Wolfgang Madonia is a shoegaze guitarist and ambient composer, but you wouldn’t necessarily get that impression upon starting their self-titled debut album, Cowtooler. Like many Kalamazoo electronic artists, his work was often tinkered with in private, for self amusement if anything. A way to supplement the focus of their art, their work with several local groups as a guitarist. His work in this realm is ethereal, guided by artists like lovesliescrushing and My Bloody Valentine. Wolfgang is one of my best friends when it comes to people from this city that make electronic music, so it’s hard to not feel wholly biased in giving praise to what I believe is a stellar representation of the artist as a microcosm. It’s also hard to not have a perspective so tied to the album since I got to witness their development into a techno artist, all the while still retaining dreamy qualities of their earlier work.

 

    Kalamazoo has a very small, yet very interconnected electronic music scene. The second wave of Detroit Techno artists brought about Black Nation and there has been an errant success story or two that ultimately distanced themselves from the city altogether, but there are few that stayed. We are the ones that did.

    It was somewhere in 2022 that I had begun to actively search for others that were making techno and electronic music. This led me to Jimbo Bruce and his project Via Ferrata, consisting of himself, Gordie Jennings and Wolfgang, albeit he was in a more tertiary role. Gordie and I hit it off massively and began hanging out after work, challenging each other with sample flips and eventually mashing our weird creations together. This process also generated a lot of independent material for both of our projects, so it only made sense that others jump in and make something without thought.

    Wolfgang was one of those others. Their early recordings still resembled a lot of the textures of shoegaze, but one day he started busting out the jungle breaks and the rest kind of flowed into position. Even when messing around, because keep in mind that these tunes were being made with movies on, full on discussions in the room, fucking around with cameras, a million distractions; he was coming up with this amazing synthesis between his atmosphere building and the rapid influx of influences he had been cramming in. Aphex Twin, Breakence, Squarepusher, Carl Craig, I heard a lot in those tunes.

    Yet, it’s almost impolite to reference influence as a point of praise when talking about this album. Wolfgang’s most astonishing trait as an artist is to be most pointedly themself. Everything that they do reflects an artist that doesn’t seek to replicate their teachings, but expound upon them in ways that feel individual and without partner.

 

    The album begins with its heaviest and hardest hitting tune, WaxenBeat. The synthetic breaks and glitching white noise eventually give way to an almost symphonic if not deliriously happy breakbeat. It’s anthemic, clattering and constantly evolving. The tune not only manages to capture the general structure of the proceeding album, but it also sets up the atmosphere with glorious reverb. The soundstage is set particularly well for the following track, Departure. While not as bombastic as WaxenBeat, the build is just as overwhelming. Blasts of brass synth and angelic vocals hanging in the distance come together with a simple yet off kilter beat. The sloshing rain and alarms give this an almost dystopian feeling as the drumming comes to a halt.

    Toolish acid fucks. That’s pretty much all you need to know, but I’ll expound on that out of generosity, I guess. Even though this is pretty simple on it’s surface, the blending in and out of different drum kits and arpeggiators in combination with the spacious pads is really something to behold. It’s less intense than the proceeding tracks, but manages to be a complete banger all the same. That decreasing intensity is something that at this point will not be completely apparent, but the next track cements that feeling pretty fully.

    Instead of chanting from the roof like the songs before, Pitter+Patter is doing exactly what it says. It’s beat is almost entirely kick drum, at a rhythm that suggests rain or a distant engine. There is little complexity here, but it’s another part of the trick this album has going for it. I remember this tune clearly, because it doesn’t so much repeat as it oscillates. It’s one pattern that goes through a lot of stereo changeups and it gets stuck in your head pretty easily. It hangs in the air until it fades.

    And just like that, Burn / Reminder is here to demonstrate how Wolfgang never stopped being a shoegaze artist. This drone, this immaculate drone has such a wide depth of stereo for such a surreal stretching of vocals, guitars and pianos. It’s like listening to bliss in slow motion. What’s really striking about the atmosphere’s Wolfgang makes is that, to my own jealousy, they’re really good at suggesting space without explicitly needing a sample of that space. In its place are these really evocative suggestions of an environment that fade with the emotional build. It’s something I find a lot of ambient composers lacking and it’s impressive to find buried here, in the middle of what is ostensibly an ambient techno record.

    Your Song (not literally yours, it’s the name of the actual song) removes the heavenly aesthetic of Burn / Reminder and leaves only the trace artifacts of what created the sounds you’re hearing. There’s bass, there’s rhythmic elements, there are even harmonic shots of glitching synth to set some contrast. What it lacks is a directed structure. All these elements fade in and out, distort and return, then dissipate entirely, leaving a wake for the final tune, Winter’s Approach.

    

This is the slowest song on the album, but it’s a perfect summation of Wolfgang’s art. The drone here is otherworldly. There are instruments being played here that sound somewhere between voice and violin, but I can’t even tell. All I can say is that these sounds sink in with time, coming in and out only to leave a permanent mark. That’s what I hope Cowtooler, as a person and as a project can do for you as they do for me. While the album could be seen as an overall smorgasbord to show off their range, the sequencing and impressive mix is holistic and carves out a unique lane for Wolfgang to explore. I’m really excited to see what else they provide for us in the future because this is an amazing way to introduce yourself as an artist.