Produced by: Dutchyyy & Howie Wonder Album: "BEAT HOARDER VOL. 1" Track: Still Wonderful Track #: 02 Created: April 3, 2015 Released: June 5, 2020 https://dutchmassive.bandcamp.com/album/beat-hoarder-vol-1 ________________________ Backstory: Shortly after leaving Sam's Point Nature Preserve where I was living w/ my pops in Upstate New York... Context: https://beta.catalog.works/dutchyyy/the-mountain After scrambling to find a temporary residence w/ little to no notice about the state taking over the private nature preserve where my pops was living as the caretaker the prior 10 years and replacing him w/ a park ranger. We briefly landed in the guest house of one of my pop friends. By guest house, I mean a singular large room, w/ hallway for storage (where I slept and set up my equipment).. This place was literally like 5 minutes away from Sam's Point, so we were still on the Mountain and the scenery was beautiful. The guest house had a nice wooden front porch, surrounded by trees. So instead of working on music in basically a closet, I would always wake up, go out on the porch, have some coffee, roll a spliff and set up my Laptop hooked to my little JBL bluetooth speaker and work on music first thing... Winter on the mountain would usually begin in October and last through early May, so this particular morning, I woke up to a freshly fallen snow covered winter wonderland view. I was working on tracks for my upcoming album "Traversal" (which I didn't know would be the album title until months later after moving back to Tampa, FL again) and instead of going into unfinished projects, I wanted to create something with new energy that matched the beautiful morning winter scenery... I loaded up drums that my friend and fellow beat scene legend "Howie Wonder" sent me to collab over, and dug through my vault looking for a specific sample I saved to flip when the right moment came....Which just happened to be shortly after sun rise on April 2rd, 2015 on the front porch of this guest house. =) I began flipping the main beat first, watching as the sun melted away that freshy dusted winter wonderland until I got pulled away shortly after for the rest of day/night... The next afternoon I woke up, ready to continue where I left off the previous day, Walked outside and saw zero traces of snow. Being me, I stubbornly decided I was going to hold off on working on the track until the winter wonderland vibe returned. I opened up Ableton Live, loaded up another sample I've been hoarding and posted it to I.G. quizzing if anyone could guess the sample. https://www.instagram.com/p/1BGSetqL2F/ ADHD kicked in, when I saw the cat's enjoying the absence of snow, rolling around on the grass and I walked out to film them. which made me think, as much as I wished it was still a winter land, It seems the cat's are grateful to be able to explore the yard again. https://www.instagram.com/p/1BGpcBqL3F/ I began opening up unfinished sessions and posting them to ig, I have so many unfinished, unreleased beats, so I was just going through them to see if anything stood out that I would want to refine more for the next album. https://www.instagram.com/p/1BN5ssqL2w/ https://www.instagram.com/p/1BTocQqL0O/ https://www.instagram.com/p/1BUB3kqL00/ https://www.instagram.com/p/1BU6XLKL2e/ I decided to re-open up the Howie Wonder collab to post snippets to I.G. in real time, asking if I should proceed. https://www.instagram.com/p/1Bb4iBqL2X/ https://www.instagram.com/p/1BdTYuqL51/ Closed up the session. To continue working on when it snows again and then I walked behind the house for some quiet time at the secluded lake. https://www.instagram.com/p/1BqStPKL3X/ https://www.instagram.com/p/1BqcXwqL3v/ https://www.instagram.com/p/1Bqp5cKL4G/ https://www.instagram.com/p/1Bq1-UqL4a/ https://www.instagram.com/p/1BrBE4qL4s/ https://www.instagram.com/p/1BrLx8qL5H/ Guess what? That was the final snow I would see, Winter Wonderland never returned haha... Shortly after, we moved from that guest house and into the basement of a new house (also a few minutes away) but this house was amazing, and the owner was never home, so it's like we had this amazing house to ourselves.... and on July 7th, 2015, I would say goodbye to New York for a bit and head back once again to the place I kept trying to escape, Tampa Bay. https://www.instagram.com/p/43B8LyKL3A/ I began working on "Traversal" upon arrival in Tampa, but guess what you will never find in Tampa Bay, Florida? A Winter Wonderland... and I'm artistically stubborn... No Snow, No finishing the track..... So the first version of Traversal was released and this song was not included on it as intended. In April 2016, I moved back to Los Angeles (No Snow) and began finalizing the Cassette version of "Traversal", Still stubborn... It was not included on the tape as intended... August 19th 2016. my mother passed away, the same day I was fired from netflix for posting a picture at my work desk on twitter, a few days later.... I'm back in Tampa Bay once again... tho with zero intentions of staying... (hindsight is 20/20) It took me a while after my mother passed to be able to bring myself to work on music. According to my own lore, the first time I touched music again was with this quick impromptu tribute to my mom I made on December 8th, 2016 which I posted on soundcloud with no track title, or intentions of keeping public. https://soundcloud.com/dutchmassive/im-deleting-this Each year, following on mothers day, I would revisit the sample to flip a new version in her memory. Until releasing the 4 track EP in May of 2020 on bandcamp https://dutchmassive.bandcamp.com/album/mother-nocturnalis-ep and later releasing the EP on Supercollector, August 19th, 2023 on the anniversary of here passing: https://release.supercollector.xyz/mother-nocturnalis-ep-dutchyyy While this Lore is true, there was an exception.... I opened one project shortly after arriving in Tampa after my mother passed... A project I was too stubborn to work on unless the perfect conditions lined up... Something I learned the hard way is that tomorrow is never promised. So I opened up the Howie Wonder Collab in tribute, No snow in sight, and attached new energy to this track.... The first time opening up Ableton since my mother passed, and I created the intro...... I realized in that moment my energy was too chaotic and off balance and I wasn't ready to return to creating music just yet. I added the new intro, added the brief interlude and attached them to the original beat, No Winter Wonderland in sight, but in spite of all the loss, and traversing, I had hope and optimism..... and on September 3rd, 2016, I uploaded the track to Soundcloud with the description: "Everything is going to be o.k." https://soundcloud.com/dutchmassive/still-wonderful-dutchy-x-howie-wonder And thus, "Still Wonderful" was born.