Features : WADLEY honors father in new project Golden Sands

DJ, producer and creative Diego Martinez is heading up an exciting new project with an emotional focus. Beginning the project, WADLEY, Martinez has utilized his skills and his father’s poetry to create something incredible and beautiful.

Started by Martinez and his father, the WADLEY project brings together heritage, family, music and friendship. Named after the desert in Mexico, where his grandfather grew up, WADLEY was the final project that Martinez and his father worked on together before his father died of cancer. The project then continued to grow into a band including a collection of incredible musicians and DJs.

The first release from WADLEY is an album titled Golden Sands. Featuring five songs created solely by Martinez and five songs made in collaboration with his father. The album, now released, is an homage to Martinez’s father and his familial history.

Golden Sands features a full variety of interesting and beautiful tracks. Some of the most notable include the album introduction, “Self Proclaimed”. The first song to be put together on the album, “Self Proclaimed” was originally a poem Martinez’s father had given to him. “It was the first poem my father gave me,” he explained. “I brought it back with music, and he told me that it was too slow.” It was near the end of the first song that his father brought him the lyrics for their second. The song also includes a video, showcasing the desert for which the band was named. It is a gorgeous melding of music and visual interpretation.

The album also features the song titled “Gotcha Big Boy”, that leans into his father’s scientific career, both giving recognition to the women of the scientific community and marveling at the complexity of a black hole, which a specific group of women are studying exclusively.

The Golden Sands album also includes tracks that tell the stories of Martinez and his father’s life. Songs like “Surprise Party” show his fathers imagination of Burning Man, a festival Martinez regularly attended and that his father dreamed of later in his life. “Nerdy” tells of an important adventure in his father’s life and “Quietly” depicts his relationship with death, and is also the root of the album’s title.

Another notable song, written by Martinez alone, is “Materia”, a track about life and the world that we have been living. The track has a driven, yet sort of melancholy feel that grows into a passionate, hopeful energy. It is compelling and relatable, an incredible addition to the album.

“What I want is for this music to be heard,” Martinez explained. Golden Sands and WADLEY as a project are a living, breathing system of music and creativity that is always growing and shifting. This project is truly unique, passionate and beautiful. It features a lifetime of stories and emotion pulled into a single album, something that you couldn’t stop if you tried.

Following the release of Golden Sands, Martinez and the WADLEY team are working on the upcoming release of the remix of two songs featured on the album, “Quietly” and “Rise Again”. Martinez has also alluded to the idea of another upcoming album, as well as a collection of other exciting work from WADLEY and all of the individual projects of its collaborators.

Make sure to stay tuned in to WADLEY and all of the WADLEY crew on various platforms for new music, visuals and social posts.

Websites:
YouTube
Spotify

Socials:
Instagram
Tiktok