Chris Connor chats with Task composer Dan Deacon…
HBO’s Task has been one of the best reviewed shows of recent months, living up to the lofty expectations following Brad Inglesby’s widely acclaimed Mare of Easttown. We sat down with the show’s composer Dan Deacon to discuss how the show differed to some of the previous films and show’s he’s scored. Dan spoke of the process of working on his first HBO series, balancing the FBI investigation and criminal aspects of the show and blend of rural locations and Philadelphia settings.
When did you first get involved with Task, and what were your first steps?
It was a long process of joining the team. It’s a very important project for HBO, and I’ve never done a series for them of this size. I had worked with [executive producer] Jeremiah Zagarbefore on Hustle and Monster Factory and some commercial work, so we had a great relationship. He said “hey, I’m working on this thing with Brad Anglesby. If you watched Mare [and I had seen Mare and loved it], you and Brad should meet. I think it would be cool”. Luckily, right around then, I had a ballet staged in Philadelphia, and they were both in town. So, they both came and watched the ballet; luckily, it was in line with what Brad was into for the series, it was a heavy, Steve Reich, Philip Glass influence, very heavy on minimalism.
So, we met backstage and during the party, and just started nerding out on things, “do you like Meredith Monk? Do you like turtle dreams?” Just going in on minimalism, and we stayed in touch. Brad helped me get through the process with HBO, and we just started talking about music, where, you know, when you meet someone, you are like a kid, and you are like”, do you like this?” That, to me, is the heart of any collaboration, you must feel a friendship and a bond with these people, because you are really in the weeds for a long time. It’s like a roommate. I’ve moved in with a lot of people that I wish I had not. Now I look at this a little differently, but it felt good. It felt right off the bat, oh, we could. I could hang with this person the way they give notes, the way they encourage, praise and support is good, and the way they give critique is also just as good. It felt like everything was coming from this truly collaborative spot.
So, I officially got on board in January of 2024. I got the scripts and just started writing demos based on the scripts and seeing how there were all these different assemblies of families. If you think of the task force as a family, and Tom’s family, Robbie’s family and the Dark Hearts and how they intersect and overlap different people’s roles within the family. Family isn’t always sunshine and rainbows, as the show, I think, very accurately depicts. The way I like to start I like to just read the scripts and treat them as inspiration for standalone music. I am not going, “oh, this could work for Susan’s theme, or this could work for the Dark Hearts”. It’s sort of, I read this, and I write this, and some things would stick, and some things wouldn’t, and that subtractive process of what isn’t the show’s sound is just as informative as the stuff that makes it in.
The big turning point, I think, in finding our sound was when I went up to Philly and they were on set shooting in what was the FBI headquarters, and there’s this scene in episode one, and they’re saying we didn’t have anything for that. They were saying we need something with drums, busy, Dan Deacon style. I said “all right”, so I kind of just whipped something together, and in between sets, we’d go into the room with the least mold, because, even though the office looks really nice in the show that’s been in, a non-used building for quite a while, so it’s pretty rough. We found the least disgusting room, we would huddle around with a headphone splitter, and they would give notes, and that was the first time we were talking about that, and that’s a bespoke cue. There are no other usages of it in the show. We knew that right off the bat, this is a one-off, but we just want there to be some joy injected here. I think we’re going to need it.
Then during lunch, I’d sent Brad maybe a dozen demos at this point, and he’d opened up the stems of every single demo in a tab in his browser, and he was DJing the stems via Dropbox links. He said, I really like these bowed vibes with this alto flute. I’d never been that in the weeds on a project before, with the showrunner that early, “what about this, and this and that could work for this theme”. We got a lot of material out of that session, and it just showed me how involved and invested and thorough the process Brad was, and it just gave me a great deal of respect for the dedication because it was, we’re talking hundreds of stems, and these are interior voices, the bowed vibes, not sitting. This was on a track that probably had about 64 stems, and it was originally a very piano and harp-focused cue, and, in the show, it ends up being just alto flute and bowed vibes because of that. So I don’t know, that to me was when I feel like the show’s sound really started, that session. I’d say that’s when things really started forming.
With this following both the FBI and the crew. How did you find balancing those sounds?
We wanted to keep it as modular as possible, because there is a lot of overlap between these groups, and even though it might take a long time for them to meet, or they might never meet, they’re still meeting the inner dialogue of a lot of the characters, Maeve, I think, is a really interesting character because she has a lot of connective tissue. So, thinking about themes being relayed through her mind, it’s her POV to the audience. I think musically a lot, and it gives us an ability to, I’m trying to, say this without any spoilers, the way you described it earlier, with pivoting and making sure that things could be stacked and layered.
I use timbre a lot as a motif, more than melody, and I wanted to make sure, timbre-wise things would work, because we didn’t want to have a lot of busy melodies. And we wanted, you know, melodies are obviously vital, but to me as an electronic musician, my primary instrument is electronics and computers, thinking about the timbre and texture over anything else, and making sure that that would work and certain timbers would cut through and be unique. We didn’t try to go all Peter and the Wolf on this, but certainly wanted to make sure that we could, as the story gets more and more complex as the series goes on, that we would be able to have these unique textures and timbres stick through and still say okay, that means the crew, and this means the Dark Hearts, and this means Tom’s family, and this means Robbie’s family, stuff like that.
Obviously, there are similarities to Mare of Easttown here. Were you careful not to kind of tread on the toes of that and make the score its own thing?
Yes, and it was almost a non-thought, it felt so different as a series and a different approach to music. In Mare, there are a great deal of needle drops that read as score, in addition to the score. Brad was pretty upfront about that, saying I want to avoid this as much as possible. I want there to be a strong motif. I love Mare, I love the music in it, and I think they did a great job, but we wanted this to feel completely different.
Were there any particularly unorthodox sounds you’re going for? There are a lot of quiet moments with minimal sound.
We definitely didn’t want it to be wall-to-wall, and we wanted it to be impactful. Having worked with Jeremiah a bunch, I knew he was going to take that approach. When I got the pilot and saw the cut. I thought, “great, there’s not a lot of music, but where it is, it’s a character, and it has impact”. It had the right amount to me. I wouldn’t say it has a little amount of music either, as it has quite a bit. It’s not like, oh, you know, we could have music here, so let’s have it. Every ingredient in the stew was vital. It wasn’t just throwing everything in the pot, so unorthodox sounds. One note, especially from Jeremiah, he really just wanted the weirdest. He said, “did you feel weird strings? Give me the weirdest strings?” So, we did a lot of extended technique with the strings, and I focused a lot on the viola, just because I love the performance we got from the players. It’s funny, they kept trading instruments during the session, so my tracks are all mislabelled.
We wanted it to be emotional, but we didn’t want it to be a hat on a hat, which is what was said quite a bit is the performances are extremely emotional and very strong, and we didn’t want to go, “now cry for us”. So, we tried to tread the line there but still allow ourselves to show the emotion that it was to not shy away or undercut, but certainly not to stand in front of simultaneously. When we wanted the score to get big, we really wanted to allow ourselves to get big. We didn’t want this to be understated or muted. I think a lot of dramas on television, in particular these days, don’t allow the score to get to an epic level. We would at least test it getting there. We would go in with multiple versions, saying, “all right, well, if this is the maximum and this is the minimum, what’s one above minimum and what’s one under maximum?” Then we would see which one landed the best. So, letting the showrunners and the producers get on the stage and say, “okay, well, here’s version four, orchestra, choir, tons of electronics, and here’s just the string quartet and everything in between”. So, I tried not to be precious about what it was going to be but making sure that we had in our toolbox everything and anything, because the sound design is also so important, just making sure that the totality of the sound was there. We never wanted to get to the stage and think, god, I wish there was something more here. It’s much easier to pull something out on the stage than to add it in. In my opinion,
What, for you, are the main differences between, say, working on an album or scoring something like this?
Oh, it’s completely different. It’s a bit like saying, “what’s the difference between exercising and running for your life?” I figured out pretty early on in my film scoring career that I didn’t know what I was doing, and it is different from album writing. So I took a big break, I got my score for my first film in 2010, and it was for Francis Ford Coppola, and I had no idea what I was doing, and it’s something I’ve always wanted to do, but I studied composition in college, not film scoring. So I didn’t know what a cue sheet was. I didn’t know that they were called cues. When you write music for yourself, and as a recording artist, it’s a very different set-up. So, I kind of got out of it for a while, and then I wanted to get back into it around 2015, and I met up with this emerging filmmaker, Theo Anthony, who was making his first feature. He had a couple of successful shorts, and we sort of discovered how to make films as a director and a composer, and that relationship of director and composer together.
That’s when I realised, “oh, I do want to do this”, but it is so remarkably different, the process of taking notes and collaborating. This felt like collaborating with non-musicians on music for a particular story in a particular universe, and that allows me to make music that I would never make as a solo artist. One, because there’s this whole new narrative that’s outside of my thought process. Two, they have ideas about music that they can’t articulate musically, so I have to try to decipher what they are. And that process shapes the way both of us think about music and changes the destination on the map to where we’re going. It’s like a puzzle where, being a recording artist is it’s just a completely different map, and it makes me appreciate the music that I do get to write for myself, but I love the collaboration.
That’s the part that I think I was missing as someone who did put out multiple solo albums and toured as a solo artist, these collaborations with filmmakers and hearing the logic arguments that happen to be, well, “why are we doing this? Okay, let’s find a reason to justify, and let’s see”. We’ll have the whole logic argument, and then the true test is laying it in and seeing how it actually sounds or works in the context. I think that’s the biggest difference is that they’re both music, but I don’t know, it’s just completely, completely different. The Venn diagram rarely forms more than a sliver in the centre.
It’s good that you’re able to shift between the two.
I mean, I feel very lucky to do that. At first, it didn’t make sense to me why it was so separate. Now you have to have a real non-attachment. Nothing is precious. I have this piece ‘Weeping Birch’ that ended up on my last record, and it was originally in that first film that I scored, and it didn’t make the film, and both me and the director, the temp title of the track was ‘Theo Loves This’, and it was too much, and it didn’t fit the vocabulary of the rest of the score, and it didn’t fit a scene. It just didn’t make sense. I thought, “oh, I wonder if I can rework this in a way that makes sense as a Dan Deacon piece”. That’s the one piece of music where that has ever happened, and that I wrote 10 years ago. I thought that would happen a lot more, but it doesn’t. And I think it happened because I was still largely writing as a recording artist scoring a film, where now, with Task, the music for Task is pretty purely Task, and the music for Venom was uniquely Venom, and the music for Hustle was uniquely Hustle, so because they were shaped by those other collaborators and the story and all that.
With my solo work, it’s just me in my head, in my studio, and I’m trying to find a way to make a record that reflects this new practice. It’s very different, and it can be really jarring to go from putting out record upon record and without anyone being like, “don’t do that. I don’t like this”. Domino Records aren’t going to be, ” Dan, this song needs a better chorus”. At times, I’m thinking, “tell me, this sucks. This sucks, right?” It’s fun to have this job where it’s like, please go this way musically, and then have my recording pathway be, Here’s the deep, dark woods. Go see what I can discover in it. They’re both horrifying. You know, being constantly afraid is the most important thing you can be as an artist. No, I’m just kidding.
With Task, you have both the rural landscape with an urban element to it. Did you enjoy exploring both those areas?
It’s a lot like Baltimore, similar level of crime, and right outside the city, 20 or 30 minutes outside the city, it’s the same rivers and quarries and the same type of tree growth. I remember, once when we were really stressed on the show, I went to where I normally go. It was winter, and I just, you know, got in the water, and, the next episode came, and I was like, this is exactly like what I just did. This felt like, I’m living in Task. I think that’s the nice part about living in this part of the East Coast is that it is very quickly thick, overgrown woods and immediately back into extremely dynamic cities with elements of decay and large city vibes. And I grew up on Long Island, and its endless suburbs.
So, you get to the beach, and then you’re in the city, New York, and then, similarly to New York, it goes on for forever, pretty much, until Philadelphia. But once you get outside of Philly, especially to the west or the south. The same with Baltimore, once you get out and head up into, you know, near the reservoirs and following the streams and the creeks, it’s, it has an almost otherworldly vibe. And I love that. There are a couple of shots in Task that you feel like you’re in the middle of nowhere, and really, it’s about 30 minutes away from downtown. I think that it’s a unique headspace to be in. So it was fun to work in that, because sometimes you go out there to feel like you’re in the middle of nowhere, but it’s nice to know, okay, I can get home and do what I have to, look, I don’t have any of the urgency of the characters of Task, but it’s a unique part of the world, for sure. I was reading the reviews, and people keep talking about the accents. I didn’t notice the accents at all because it’s so similar. I hear so many people with that accent all the time. It’s bizarre.
Was there anything in particular you wanted to kind of emphasise on the score for Task?
I don’t think so. It was just it was fun living in a seven-hour film like this and thinking about it like that, and the way that the core team thought about music and that initia, it’s just fun. It was fun to be on something that had such high stakes, which is coming off of an extremely decorated nomination and award-heavy series, and for people to still go, “let’s experiment, lt’s find something through the process of discovery”. It was,rare to say let’s do what’s safe. And that was an extremely inspiring place to be in as the show’s composer, to be “let’s see what we can do”, that felt great. And I think that, you know, I just want to publicly, I say this all the time, but thank you to Brad and Jeremiah and Sally and everybody for being so open to finding the show’s sound.
Many thanks to Dan Deacon for taking the time for this interview.
Chris Connor
