Dan Deacon composed the original score for Rat Film, an awesome-looking documentary about his home city of Baltimore and its tangled history with the titular rodents. Today, he’s released a piece from the soundtrack called “Redlining,” whose title presumably refers to the racist New Deal-era lending practices that led to de facto segregation in cities like Baltimore that persists to this day. (Rat Film uses its premise to investigate “the historical crimes of segregation and contempt for the city’s black residents,” reads a glowing New Yorker review.)
In contrast to Deacon’s best-known work, the music “Redlining” is placid and crystalline, built on a fidgety player piano that might bring to mind the great 20th-century composer Conlon Nancarrow. Hear it below.
