Josh Dibb is a musician, producer, studio and mixing engineer, carpenter, and more who performs as Deakin. He’s a founding member of the band Animal Collective, a consistently morphing musical project now spanning over two and a half decades with zero sign of stopping.

From an early age, he would make music and sounds on a multitrack recorder with his childhood friend and eventual bandmate Panda Bear between jokes and a Waldorf curriculum. Going through plenty of change and tumult as they aged into adulthood, they would keep in touch and find their way back to each other through several moves, new schools, and big choices. Animal Collective became a glue that tied them together across continents.

After 35 years, the partnership continues with Panda Bear’s new album Sinister Grift, out now via Domino. Deakin was brought on in its early stages as producer and mixing engineer after an abnormally long stint of touring and recording for Animal Collective.

ellie sunlight moon sat down with Deakin back in late February, who spoke over Zoom from his Baltimore studio about producing and mixing Sinister Grift, scoring the film OBEX, his evolving connection to musicianship and engineering, working in service of others’ music, his qualms with the Dolby Atmos marketing push, and finally tackling his debut solo album.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length. Full transcript is available via ellie’s substack here.

Read the transcript in ellie sunlight moon’s newsletter to here, from here.

Photo by Atiba Jefferson (@atibaphoto).