Grammy-nominated songwriter, producer, guitarist, and bandleader Cory Wong has teamed up with Stockholm, Sweden-based “twisted pop trio” Dirty Loops for a new collaborative single, “Follow The Light”. The track offers the first taste of a forthcoming collaborative album by Wong and Dirty Loops entitled TURBO, due out later this year.
“My first interaction with Dirty Loops was with the viral videos of them doing insane arrangements of pop songs,” the prolific Cory Wong says of his latest collaborators. “Their musicianship is absolutely top tier. The only thing I thought was, Where’s the guitar?!? As I sat playing guitar along with the videos from my studio, I thought that I should reach out and see if they wanted to collaborate on something. Usually, a collaboration is just one song or a writing session, but I’ve been exploring the idea of doing collaborative albums with other artists because it allows the two visions of the artists to intermingle more and find more unique ways to blend together to create something new.”
Wong continues, “This project really brought a lot of the musical chops side of my playing out that I often restrain from putting on my albums, and I added some restraint to parts of songs that they might get really intricate. It ended up being a perfect representation of both Cory Wong and Dirty Loops as artists and what a true collaborative project can be.”
“This album is to music as The Naked Gun was to movies,” adds Dirty Loops’ Henrik Linder.
The blasts forward with a healthy disregard for genre, mixing elements of pop, funk, metal, opera, and jazz fusion underneath virtuosic bass, a potent horn section, and lush, radio-ready vocals.
Listen to “Follow The Light” on the platform of your choice or pre-order your vinyl copy of TURBO here. Check out the “Follow The Light” music video below.
Dirty Loops & Cory Wong – “Follow The Light” (Official Video)
[Video: Dirty Loops]
The release comes the morning after a surprise Cory Wong & Friends pop-up show at The Sultan Room in Brooklyn, NY. The two-show engagement at the intimate venue saw Wong perform with an all-star band featuring guitarist Brandon “Taz” Niederauer, bassist/vocalist Louis Cato, organist Eric Finland, percussionist Negah Santos, saxophonist Eddie Barbash, and more, with a setlist ranging from old tunes to a new song composed at soundcheck to a jam on Shaggy classic “It Wasn’t Me”.
As Wong mused to end the early show, his next time in Brooklyn will not be such an intimate affair: his Cory & The Wongnotes Tour is set to hit the much-larger Brooklyn Steel on February 2nd.
Check out some photos and video from Cory Wong & Friends at The Sultan Room below. For a list of Cory Wong’s upcoming tour dates, head here.
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