This month’s mix feature is WYLDCAT. Bringing something new to your ears with the niche genre of chiptune – he programs music using GameBoys. The mix he created has a techno or house sound, but you can tell that he turns his creative juices up to the max and can be extremely versatile.
His debut album CatAtonic just dropped on 9/22 and he will also be playing in 2 Detroit locations coming up – peep the interview!
In his interview, we talk about things like how to get out of a creative block, his passion for the photo/video art form, snowboarding, his debut album and how you can find it, what chiptune is, and more.
Check out his mix – on SoundCloud now! I hope you enjoy his feature.
detroit.dance: What do you do for work?
WYLDCAT: Work is interesting. Since the pan-sandwich, I’ve been freelance and that’s everything from audio gigs, video gigs, photography gigs, running front of house or helping at venues to shooting weddings on the weekend or doing commercial photoshoots. It’s a little bit of everything. Being freelance has been an interesting shift from going to the same place every single day to writing my own schedule.
detroit.dance: How do you keep everything put together while being freelance?
WYLDCAT: Be able to think on your feet and keep an open mind. The other day my schedule changed three times in one day and it wasn’t even worth opening the Calendar app anymore. Put your phone down. Focus on where you need to go next. And just don’t worry about the thing after that because you have to focus on one thing at a time.
detroit.dance: What are some hobbies that you have?
WYLDCAT: My biggest hobby would be snowboarding. In the winter I push my start time at work back to one o’clock because I have to go snowboarding every day. It’s really just a matter of standing sideways in general. Something about walking forward has never really been my thing. It’s never pleased me. I have to stand sideways and look over my shoulder whether it’s skateboarding or longboarding or snowboarding. Riding a bike, too. Those are all my forms of exercise and therapy.
Another hobby I have would be shooting and experimenting with my cameras, even though I do that for work. I recently shot a music video entirely with the premise of an old MTV nostalgic B roll that you’d flip on in the middle of the night and you might be seeing partial nudity but the image is so badly distorted through hardware effects that you can’t tell what it is anymore. I just have fun experimenting.
detroit.dance: We met doing photo & video for Movement 2022, talk about your passion for the medium and some people you’ve done video for.
WYLDCAT: It all started with skateboarding and snowboarding. The action sports world and the videography world sort of collide at some point, and there’s an unspoken rule of if you don’t have tangible evidence, or if you don’t have proof or document of something happening, it never really happened. Hindsight always brings up better emotions. We’ve created this sort of world that relies on that. As a creative, my passion was able to be transformed into documenting others for my line of work. The opportunity presented itself to follow some friends of mine who are some well respected artists in the local community at some gigs and make promo material. Everything snowballed from there. Now I’m the full time videographer for Techno Snob and it’s been really rewarding. I also subcontract for other companies and travel to various festivals and gigs. The music industry has so many facets and jobs within it to explore. If you’re a jack of all trades you can find a lot of different niches to fill.
detroit.dance: Is there a particular photo style you have or favorite thing to do while editing?
WYLDCAT: I love documentary style or “fly on the wall” and capturing candid moments. I guess that comes from being around skateboarders and watching them try something 20 or 30 times, you get a lot of chances to be there and be present. I love editing in general. Some people don’t like editing because it can get tedious but that’s truly where the stories come alive. The whole process is fun to me.
detroit.dance: Your DJ name WYLDCAT – where did that come from?
WYLDCAT: Cat has always been a nickname of mine. In grade school, we read a book that had a character named Stu Cat, and everybody in my class turned and looked at me and that was it. I was in and out of bands through high school and that pseudonym continued to follow me. Later in life it shortened itself to where my music acquaintances would call me Cat and my longtime friends would call me Stu. In about 2018 I decided I needed a moniker to put my entire brand behind, and while snowboarding someone shouted out, “You wild, Cat” and it made sense. My hometown of Oxford has the wildcat as their mascot. But you have to be cool and change your letters around like we are on AIM. So WYLDCAT it was.
detroit.dance: Your debut album CatAtonic is coming out on 9/22 – congratulations!
WYLDCAT: Every part of the process so far has been incredibly rewarding and incredibly challenging. I’ve written the music over the last two years, while exploring different sound palettes and live sound techniques. There’s been a lot of time put into it, but at the same time it feels like I let it go at the proper time. You’re always going to be the most critical of your own art, but letting it go and seeing what it becomes to other people is also a very cool thing.
Being an independent artist can be challenging. The whole process of distribution and coming up with the art and the logos and when to when to post what, having the full creative control of everything. I’ve been making music for so long and never put out something tangible that I could hold on to. That part of the album process was the most exciting.
There are 7 tracks on it. Lucky number seven.
I have physical copies of the album – CDs, tapes, and USBs. People can reach out to me for them on social media or catch me at a show hustling out of my backpack. It’ll also be up for name your price on BandCamp and for free listening on SoundCloud.
detroit.dance: Are all the song names cat themed?
WYLDCAT: Yeah, the idea behind it was to dig deeper into the cat thing. The album title is CatAtonic, and a catatonic state is when one cannot move normally. The whole thing is just cats. I had a neighborhood cat that would sneak into my room at night called Khan so there is a song named after him. There’s some nice sound design in Chem Cat that inspired the name. There’s a different story or piece of art behind each track name.
detroit.dance: Are you playing any shows coming up?
WYLDCAT: I’m playing at Replay Cafe in Detroit on October 29th and I’m also playing at the Leland City Club opening the bar room for Techno Snob on November 5th.
detroit.dance : How did you get into making music, and more specifically music using GameBoys?
WYLDCAT: Music has always been a part of my life. I had a lot of music projects growing up, I met most of my friends through music, and I was always interested in programming music on the computer. I’ve been programming music on the computer since as far back as elementary school with plug and play virtual instruments. I was always trying to download the latest music softwares illegally and we would trade softwares between friends to try anything we could.
That evolved later into an interest in things like actual hardware sequencers and hardware drum machines and experimenting with live sound. Then, I got interested in going to shows. I started seeing a whole new world of music going to old warehouses in Detroit, where someone had brought in a PA system and speakers. I thought it was really cool and intimate. That was the first time I felt like I really needed to work on and put out my own tangible music.
I never had my eyes on a horizon that looked like I was going to pursue music until I met some of the people in the video game music community. Something about them was so inclusive and so welcoming. They felt like the opposite of gatekeepers. They felt like bridges to other sides of the world. People that wanted to pen pal with me that I’d never met just because we were interested in the same thing, ready to invite me to the other side of the world to play gigs with them. I’ve always played video games and then my love for music and video games collided, and it has really been fulfilling and exciting so far.
detroit.dance: How many people are out there that create video game music (chiptune)?
WYLDCAT: Dozens of us.
We are so saturated here in Detroit with people who make music, and we are so blessed that we’re in a place where seven nights a week you could walk in and out of multiple clubs and hear different music. But as far as chiptune it’s incredibly niche. I think those people that I’ve met around the world are interested in meeting each other and sticking together because it’s such a small environment. The first chiptune show I went to was a chiptune music festival. And it was in a guy’s studio apartment. There might have been 50 to 70 people there.
detroit.dance: What is the definition of chiptune?
WYLDCAT: Anything that is running on an old chipset like video game hardware and consoles that generate their own sounds.
detroit.dance: And then how do you utilize that console to make the music?
WYLDCAT: It’s basically sound design in its truest essence. You’re just using the limitations of the hardware to design a sound that you like. And I think the beautiful thing about music and electronic music as a whole, is that everything in electronic music by itself sounds bad, until it doesn’t. Everything is just a noise. Everything is just a frequency, everything is just humming inside of your eardrum until all the sudden you hear something that you like and it no longer is a sound alone. It’s something more than that.
I think the beautiful thing about dance music is that you have to design the sounds from scratch. When you talk about chiptune on original game consoles and on original hardware, you’re very limited by what that hardware could do at its time. If we’re talking about a Gameboy that was made, you know, 21 plus years ago, the limitations are right in front of you. Only four sounds can play at one time. So what you do with your own creativity working within these limitations of this hardware is what I find so beautiful about chiptune and about video game music as a whole.
If I take everything out of my studio, and play with one thing at a time, I tend to be way more productive. I’m very ADD and I think stripping away the options for me and forcing me to put only one size brush in my hand and only four colors on only this type of paper is a thinking match with myself. So what can I do creatively to work within these limitations? It’s a beautiful thing.
detroit.dance: What’s one of your favorite GameBoy games?
WYLDCAT: Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced or Sword of Mana.
detroit.dance: If you could take a rocket to any planet, which one would you go to?
WYLDCAT: I think one of the moons of Saturn would be cool to check out.
detroit.dance: What are your words of advice for someone going through a creative block?
WYLDCAT: Don’t plan it. Don’t think about it. Go do something nice or buy something nice. Do something that has nothing to do with your art form.
Make sure you check out WYLDCAT’s Destination Detroit – Replay Cafe and his Recipe by Request (Peanut Butter Protein Balls)
Keep up with WYLDCAT on his socials: