Direwires Biography

Direwires is the work of Adam Young (b. 1983) - the summary and continuation of a strand of music and audible ideals that has been consistently developed and contributed to during Adam’s past ten years of composing and producing various electronic-based musical works.

While Adam has been delving deeper into his ambient body of work since his very first weeks spent exploring the creation of music, The work of Direwires truly began a few years ago, inspired by the music composed by Koji Kondo for the video game "Ocarina of Time" (Zelda 64). It began with the arrangement of short segments of sampled choir voices and instrumentation from old dusty records and books-on-tape. Finding increasing inspiration from the dramatic effects of traditional film scoring and an interest in applying the analogy of "film scenes" to real life scenarios, Adam started taking his own music more seriously, and ambitiously took to deeper, more involved means of composition involving field recording and the manipulation of recorded human voice. After a couple years of weaving together entire faux-choral compositions, the first Direwires piece publically available ("If There Ever Comes A Day...") had been released through Moodgadget as part of the label's debut compilation CD. (Random Number..Colors Start, MGT-001 / 2004). After spending the better part of a year preparing a set of techniques for performing for live performance, Direwires' premiered at Mutek 2005, billed with Tim Hecker & Klimek, and a short list of experimental music's best. Several compilations, singles and limited edition EPs featured Direwires throughout 2005, including a limited edition debut CDR, "There's Life After Winter", on which 6 original pieces were made available, a remix of Thinkbox's Rob Theakston and a remix of Direwires' "Oh, Her" arranged by Benoit Pioulard (Ghostly, Kranky). Only 100 copies were manufactured. Adam had also contributed his own (re)interpretation of Kenneth Kirschner’s piano sketch, “November 11, 2003” as part of a released remix project based on Taylor Deupree & Kenneth Kirschner’s “Post_Piano_2” album on the 12k label. Young continues into 2006, writing, remixing and releasing musical works as Direwires.*

*Adam is also one-half of Canada's Tractile - a minimal techno duo comprised of himself and one Joel Boychuk. Tractile.net for information on the pair.