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The King of Clouds LP
ORIGIN STORY
This album is comprised of a selection of compositions written and recorded between approximately 2004 and 2016, with the final recording and editing taking place in 2023. This album features an array of studio-produced solo compositions written and recorded by James Wolff. The song selected in this LP are characterized as the most “studio-electronic” of the discography. These songs were among the second wave of material composed for long-form electro-pop songs and feature complex counterpoint and weaving thematic motifs. There is also a greater emphases on recorded violin elements, which characterize the later indie-orchestral period in the subsequent album, Cascades.
ALBUM TITLE ORIGIN
The meaning of the album title references the futile efforts in band-building efforts by the composer, which resulted in this direction to compose and record an almost entirely "solo" album. Left disappointed by the fleeting adventures and transitory nature of bandmates, this title is an homage to the lofty attempts at building such transitory ensembles, a reaction to the efforts that went into the first album, "Eyes Like Stars", with its multitude of band members and replacements. The title conveys a melancholy pervasive in the writing, a grand title of control over the invisible and intangible.
DEDICATIONS
I dedicate this album to my mom who always believed in my musical talent and helped me hone and develop my skills and inspire me to practice and study music theory and always believed in me. Also, to my dear family, my two boys, I hope they will grow up to listen to this lifetime of effort and care into the craft to establish my legacy in this discography. I hope these songs survive me, that they touch the world, that the whole of my work, my music, my technology companies, that they will be my great legacy and that they inspire other people to try and change the world, no matter the overwhelming odds and adversity, it just takes patience and dedication and sacrifice. Never give up on your dreams.
The King of Clouds LP
Full Length Album
1. Fast Maneuvers
2. New Age Thinking
3. Electric Sky
4. A Fast Life That Goes Nowhere
5. The Heart is Always Searching
6. Everybody is Wondering
7. No Turning Back
8. Are You Even Satisfied
9. Science and Understanding
10. Three Angels
01
Fast Maneuvers
CREDITS:
James Anthony Wolff: Composer, Vocals, Guitar, Keyboards, Violins
LYRICS:
Fast maneuvers in the dark of night, it could be the shadows or it could be alive, playing tricks on your eyes
Watch it explode, watch it explode, It lost control and in its place was the blackness, in the blackness, or is this far away
Watch them explode, watch them explode
Playing tricks on your eyes
Your like an empty box, with nothing in it, just memories, of things that never happened, could it be true, could it be true, slowly lost your mind, now your living in a hospital
Could it be true, could it be true, now your living in a hospital, could it be true, could it be true
02
New Age Thinking
CREDITS:
James Anthony Wolff: Composer, Vocals, Guitar, Keyboards, Violins
Katie Tisch: Guest-Guitarist
LYRICS:
Great dreams, and meanings, we have so many things
to do and people to see
Somewhere out there a fortune is being made, one is being
spent one is being saved,
But have faith were not so far away, far away, far away,
We’re not so far away,
From a chinese fortune cookie, comes a great story
New age thinking
In a fortune cookie
Like stormy waters that break and sway
Just trying to make it through another day
03
Electric Sky
CREDITS:
James Anthony Wolff: Composer, Vocals, Guitar, Keyboards, Violins
LYRICS:
Do you remember when you told me you were leaving for three years for flight school, I said ok, fly the skies at jet stream altitude
It's not any kind of surprise, when were growing up you had that look in your eyes,
And your head in the clouds, always dreaming, always dreaming
I’ll visit you in Arizona and we can make up for lost time, I’ll tell you how the music’s going
And you can tell me what it feels like to fly,
Through the clouds, high above the ground, in the jet stream you find yourself,
On a fast trajectory back towards New York, find yourself, slowly getting older and going home,
Peel back all the artificial layers, the small indecisions in our lives that our lost,
And you will find something greater smarter by intelligent design,
Through the clouds, high above the ground, in the jet stream you find yourself,
On a fast trajectory back towards New York, find yourself, slowly getting older and going home,
04
A Fast Life That Goes Nowhere
CREDITS:
James Anthony Wolff: Composer, Vocals, Guitar, Keyboards, Violins
LYRICS:
I’m so tired of these games that lead nowhere, it's always the same and nobody cares, wrapped up in a fast life that goes nowhere, and I don’t care, I don’t care, that right I said I don’t care I’m gonna get my guitar packed up and leave, and head off for better things. Say goodbye to this small town once and for all and what happens from here will be history, will be history, were gonna make history, it’s gonna be history, history
Do you ever get that feeling that the world has left you behind, we’ll come on and join us and taste what it feels like to be alive.
Goodbye small town I’ll see you the next time I come around, it will be different for sure, but it still might feel good.
And this is what we’ve decided to do with our lives, you can’t control us, try to make us civilized, we were made for something different, we were made for something special, we were made for something different, we were made for something special.
05
The Heart is Always Searching
CREDITS:
James Anthony Wolff: Composer, Vocals, Guitar, Keyboards, Violins
LYRICS:
Reads like a charm, your farewell letter could be a song, and everything I knew, about you in one second was totally wrong. And when I read the letter you left about moving to Florida I wondered why. What could make somebody leave and follow such a crazy dream and leave us all behind, what would make somebody leave and follow such a crazy dream and leave us all behind,
Search out a brand new scene, make new friends and enemies, what happens when the old ones start to fade from your mind, as you lose their names with the onset of time, and work new jobs and see new things and learn new games defining who you are and who you are want to be, who you are and who you want to be.
When everything in the world tells your heart not to go what happens to you inside, the power people really have change their lives, and I wonder why the heart is always searching for new light.
Why does it have to be so difficult, when the answers we all look for are so simple, it could be psychological or chemical. The artist will tell you its natural, while the poets will tell you it's beautiful and the minister will tell you that its miracle, and the doctors will tell you that its physical
06
Everybody is Wondering
CREDITS:
James Anthony Wolff: Composer, Vocals, Guitar, Keyboards, Violins
LYRICS:
Maybe because I was drunk last night, I thought, I just seen you for the first time,
And when I went up to say hi, to you, you said, don’t you remember last night?
I said I would take it seriously, she said no said I was just simply flirting,
And I asked her about the next day we had at the art museum with the ancient paintings,
Did that mean anything at all, and I said, I want to take it steady, I am finally ready
Are you ready, I’m finally ready, are you ready, I’m finally ready, are you ready, for me
Everybody is wondering, but nobody is asking, if you are already taken
Everybody is wondering, but nobody is asking, if you are already taken
Everybody is wondering, but nobody is asking, if you are already taken
07
No Turning Back
CREDITS:
James Anthony Wolff: Composer, Vocals, Guitar, Keyboards, Violins
LYRICS:
In the massive riots that cripple Greece,
In the worst violence they had ever seen, since the days of world war 2,
Up in arms were thousands of youth, and the police responded, killed teenager of polish descendants,
And who's to say, whose right or wrong when so much life has already been lost
Torch the stores and buildings nothing can stop the police from shooting,
As the hotels burn and the windows are smashed in, black smoke rose from the city center,
And the city streets were covered in ash and there’s no turning back, there’s no turning back,
There’s no turning back
There’s no turning back now, no looking back,
Burnt itself down
And the fire burnt it down, burnt it down, to the ground
THE MEANING:
I found the lyrics to this song almost wrote themselves, as if guided by a ghostly hand, the words formed from the notes of the music as they shimmered in my head. The song has one of my favorite electronic bass lines that I would highlight during solo-show DJ sets. The song, early in its development.
08
Are You Even Satisfied
CREDITS:
James Anthony Wolff: Composer, Vocals, Guitar, Keyboards, Violins
LYRICS:
09
Science and Understanding
CREDITS:
James Anthony Wolff: Composer, Vocals, Guitar, Keyboards, Violins
LYRICS:
Science, and understanding, PBS television planning, what are the profound impact of our biological footprint,
The carbon, we release in the atmosphere, can the Polaris star see it and feel, the evidence of our civilization,
And its impact on the future generations
Faster than we know it, through the internet, the scientists think with their hearts and they are the explorers of the moon
And when we send the next shuttle directly into the atmosphere of the sun to burn up like a bug in a furnace,
And then send another one past the dust of the Kuiper belt and break the pull of the sun
What will they learn and how will they use it, what eternal mathematical equation will prove that
10
Three Angels
CREDITS:
James Anthony Wolff: Composer, Vocals, Guitar, Keyboards, Violins
LYRICS:
The moment that man killed himself at the suicide clinic in Switzerland,
Something amazing and unusual, happened at the foot of his bed,
Three angels appeared to the man with halos around ethereal heads,
And the man aged 59 who had a fatal disease spoke to the heavens and asked for their mercy,
As the ventilator motors switched off and the lights flickered and he drank the lethal sedative
As they watched on from the foot of his bed with their tv cameras pointed at his head,
It was the first time that an assisted suicide had been filmed by British network tv
And it has sparked debate all over the world as to whether it was even ethical
And though the doctors tried to treat him, nothing in modern science could beat it,
When the television viewers could see it, so the retired university professor,
And the father of a family, chose to pass away,
Holding his wife while she prayed,
That there would be a school on the other side,
He could escape this disease that had left him paralyzed.