Danny Peck has been crafting music for nearly 30 years, evolving from MS-DOS trackers to modern digital audio workstations. His journey includes scoring for video games, indie films, and releasing dozens of albums under various monikers like dep and A Defiant Heart.
Now, Danny returns to his roots, releasing music under his own name and embracing a new creative process with "Where Hope Goes, Fear Follows", scheduled for release on August 14, 2024.
Be taken to another world completely and immerse yourself with "Where Hope Goes, Fear Follows," a collection of lush, imaginative, often experimental orchestral ballads from composer and producer Danny Peck
"Where Hope Goes, Fear Follows" is about starting over, it's about growing older and facing one's intensifying thoughts around legacy and mortality. I made this while going through a lot of changes in my life, and honestly it's also a lifetime culmination of my own creative process.
I've spent the better part of the last 3 decades making music in one form or another. I started experimenting in the 90s, fiddling around with trackers in MS-DOS before I started using notation software in Windows. I spent a lot of time in school involved with band, learning instruments and enjoying the creative process. I even composed a piece for my high school band once.
Into adulthood I continued playing various instruments, and experimenting with both analog and digital gear. Along the way I did some scoring for video games and indie movies. Nothing major, more pet projects that allowed me to keep pushing myself creatively.
In addition to music I've been a software programmer professionally since 2001. I think there's a really interesting intersection between making software and making music, and I've been trying to apply lessons and techniques from one to the other over the years. I think in a lot of ways making music is a way to bring balance to my life of writing code which is at its core a very analytical process. I will say though that the process of making music is also highly analytical, and the process of making software is also highly creative.
I released a lot of albums, dozens of them, across many different monikers. I collaborated with other creative friends and professions as well. I always eventually found myself back in the studio alone. It really has always been therapy for me. That's why for the new album I'm wanting to return to releasing music under my own name, Danny Peck. It's about stripping away the masks.
Fast forward to 2023. My wife and I moved to a small town in Michigan, and I decided, by both necessity and intuition, that it was time to start over. I built my studio from the ground up, replaced all of my existing software, started over with new hardware and equipment. I kept my trusty Korg piano keyboard, but everything else was a complete reinvention.
Last year I moved on from tracker-driven music making software. For me, this was the key. Tracker sequencers, I realized, forced me into a rigid grid, stifling my creativity, and forcing me down the same path with each song again and again. Everything I made, to me largely sounded and felt the same. I needed a change.
That's really the impetus of this new album, “Where Hope Goes, Fear Follows” — It's about starting over, it's about growing older and facing one's intensifying thoughts around legacy and mortality. I made this while going through a lot of changes in my life, and honestly it's also a lifetime culmination of my own creative process.