Artist Of The Day: dep

Imagine yourself running through the forest, shoes flung into the bushes. The fog of the dawn is thick, so thick you can barely see your hands. It’s soft earth under your feet, though—must have rained last night—and it kisses your heels every time they touch the ground. All you have with you is the misty hope of something waiting for you at the other end of the path and the murmurs of the birds to guide you there. These are not exercises in visualizing: these are the last known surroundings of one Danny Peck, though he’d prefer it if you called him dep. Quite literally. The song’s name is “Last Known Surroundings.”

He’s a wanderer, dep: from the throes of his bedroom, he’s written 19 albums, dabbling in everything from acoustic folk to electronica. Yet it’s on Ever Looming, his twentieth release, that he asserts he’s really found himself—in all honesty, the music speaks for itself. Say hello to thundering walls of percussion, distant but ever-so-slightly morose vocal chants, dazzling toybox keys, and soulful strings adding up to what feels like the soundtrack for the Inception sequel Christopher Nolan never wrote. Ever Looming is a fitting opus for a bedroom producer, a blanket for troubled souls, capturing a sense of exhaustive wandering but balancing it with aesthetic beauty and a soothing peace. It’s hard to see in the fog, but dep promises you that you are not alone. And he has the musical chops to make you believe it.

Ever Looming is available for free now, and you can also find plenty of info on dep (not to mention downloads!) on his official page.