Dan Deacon’s 2007 album Spiderman Of The Rings attracted a flurry of national press coverage both for the Baltimore-based musician and Wham City, the  multi-media collective of artists at which Deacon is the center. But so much of that coverage focused on the external facts — the wild live shows, the illegal warehouse venues, the bizarre outfits, the eccentricity of the whole Wham City scene — that something almost got lost in the shuffle: that Dan Deacon is kind of a brilliant guy who made a great record.

Spiderman Of The Rings was, at its core, a bedroom techno record, essentially a guy turning dials on machines and seeing what sounds come out. What came out was surprisingly pop, with big bursting melodies, bright textures and occasional vocal chants that translated into celebratory live shows, but it still started with a guy in a room with a machine. The follow-up, Bromst, is a departure in terms of its creation, given the 15-piece band now playing Deacon’s compositions on live instruments. But in practice, the results are almost shockingly similar to the sounds he made on his own; the drummers still play like the drums Deacon used to program, and the guitars and keyboards get spliced into pixelated fragments just the same. And all the new approaches being applied to the same ideas would be a disappointment, if it weren’t still as exhilarating and intricate as Spiderman, albeit less fresh this time around.

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Given that Deacon’s pieces are more symphonic in nature than songs per se, it’s ultimately more movements and musical motifs that stand out, rather than lyrics or melodies. The rubbery texture of the digitally bent bassline on “Woof Woof” may be the album’s single most hair-raising sound, while the the cascading and constantly multiplying pianos on “Slow With Horns/Run For Your Life” provide one of Deacon’s finest moments as an arranger.

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The biggest difference between Bromst and its predecessor may be that now virtually every track is an epic, often stretching past the 6-minute mark. Meanwhile the variety in sonic textures has gotten somewhat narrower, making for a more homogenous album and, unfortunately, a more monotonous listening experience. In that context, “Wet Wings,” a 3-minute miniature composed of disorienting layers of female vocals, is the perfect mid-album palette-cleanser. Still, it’s the album’s more extravagant full-band arrangements that stand out on their own the best.