Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Journey & Destination

This has been an eternity in the making. I've been working on this album for two plus years. I recorded the initial set of about 8 demos in the first six months, and then spent about another year just making songs here and there. And then after that I spent another 6 months just kind of tweaking here and there. This album is still far from perfect, but I came to the realization, that if I kept trying to make it perfect, that it would probably never get released. So I bit the bullet and decided that this is as good as it's going to get right now.

The title and general theme of this album is the idea that some people believe in the journey of life and that some people believe in the destination. How for some people it's all about the experiences you have while living, and for some some people it's all about working toward an End Result and they don't care how they get there, just as long as they do. I've tried to decide what kind of person I am, and I've come to realization that I'm a little of both, which made for an interesting musical theme for this album. If you look at the song titles, artwork and content of the album a little more closely you might find a little bit more there than you'd think. Every thing on this album was very intentional, and thought out.

When I made Homage Collage I had just started getting into electronic music more, and when I started DJing I got insanely into electro, which is where a lot of my inspiration for this album came from. Even though I wouldn't really consider this an electro album. In my eyes it's much more of an electronic rock album. Which has always kind of been the type of music I make. Check the inspiration section to get a pretty big list of the stuff I was listening to while making J&D. I spent so many days walking around with my ipod on listening to Toxic Avenger, and Justice trying to figure out how they made the sounds they did. The whole album is kind of a love letter to all those electronic artist that I've been banging my head too for these past few years.

This album is a big change in sound from my first album Homage Collage, and my next album (which yes, I am already working on) is going to be an even bigger leap. It's kind of strange releasing this album now because I feel like my music has already really evolved past the sound presented on this album, and for a brief period I actually considered never releasing this. It all came down to a question of Journey & Destination for me. If the experience of making these songs was enough or if I needed something to show for it. In the end I decided that I'd spent way to much time and energy to banish this album to my archives. So here it is finally. Enjoy.

JOURNEY & DESTINATION
1.Dance Lessons
2.End Result
3.Captcha
4.AT-AT
5.Ampersand
6.Hearts & Minds
7.Mars Is Bright Tonight
8.iROC
9."Wearing A Moustache"

Status: Official 2nd album
File Under: Journey & Destination
Duration: 43:42
Inspiration: Toxic Avenger, Boys Noize, RAC, Justice, MSTRKRFT, Simian Mobile Disco, 65daysofstatic, Daft Punk, Innerpartysystem, The Bloody Beetroots, Fake Blood, Steve Aoki, Ratatat, Surkin, DIM, Data, Danger, Kavinsky, Sebastian, Felix Cartal, DJ Mehdi, Crookers, and a shit ton more

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Wolves Release Schedule


I haven't been updating this blog quite as much as I was hoping I would be, but to keep me honest I'm posting my to do list, and the projects I'm working on.

Upcoming releases:

- Later This Week: Passion Pit - Sleepyhead (Wolves Remix) (UPDATE: I posted this, and for some reason Blogger had me take it down (twice!), so it's gone permanently (off of the blog) you can still find it on my site)
- Next Week: Journey & Destination full album release
- Following Week: Kid Cudi - Day n' Nite (Wolves Remix)

Future Releases/In the Works:
- Wolf Tape (wolves' hip-hop mixtape)
- Untitled Ocarina Of Time Remix Project
- Distortion & Compression (extras from J&D)
- Mountain Range (?)

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

DADA music

This album is kind of more of a compilation or anthology of sorts. DADA music is basically a collection of the best mash-ups I've done over the past five years. It all started a long time ago back during my days in Who-Rey-Grad. I was making these mixtapes that I called Heironymous Machine. I did two and started working on a third one (which I worked on for about 2 years and subsequently never finished). Recently I realized I had all this music just sitting on my computer and some of it wasn't half bad, so I decided to put all the stuff that was any good together and release it as an album under my wolves moniker. All the tracks have been tweaked and retouched so if you had somehow came across the original stuff, these version should be a lot better.


The name Dada music come from the DADA movement in which artist took things out of magazines and newspapers and made art pieces out of them. An eerily similar process compared to how I construct my mash-ups. These are definitely not your traditional mash-ups (not to pat myself on the back for doing something original, but to warn you that these may not be what you would traditionally expect to hear when you hear the phrase mash-up). Another little disclaimer, like I said before a lot of this stuff is super old an even though I polished every, thing it's all still a little rough, but that's kind of half the fun of it, so be gentle. Well enough of my ramblings, below are all the liner notes and links to downloads:


DADA music

All music stolen and then cut and pasted by Wolves Of Saint August

01 Machine *

02 Laude Mouths (FALL OF TROY vs VELVET TEEN)

03 Robot-Human-Absolution (DAFT PUNK vs MUSE)

04 The Quiet Sunrise (BRAND NEW vs MINUS THE BEAR)

05 Crunk Shiskas At Club Tokyo (SAY ANYTHING vs TOKYO POLICE CLUB)

06 A Valuable Lesson **

07 Protest Tongs 65' (65DAYSOFSTATIC vs ANIMAL COLLECTIVE vs REFUSED)

08 Disgrace Anthem (RADIOHEAD vs FUGAZI)

09 Passenger Of America (MONEEN vs DEFTONES)

10 Close To The Edge Of A Floating World (ANATHALLO vs YES)

11 Future Worlds (RUSH vs DELTRON 3030)

12 Journey ***

DOWNLOAD FULL ALBUM


* Samples: Sharks Keep Moving, At-The Drive In, The Velvet Teen, Glassjaw, Q and Not U, Refused, Death From Above 1979, The Format, The Get Up Kids, Finch, Gruvis Malt, Dialouge Taken from the Venture Bros

** Features samples from the song My Favorite Accident by Motion City Soundtrack

*** All samples from Rick Wakeman’s Journey To The Center Of Earth


Status: Illegal
File Under: DADA music
Duration: 53:05
Inspiration: 65daysofstatic Unreleased/Unreleasable Mixtapes, Legion Of Doom, Girl Talk

Monday, March 1, 2010

BRIAN BEYKE - JOEL (AUTUMN)(WOLVES REMIX)

The thing that really stood out about Brian Beyke for me was that I thought it was so cool that he was doing this big post rock sound by himself. The other thing I thought was amazing about his music was that even though it was rather minimal, each of the songs had parts that really drew you in. Each song had an individuality to it with some sort of special element that keeps what is a rather acute sound from blending together.

This remix went through a lot of transformation while I was working on it. The first two or three versions I did were over 6 minutes long, and it just wasn't quite working, so even though it was going to be a ton of work, I tore the whole thing down, and started over again. The thing I'm always trying to do with remixes is make something that sounds completely different from the original. With this one I tried turning a slow lilting song into a slightly more upbeat atmospheric electronic song. It's probably going to sound really out of place on my next remix album, but here you go:

Check out the remix HERE.
Check out Brian over HERE.

Status:
Official
File Under: Wolves Remixes Vol.3
Duration: 3:39
Inspiration: Nosaj Thing, Ratatat