Le Castle Vania's Warped homecoming
Former Atlanta DJ visits his old stomping grounds
From 2007 through 2012, Le Castle Vania's Fuck Yesss indie electronica dance parties sold out the Drunken Unicorn, eventually moving to the more spacious Masquerade. After five years, the local favorite, born Dylan Eiland, was lured to deadmau5's mau5trap label and the party ended. Now living in Los Angeles, Eiland says he's considering resurrecting Fuck Yesss in Atlanta. After contributing four songs to the soundtrack for last year's Keanu Reeves mob revenge film John Wick, Eiland remains in high demand, recently unveiling collaborations with Addison (formerly Schoolboy), working on an EP with up-and-comer Lumberjvck for release this summer, and starting an electro-rock act called Trade Secrets with Blake Miller from Moving Units. After returning home last year to play TomorrowWorld, Eiland is back again for a decidedly more punk rock homecoming, performing on the Beatport Stage at the Vans Warped Tour. Before the show, Eiland checked in to talk about life in L.A., being a black sheep on tour, and Southern barbecue.
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Why did you move from Atlanta to L.A.?
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I had been going out to L.A. so much to write music and to work with great musicians out there. Then I got a really cool studio, so I decided to make the jump. The Crystal Method rents me a room in their studio. When I was in high school, I loved their music and looked up to those guys. If you had told me back then that I'd be working out of their studio, I would have never believed it. I wrote a song with them on their most recent record.
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When you moved to L.A. did you get anything like Fuck Yesss started out there?
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I played a lot of shows, but nothing that I threw. I never really liked throwing events, to be honest. It was more out of necessity because there wasn't a venue that was pushing the style of music I was trying to do. Since then, that scene has really exploded in Atlanta and there's so much going on with electronic music. But I prefer to just stay on the creative side.
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Trends have come and gone in Atlanta's electronic music scene. How has your personal style evolved over that time?
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I try to stay true to where I started. I've never really got caught up in trends. I've actually never made a dubstep track. But I take influences from everywhere — I take influences from that sound, from hip-hop, from rock music — and fuse it with electronic stuff. Being from Atlanta, obviously there's some trap influence. I'm just trying to expand on my existing sound. And now I'm scoring some film and video game stuff, which is a little different from what I normally do.
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How did you end up working on the John Wick score?
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I'm a huge fan of Tyler Bates, who has done some huge film scoring. So I approached him to write some music together and we just became really good friends. He's been kind of a mentor to me on string arrangements, scoring and all that kind of stuff. He was approached to do John Wick, but was in the middle of doing Guardians of the Galaxy. He had the idea that my music would be a really good fit for John Wick, so he approached the director with the idea of having me come in and do a large chunk of that.
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He also produced the latest Marilyn Manson album, The Pale Emperor, which you also worked on. What was your role on that album?
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I didn't do a lot of work on the record other than some very small sound things I sent over to Tyler. I did a remix of %22Killing Strangers%22 as well, but that hasn't come out yet. It was used in John Wick, actually.
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How has the Warped Tour been for you so far?
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It's totally different from any tour I've done before. I was on two years of the Identity Festival, which was kind of the electronic music version of Warped Tour. It went a lot later than Warped Tour. Warped Tour usually ends around 8:30 or 9 o'clock, which is when things usually get started in the electronic world. I'm definitely a black sheep on the tour, though there are some other cool electronic acts on the Beatport Stage. All the bands are super friendly and nice; they don't treat me like the black sheep on the tour. We're all hanging out afterward, having barbecue and just chilling on the tour buses. You can't get barbecue in California like you can in the South, though.