Several members of Vulfpeck have banded together for a new album of original material, Vulf Vault 005: Wong’s Cafe. The Cory Wong-produced album is out on January 7th, 2022.
Wong’s Cafe arrives as the fifth installment of Vulfpeck’s ongoing Vulf Vault series. Each of the previous four releases has focused on a particular member of the band including Antwaun Stanley, Woody Goss, Theo Katzman, and Joe Dart. For Wong’s contribution, the band decided to create an album of entirely new material, with half recorded pre-pandemic and the other half captured over the last few months. Wong took the band’s unreleased recordings and added new layers as a producer, in addition to mixing the entire album, and Jack Stratton added the finishing touches in mastering to give the album Vulfpeck’s signature sound.
On “Smokeshow”, the sultry saxophone of Eddie Barbash (Jon Batiste, Cory and the Wongnotes) provides the inviting opening for the single. With a lineup of just three musicians—Wong, Barbash, and Goss (piano, composer)—everyone wears multiple hats to create densely layered instrumentation. Stratton sits on high, handling mastering duties as Wong toggles guitar, bass, keyboard, mixing, and composing, managing to fire off some incendiary guitar leads for the big finish.
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The Grammy-winning, multi-hyphenate guitarist released his latest album, Live At Paisley Park, back on October 28th. The live, in-studio recording heard Wong perform in Prince‘s famed home studio in Chanhassen, MN. Given that it has been about six weeks since his last album, Wong is about due for a new one.Â
As Cory Wong noted in an Instagram post about the new album, “since we don’t do a lot of shows, we usually book a studio in the town we’re playing in to record new songs for a couple days…and also just so we have more time to hang out together (we all live in different cities). … a few songs were recorded in Denver just before our last Red Rocks show. one was from the day after our LA show at the Greek. a couple songs are things Woody and i collab’d on via emails. a couple things recorded in hotel rooms, airbnbs, and my kitchen … a wide variety of things that Jack challenged me to produce and put together for this album. so stoked with it and absolutely love and cherish my friends that i got to make this music with [sic].”
The crowd-funded effort has 31 days left from today, December 8th, with a limited number of vinyl copies available. A description of the album reads, “This one is special. All unreleased material. Only one pressing ever. Vulf collectors know the code. This is it.”
Watch the video for “Smokeshow” from Vulfpeck below and click here to pre-order Vulf Vault 005: Wong’s Cafe.
Cory Wong, Vulf – “Smokeshow”
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