Deakin

Deakin is the performing name of Joshua Caleb Dibb, an American multi-instrumentalist and member of Animal Collective. He is born in Orange, California, and meets future bandmates Noah Lennox, David Portner and Brian Weitz while at high school in Baltimore, Maryland. With Lennox, Portner and Weitz, he records homemade material and later helps develop the group that becomes Animal Collective, a project associated with psychedelic pop, psychedelia, neo-psychedelia, ambient, Krautrock, electronic music and indie rock.

Animal Collective

Dibb is a founding member of Animal Collective and remains part of the group, although he takes several breaks from its activity. The band begins as a loose collaboration between school friends and later uses the Animal Collective name for different combinations of the four musicians’ recordings and performances. Dibb tours with the group from 2004 to the end of 2006 and records on Feels and Strawberry Jam, then steps away temporarily for creative and personal reasons. He is absent from the band when Merriweather Post Pavilion appears in 2009, but returns for the 2010 visual album ODDSAC and the 2012 album Centipede Hz. He also contributes to Tangerine Reef in 2018.

Solo work as Deakin

While away from Animal Collective, Dibb records under the Deakin name and makes remixes for acts including Phoenix, Goldfrapp, Ratatat and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. He raises money through a Kickstarter campaign to fund a debut solo album that is intended to include an elaborate book and CD, and to support the charity Temedt, which helps enslaved Tuareg people in Mali. The project takes longer than expected, and he later says that most of the money goes to Temedt and that he finances the album himself. In 2016, his solo debut Sleep Cycle appears on his My Animal Home label. He also performs his first solo set of material in Baltimore in 2010.