PHOTO BY AMANDA MUSTARD
Dan Deacon has released The Dark Wizard—Soundtrack from the Docuseries, his original score for the new four-part HBO Max documentary about legendary free climber, highliner and BASE jumper Dean Potter.
Rather than simply soundtrack Potter’s extreme feats, Deacon built the score around the psychology underneath them: obsession, adrenaline, fear and the increasingly blurred line between freedom and self-destruction. Deacon describes Potter’s relationship with extreme risk as a form of emotional regulation, giving him room to push the music through similarly violent swings in texture and tone.
It continues a particularly busy run of soundtrack work for Deacon, following Time and Water, Netflix film Little Brother and the series Task. He also recently won a Los Angeles Emmy for his work on PBS’s Art & Science Collide and contributed a reworking of “Dreaming” to Turnstile’s NEVER ENOUGH: VERSIONS.
The Dark Wizard—Soundtrack from the Docuseries is out now via Lakeshore Records. Deacon returns to Texas on November 6 for a show at Austin’s 29th Street Ballroom.
