Spirit Wolf 2012 Showcase Notes

1.	Doofus da Dingo – Zigzag Says Go To Sleep
Thought I’d start off the mix with the first track I made in 2012. The name comes from a friend who liked to call me by my nickname: Zigzag.  The same friend would also stay up until the super late hours of the night chatting with me on weekdays. Problem was, he had to go to school in a few hours, I did not.  So, I thought I’d compose a little lullaby for him. Weird; yes I know, but what else are you going to do at 4 in the morning? Anyway, I pulled a ton of influence from FIAB’s track: “Woody Lake (Remix)” as that was my favorite track at that moment of time.  I posted the song not expecting much to happen, maybe a laugh from my friend; but it exploded. Someone posted it to YouTube and it gained around 7,000 views before the video was removed. So I thought that was pretty cool for my first track of 2012.

2.	Renard – Great Expectations (Spirit Wolf vs. Doofus da Dingo Remix)
This year I’ll admit that I listened to a lot of Renard’s work.  After listening to the original mix of Great Expectations about 100 times, I decided I’d give it a remix.  I wanted to give the remix a new school vs. old school feeling, so I threw my main alias up against my old school alias.  The result was good, but I’ll admit that the original was better.

3.	Doofus da Dingo – The Cocky Who Cried Dingo (Big Kick Mix)
This song was a strange one, but I thought it turned out fantastic.  At my school, my nickname is Dingo. (the origin of the Doofus da Dingo alias) One night, our class was given some free time to look for some funny pictures for an assignment, and a few of my friends wanted to find a dingo picture for me. They discovered an Australian children’s book called “The Cocky Who Cried Dingo.” My friends told me I should make a song with the title and I agreed to do it.  That same night, a producer friend of mine posted an unfinished project saying that anyone could finish it. I took the funky lead sound from it and the track quickly came together.  I was especially proud of the riff and old school stab section in this one.

4.	Nu Foundation – In Your Head (Doofus da Dingo Remix)
Nu Foundation.  He was without a doubt, my biggest influence in music.  After his tragic passing last year, I decided that I’d give In Your Head a remix to honor his memory.   I heard from many people that he really enjoyed old school happy hardcore tracks, so I thought I’d give it that old happy hardcore feeling.  After being played out by a few friends on internet radio stations and mixes, people where begging me to release it.  Unfortunately, I was asked not to give it out. Sorry :(

5.	Spirit Wolf – I’ll Never Forget You
This song also goes back to Nu Foundation. I started it shortly after he passed away in 2011.  I never was really happy with it, so it sat around gathering dust.  I was inspired to finish the song after I learned about the death of one of my friends.  This song is dedicated to all the good times both Mikey and Nikolai gave me in life.

6.	Spirit Wolf – Starchild
Not much to say about this track. I completed it in just over an hour.  The name comes from a preset I used for the riff in the breakdown.

7.	Spirit Wolf – Falling for You (2012 Mix)
I decided to give my most popular track of 2011 an updated remix.  I was originally going to give it away on New Years’ Day on 2012 but I wasn’t happy with it. So it sat around collecting dust on my hard drive until I finally decided to finish it.

8.	Spirit Wolf – Grimoire
My first attempt at a freeform song with psytrance influences.  This song started out as 3 unfinished psytrance projects.  I decided to combine them all and make a constantly changing psychedelic journey.  The hardest and most interesting part of the track was the bridge.  I knew from the start that I wanted to have a triplet section in the track but just jumping to it didn’t really keep the psychedelic feel so I got an idea about a gradual shift into the triplet section.  After about 4 hours of trying different things, I finally got the gradual time change I was looking for.  I thought it was cool how it gave the illusion of the track slowing down without an actual change in tempo. The name comes from my fascination with paranormal stuff.  A grimoire is a book of black magic, and I thought the name would fit well with the dark psychedelic feeling of the track.

9.	TeHLoY – Beyond (Spirit Wolf Remix)
This was by far the longest song I’ve ever worked on. After many setbacks, an entire rewrite and over 30 hours of work; I finally finished my remix of Beyond.  The original had many of my trademark elements in it so I decided that I’d take a slightly different approach for this remix.  I wanted to draw more influences from trance so I added that distorted “squelchy” synth in the intro and outro, made an orchestral breakdown and added a double bassline.  I was very pleased with this one.

10.	Furries In A Blender – Woody Lake
Like I mentioned above, Woody Lake was one of my favorite tracks to listen to this year, and after finding the vocals, I had to remix it.  Though, this track started off as a joke song that I was going to sing in.  It later turned into a remix of “Where’d You Go?” but I just wasn’t happy with the vocals.  So I put the Woody Lake vocals in and they fit like a glove.

11.	Spirit Wolf – The Adventure Begins
I was asked by my buddy D-tor to make a fun and cheesy into track for his Seven Dimensions of Euphoria mix.  I poked around in my unfinished project files and I found 2 unfinished projects that would complement each other very well and I started off with that.  After many delays, I had an intro track for D-tor’s 7D6 mix. I posted it on soundcloud and many people enjoyed the preview.  I later gave out the full mixable track for reaching 600 followers on soundcloud. (THANKS EVERYONE!!!)

12.	Darren Styles – Takin’ Me Higher (Spirit Wolf Remix)
The original song was one of the very first hardcore songs I ever heard and it still remains in my top 5 hardcore tracks to this day.  Yet, this song never saw a digital release, and to make matters worse, it would cost over $25 to get a secondhand copy of the vinyl to the states. So I decided I wanted to make a bootleg of it to play in my sets. After finding the original vocals from Time Frequency’s “Real Love” track, I made a remix that didn’t stray too far from the original.  I later sent a promo to a local dj and had the pleasure of hearing it at an event.  It was fun seeing ravers literally jump out of their seats during the song’s buildup. ;)

13.	Furries In A Blender – Don’t Hold Back (Spirit Wolf Remix)
As stated above, I listened to a ton of Renard’s tracks this year.  Since the vocals were about raving, I thought I would put in my personal favorite things to hear at raves: big detuned basslines, uplifting pianos, huge supersaw chords and of course the uplifting riff.  I remember staying up extremely late to finish this track and I only got about 2 hours of sleep that night. Guess I got of bed slowly… Okay that was a terrible pun. Sorry ‘bout that.  Oh, and I actually played the wrong version of the song in this mix. The final version has an extra synth in it and the vocoder isn’t as loud.

14.	Spirit Wolf – Let Go
Inspiration for this song came to me when I was gambling in a casino. That’s actually where the name came from…I lost a bunch of money that day. Whoops.  Anyway, I wanted to make a minimal freeform track with a haunting vocal in it. The vocal was replaced with a flute and it was given an orchestral breakdown because I wanted to try out EWQL’s StormDrum plugin. After the buildup, the drop didn’t seem energetic enough for me; so I decided to try a breakbeat drop. I thought it was awesome. :P I updated the track a bit a few months later because I felt that I learned a bunch of new stuff and the song deserved it.  This track also received 2 remixes from both Autumn Nights and Audio Warfare.  Both are awesome, you should check them out.  Overall, I have to say that this was my favorite track I produced this year.