist, seven-year-old Nelson, the wandering beach walker or the 70-year-old woman who left a note in their tip jar saying, “I would rather be in the place your music takes me,” there can be no debate as to the boundless reach of Deklun and Pace’s music. Miller, also known as Deklun, mans the electronic beats and mood while Rubadeau moans and groans through his trumpet, utilizing the trumpet’s wordlessness as a medium for international transcendence.

Rubadeau accuses Miller of electronic bliss hypnosis and Miller accuses Rubadeau of telepathic musical understanding, but together they become an unstoppable force reaching out to shake you from your daily sleepwalk, urging you to see with open eyes and ears. They create organic and atmospheric tangles of time and space.

“We need time,” Rubadeau said, “to take you on a journey—a journey in sound. No matter what, somewhere in that 90 minutes you will have two or three minutes of just…you lost yourself, you forgot you were listening to music, you forgot your surroundings. And because that happens when I’m playing and I think it happens when [Miller] is playing, I imagine it’s happening for the strangers too.”

Having played everywhere from the coast to the city to the mountains, Deklun and Pace seem to gravitate towards venues and experiences more suitable to their unique style of music. Their style can only be described accurately as such: improvisational exploration of expression. The kind of venues that suit this style are places like the venue-less beaches of Seaside and Del Rey, Portland’s Lan Su Chinese Gardens, Washington’s Mt. Baker and Oregon’s other hidden treasure landscapes.

One of the duo’s signature moves is renting out a generator and setting up wherever the flow takes them, offering musical creation to the natural world. Driving down Highway 26 once, they noticed a road sign, Music Road, beckoning them to follow and come play a while. After following this road for a little more than five miles, they pulled over, got out of the car, set up the generator and let loose. A video and CD of this beautiful experience can be found on their website, www.sonicbids.com/deklunpace.

“Our music,” Miller said, “is a good fit for nature. People say they notice people dancing and their feet getting rooted in the ground and they start becoming like moving trees. They’re connecting with our music and that’s translating from our love for nature.”

A show that has left unforgettable imprints on both musicians’ memories was the Festival 542 in Glacier, Wa. Festival 542 was an outdoor enthusiast kind of festival, providing 25 miles of scenic highway for bicyclists, runners and walkers to enjoy for the weekend. Deklun and Pace set up at both the beginning of the race and the end.

“It was a little scary for us,” Miller said, “to play for an audience that wasn’t there solely for us. We were more accompaniment for the festival. But everyone commented on how amazing it was because it fit so well. They heard it 12 miles down the road as they were climbing on their bikes, and told us that they felt like we were pulling them to the finish line.”    

At the same festival, Rubadeau set up to record the session and although the winds were too heavy to catch any quality sound from the show, the recording did catch one magical moment.

“He couldn’t have been more than seven or eight,” Rubadeau said. “He was talking to his dad saying things like, ‘this music is sad’ and his dad would say, ‘well it’s not always sad, sometimes it sounds happy,’ and the last thing you hear on the recording is him picking up a CD and telling his dad he wants to listen to it on the way home. This tiny, tiny little voice. It was pretty much the only thing that came out crystal clear on the recording, after 90 minutes of wind.”

The fact of the matter is that these guys are on to something fresh and truly unique. They create once-in-a-lifetime soundscapes for audiences of all shapes and sizes by stretching their own creativity to encompass all they believe music should be about: experimentation, mood and improvisation. Miller calls the experience, for both themselves and for listeners, a “sonic sojourn” and Rubadeau calls it a “listening session,” but there can be no deliberation as to the authenticity and spiritual quality of their approach to the creation of music. ?