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Dan Deacon releases mountainous new single

By Andy Malt | Published on Tuesday 14 January 2020

Dan Deacon has released new single ‘Become A Mountain’. The track is taken from his new album ‘Mystic Familiar’, which is set for release through Domino on 31 Jan.

“During the four years over which I composed the songs that became ‘Mystic Familiar’, I began going to therapy and started a meditation practice”, says Deacon. “I felt raw and vulnerable while making this album, and I wanted the music to reflect that”.

“Like many people who’ve been in a dark mindset for a long time, self-compassion and non-judgmental thinking were a real challenge for me, entirely new habits that needed to be learned basically from scratch”, he goes on.

“When I would try to embrace having positive thoughts”, he adds, “they didn’t feel like my own, but rather another entity’s thoughts trying to speak to me. While writing, I began thinking of these thoughts as a ‘Mystic Familiar’ – my own personal supernatural companion – trying to communicate with me. Externalising the thoughts made them easier to fully realise and reflect upon”.

Of the new single, he says: “The lyrics in ‘Become A Mountain’ lay out the framework for the album’s overall concept: a narrator and their Mystic Familiar. Our narrator, in the opening verse and choruses, is trying to learn how to be self-compassionate, to live a life in the present while being able to deal with self-doubt and anxiety in a lifetime of great flux and foundational transformations”.

“Meanwhile, our Mystic Familiar, in verse two and the pre-choruses, tries to help guide the transformations of our narrator through mantras coaxing me to be present in the now, even while also being an element of chaos itself”.

Watch the video for ‘Become A Mountain’ here:

Deacon will also be touring from the end of the month:

31 Jan: Dublin, Grand Social
1 Feb: Glasgow, Classic Grand
4 Feb: Leeds, Brudenell Social Club
6 Feb: London, Scala