Lakeshore Records announces the 
release today of The Dark Wizard—Soundtrack from the Docuseries with an original score composed by Dan Deacon. The exhilarating original music captures the intensity of the life of Dean Potter underscoring the transportive thrilling moments as well as the darker aspects of his psyche. The original series streams on HBO Max.
The Dark Wizard is a four-part HBO Max documentary series that explores the extraordinary life, achievements, and inner turmoil of legendary free climber, highliner, and BASE jumper Dean Potter.
Director Nick Rosen notes: “We were initially drawn to Dan Deacon as a recording artist, having grooved out to his tracks for more than a decade. Throughout the process, it seemed like Dan was intuitively connected to Dean and his roiling emotions, as he and Chester crafted an indie-inflected soundtrack of grandiose landscapes, angsty tension, intimate storytelling and the complex character at the center of it all.”
Deacon adds: “To me, The Dark Wizard tells the tragedy of obsession through someone using extreme, life-threatening risk as a form of emotional regulation. I set out to compose a score that captured Dean’s emotional turmoil as a human being, as well as the audience’s mounting anxiety, knowing that something inevitable was barreling towards them. Dean’s massive swings allowed me to take the score to equally wild extremes of texture and tone. We needed to feel the fear he felt, know the adrenaline addiction was growing, and start to sense a point of no return emerging with his obsessions. Something that stuck with me while writing the score was how Dean really embodied the “fuck you” mentality Gen X had towards selling out to corporate culture, and the impact it had on him when he started playing the game. He needed to be so many different things to himself, and ultimately, his obsessions took stronger root than his initial intentions. Nick, Peter, and the whole team did an incredible job of presenting Dean as both a person and a legend. It allowed me, as the composer, to lean in when we should feel scared with Dean, excited for his accomplishments, or pissed off at him.”
ABOUT DAN DEACON
Baltimore-based Dan Deacon is a composer, experimental artist and performer renowned for his five studio albums of innovative electronic music, his live performances in both contemporary and classical settings, and his extensive body of work in film and television scores. His rapidly growing list of prominent film credits including Little Brother (Soundtrack from the Netflix Film), last year’s Task Original Series Soundtrack and PBS’s Art & Science Collide, for which he just won the Los Angeles Emmy Award for Music Composition, Time and Water is the latest in Deacon’s rapidly growing list of prominent film and television credits.
Deacon has premiered compositions at Carnegie Hall, the Barbican Centre, and Lincoln Center, and collaborated with artists and institutions including Kronos Quartet, Sō Percussion, The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the LA Philharmonic, and Justin Peck with the New York City Ballet. Deacon’s most recent studio album is Mystic Familiar (2020, Domino Recording Company).
ABOUT LAKESHORE RECORDS
Lakeshore Records is a GRAMMY-winning record label, and the soundtrack arm of the Cutting Edge Group. Lakeshore Records is the global independent leader in top line soundtrack album releases, including such popular, critically acclaimed and classic soundtracks as Bridgerton, Stranger Things, Wednesday, Fallout, John Wick, Whiplash, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, Drive, Cyberpunk 2077 / Edgerunners, Star Trek: Picard, Bojack Horseman, The Walking Dead, Napoleon Dynamite, Red Dead Redemption 2, the Grammy-winning Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: Dawn of Ragnarok, the Academy Award nominated Lady Bird and Academy Award winners Moonlight, Little Miss Sunshine, American Factory, If Beale Street Could Talk, The Hurt Locker and many, many more.
For more information, contact: www.lakeshorerecords.com
Read Lakeshore’s blog Soundtracks, Scores And More here: https://soundtracksscoresandmore.com
