Intelia Soundtrack Free Download

This makes three new fractal soundtracks in three days. Busy!

In terms of direction, Jonathan wanted me to make this one like a futuristic hypercomputer. Vaguely like Tron. I did this in the very early morning, thinking particularly of how damn cool it would be to have those laser light frisbees. And don’t even get me started on the light cycles…!

Golden Box Soundtrack Free Download

The 3D adventures continue! This animation felt quite classical, so my brother asked me to think in the direction of something baroque. I gave him this short quintet, for cello, violin, clarinet, english horn, and synthesizer.

Bulbox Soundtrack Free Download

The Fractal Foundation is gravitating into more and more 3D animations, which changes the audio relationship. I’m finding that the music has to be much more atmospheric and less based on specific moments or cues, as in the 2D zooms I’ve done before.

Of course when he makes a new zoom, I too get to make a new soundtrack. So it happens that we both improve in parallel, related paths. It’s enormously fun.

This piece is a new intro for the popular Fractals Rock show, which is basically the standard planetarium show but without the talking and science – just the zooms and music. Jonathan sent me a snapshot of what this intense, frightening 3D zoom would look like, and asked for freaky music with a gentle, pleasing middle section. And that’s what I gave him.

Come one, come all to our latest mellow coffeeshop gig. Now feature Dan Cooper on percussion, which adds a lovely new element. We’ll play a bunch of new songs too, from upcoming projects. It’s gonna be fun!

Another song from the upcoming album. Somber, dark, and frightening.

The songs from this album are really in quite a new direction for me. I’m trying consciously to pare down the sound, to make things rawer, plainer, less sterile, more homemade. That goes for the songs themselves – I’m trying to trim down the chord changes, middle sections, and extra parts. It’s pretty tough. There’s a strong tendency to hide behind lots of notes and chords, from the songwriting point of view, or behind layers and layers of sound, from the recording end.

I want this album to be stark, plain, bare, honest, cold, sad, and beautiful. The image in my head is of bare trees in late February, in the precious hours of cold, limp sunlight in Leningrad.

Version 2 (many, many guitars)
Download audio file (Daniel_Wolfe-Learning.mp3)
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So I’ve got a new album in the works: 7 songs, drawn together by a thematic concept which is so multi-layered and meaningful on parallel levels that it just makes me shiver to think about it.

I’m going to work on these in public, releasing demos and works-in-progress, warts and all. I want the whole album to be as raw and organic as possible, so some of the mistakes that I make will no doubt end up in the final cut, just because the energy or feel is right.

I want to wage war on sterility.

I’m also trying to break out of the isolation of my own head, and so I’m opening this whole experiment with a question to you. Please help me by listening to both versions of the song, above, and marking your favorite in the poll, below.

The song is called “Learning” and I can’t figure out which of these versions is the better take for this song. The difference is in the wailing, shrieking guitar. Version 1 has only one guitar (except at the chorus, where a second line comes in), while Version 2 has a wall of guitars wailing all over the place. I don’t know which one I like better, so I’m asking for your help. And thanks.

The video was an attempt at a video song a la Pomplamoose, but in retrospect I think the somber mood of the song required something else, less zany sexy hipster, more koyanasqaatsi.

Here’s the track itself:
Download audio file (Daniel_Wolfe-89Years.mp3)
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And here’s the videosong:

(Note: I’m working on getting the free downloads started again. I’m workin’ on it! Damn engineering…)

I had a great time writing and recording this one. It came to me swinging in a hammock at my friend Sarah’s house in Rabinal, Guatemala. A beautiful time, down there.

UPDATE: If you want free MP3s of this song, or any other “official” album song, please visit the Store at the link below. You can get them for free but in exchange for adding your email to my No Spam Mailing List.

It’s supposed to be bad form to talk bad about your own work, but I’m not entirely happy with this one. I was trying so hard on this album to be solid and professional that, in my view, some parts ended up a little too sterile. This song suffered particularly from that.

In my head, I heard a solo for this track. A really grand, brilliant, soaring solo. It’s supposed to come in four counts after the song ends. It’s not there. It bugs me a lot. It’s one of those things that I’d like to redo, and wouldn’t be hard, theoretically, but I guess it just feels like going backwards. No easy way out of this one.

Happy lyrics sung sadly = a good song, in my mind. This one stemmed from a stew of questions about life and society I had swilling in my head, you know, the questions most people in their 20s obsess about. Why do things have to be this way? Why do people insist on being sad? And so on.

I love playing this song out. On a good night people will join in the chorus at the end and everything seems lighter for awhile.

A late night song about all the chances you didn’t take. Never an easy feeling, but at least we aren’t alone.

This one was also written in Russia, albeit earlier than Anthem. I think it might be the oldest tune on the album, actually.

It had words, first verse English, second verse Russian, but when I dragged it out of the closet I cut the words and decided to make it instrumental.

This one went through an enormous number of iterations. When I play it nowadays (which is rarely) it’s a lot more uptempo and has a solo and various interludes. It started off fast, once upon a time, then turned slow and gentle, before finally picking up the pace a bit more for the album.

It’s just a collection of old folk sayings and such that I put into a song so as to be able to remember them easier.

This is a strange, droning tune that grew out of a reggae chant I wrote years ago in Russia. Bagpipes. I put bagpipes on it, and I love it!

As with most of the tracks on this album, this song used to be a lot longer but I went through some pretty merciless editing in order to smoothen things out, thematically-speaking.

A country song, another love song, basically a song about how it sucks to leave the one you love to go make money, just to end up spending it and so on. Wanting to get away, unplug, and just BE with that person. Simple.

This song, Possibility, was written in 2005 or 2006 and deals with those nebulous and wonderful beginning to middle years of a new relationship. It’s just a simple love song.

The end. Just like the beginning, but of course transposed a key higher. Why? Because I’m kind of a coward about dying and I’d like to believe that, at the end of this ride, we just go to a higher plane and continue the adventure.

Thanks for listening to this album and making it a success!

If you like my music and want to support me, please go visit my store and buy a copy. And keep spreading the word! No one listens to anything anymore unless it’s recommended by a friend, and word of mouth is the best thing around. So if you really like my stuff, please tell a friend!

The great conclusion. The price you pay for the life you’re given. I wanted an epic song, inexorable as death. I didn’t want fear, though – I was aiming for something more strangely seductive, the quiet calm after a long day.

Originally I wrote a classical piece for cello, two violins, and xylophone. But, frankly, the piece kinda sucked, so I took the recording of my friend Nando playing cello, chopped it up and mixed it around to make the base track for what you hear here.

Then my friend Meghann, an amazing singer, came over to bust out some vocals. I told her vaguely what I wanted and she did three takes. I saved each of the takes, fiddled around with them just a bit, and the result is, I think, pretty angelic. Meghann’s down in San Diego now and I haven’t seen her in ages, which is sad. Listening to this piece makes me miss her. She had great taste in beer.

Finally, once everything was pretty much recorded, my dear friend Jesse took the whole song in hand and helped me craft it into something listenable. Basically he took a lumbering ~20 minute ode to death and sculpted it into one of my favorite songs. Jesse owns a farm in New Mexico and doesn’t really do music anymore. A pity.

Note for Extreme Music Dorks: if you listen to the middle part, starting at 3 minutes in, you’ll hear a simple xylophone and piano line below the crashing waves and whatnot. The root notes for this progression? F-A-D-E. Yup, I’m that geeky.

This song is clearly sex. I had a vague idea of what I wanted it to sound like, so it wasn’t too hard to build the basic track. But I really couldn’t get the right feel. I was stuckstuckstuck.

Finally I caved and asked my friend and role model Alexis Harte for help. Then, at about 45 seconds in, he took over and blew me away.

I’m also pretty sure it’s the shortest track on the album. Not sure what I’m trying to say, there.