Detroit-to-LA polymath Sam Austins delves into his enthralling, genre-spanning new EP, The woods, vol. 1” for Wonderland’s latest track-by-track.
Sam Austins’ new EP, “The woods, vol. 1” is a swirling, idiosyncratic and overtly danceable exploration of life’s very core — the love, pain and growth that’s unavoidable and universal. The Detroit-born, LA-based singer-songwriter and producer is soulful and ethereal, otherworldly yet intimate, his breathy, upper-pitched vocals gliding atop the crunchy futurism of the sonic backdrops.
Detroit-tinged in its helping of ghetto tech, but grounded in the heart and romanticism of Los Angeles, it’s a project that feels unknown yet deeply familiar, walking the fine line between influence and individuality. To dive a little deeper, Austins offers up a track-by-track run down in a Wonderland exclusive.
Listen to “The woods, vol. 1”…
Speaking on the EP as a whole, Austin offers: “The woods, vol. 1”, like its sound, was created in moments of sporadic, chaotic, bursts of inspiration. The goal was to make a project that encapsulated so many of the sounds that inspired me as a kid growing up in Detroit. It’s like an ode to the club music scene that once was, and my hyperemotional interpretation of it all.
Read the track-by-track thoughts…
“Smoke break”
“Smoke break” was written pretty quickly. I would do this thing where I’d start a song, and if it felt good enough in the first ten minutes, I’d put it on the internet to hear. And so I did. I used my Digitakt drum machine to program these hypnotic 808 drum rhythms, that were almost Outkast adjacent. I sped it up and the rhythm even more enunciated just felt so fucking sick. After that, I laid the chords, and then even quicker than that, I wrote the hook. Maybe took me only 15 minutes to do all of this. The hardest part was the verses. It took me months to figure out how I’d approach the character of it all. I wanted it to feel sexy, but quirky. Dark, and somehow still, colorful. A picture painted of loneliness in a space where you feel invisible, especially to the people you want the most.
“Say what you mean”
“Say what you mean” to me is peak nightlife dance music. The kick is punchy as hell, the snare is snappy, and the synth sounds like heaven. I try all the time to reprogram that patch back to how I made it but I can’t quite nail the sound like how I did when first writing the song. Again, it was one of those quick ones. My favorite BPM at that time was 127. Got the pattern down, just let the hook ring off, and then I sent it to my friend LAN Party to take the production over the top. He made it otherworldly with the percussive rhythms on top.
“A baby girl named Heaven”
“A baby girl named Heaven” is probably my favoyrite song on all of “The woods, vol. 1”—the feeling of it always reminds me of Ryan Leslie production or like old Neptunes. I don’t know if anyone picked up on what I was trying to do but hopefully some kid looks at this piece and sends them down a rabbit hole of music. The context of this song is about missing someone that’s on another side of the world. The longing, the yearning goes extremely deep in this song.
“Hot like you”
“Hot like you”, one of the first songs written for this project before I even knew I was writing a project to begin with. I wrote it with my friends, Elliot and Hugo, deep into a Prince rabbit hole. I wanted to make something so deeply rooted in lust, but keep it punk, then these crazy guys came together with me to make one of my favourite songs ever.
“The ember”
“The ember” is my crack at trying to honour the amazing Grimes. It’s also the only song I produced and wrote on this project solely myself. This song also written in one day, in my room on a rainy day in Los Angeles. “The ember” is about being burned by a flame that catches on too hot. Sometimes holding that passion close enough can hurt you, and that’s what the ember is. The flickering hope that the love will save us. Even if we don’t want to be.
“Wipe your tears”
“Wipe your tears” is a song I wrote with John Hill and JJ Scheff, around the same time I wrote “Seasons”. It was in a batch of songs made for an album, and it’s just the biggest damn breakup anthem. Playing this song live even furthermore cements this with me that this is an anthem that people will find and be shook that this music was hiding on the outskirts of pop music.
“River stream”
“River stream” is a song I wrote based in a wedding where, I am speaking to the person I’m getting ready to see at the altar and they begin to get cold feet on the idea of going the extra step. I didn’t actually experience the wedding but I’d like to believe I almost did. I had an ex that was afraid to really commit to me, at the time we were dating, and we just never did. So, this song, just like this whole project is a recollection of processing the grief of never making it to that next step together, and calling it quits. But to honour that feeling of grace and affirmation, in a way I didn’t know how to before, lifted my spirits beyond belief for where I was at with this project. I wrote the second verse in the same sitting as the first but just knew it would be perfect to get a counterpart to sing that section. I sent it to a few friends but when Cecile entered my life, I just knew I had to get her on the record. Special shoutout to John for bringing us together.
“Seasons”
I find it most poetic that the song that had the most to do with change and dealing with the realities that come with change is the song that brought me the most significant and positive shifts I’ve ever experienced in my life. “Seasons” is the first song I wrote from “The woods”. I made it with Rodaidh back in, and no one could comprehend the potential this song had, myself included, jaded to it after dealing with music business battles for so long. And then one day, I chose to surrender and for the first time decided I’d try to do something different. So, I started to let people into my process daily until the world discovered what I was doing. I didn’t know the level of impact it would have, I just knew it was a sound worth chasing. In that, I found myself at the centre of my own creations, being what the world will know as “The woods”. An emotional, turbulent chapter of my life put on a grand stage for everyone to find themselves within.
