Rumors flew around the internet a few days ago regarding Wolfgang’s social media images suddenly fading to black. While many people shot around the rumor that it meant Wolfgang Gartner was retiring, it seems that it couldn’t be further from the truth. Earlier today, the dance music don took to Facebook to express not only his thoughts on the current festival circuit, but also how he plans to approach the producing of his upcoming album.
He starts by saying that he unknowingly started writing his album in July of 2013. This is also the summer that saw the influx of big kicks, snare-roll crescendos, and blaring rave synths that make of the cookie-cutter formula that has given dance music so much flack. As both upcoming artists and established DJs conformed to a formula that was guaranteed to turn a profit, creativity and originality had to move aside as the money machine cashed in.
Wolfgang goes on to say that this dance music climate of soulless bangers made him adopt a ‘F**k it’ mentality in his approach to making the album. The issue that he expressed was that music takes a very long time to be released, sometimes over half a decade. So if you are making music that is ‘here-and-now’, by the time it actually gets released it is actually very behind the times. That is why he seeks to inject his inspirations from the music of his childhood, the funk filled records that started his sample collection, as a way to bring the soul back into his album.
He states that the process was frightening and liberating at the same time. The most important line of the article can be boiled down to: “I’ve tried to make Electronic Dance Music that focuses on the Dance part and disregards the means of getting there.”
Check out the piece in its entirety here, and watch the video below to see just how much soul Wolfgang has infected into his latest productions.
