We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Daniel Corey. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Daniel below.
Alright, Daniel thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
I recently finished my first music video. It was the conclusion of a very long and fulfilling journey of life.
I started writing the song “Lift Me Up” many years ago, long before I ever knew that I wanted to become a professional recording artist. Fragments of the song stuck with me through many changes in life. When I started to get to know amazing music pros like my friends Alexx Calise and Dennis Morehouse, I knew that I could lead a musician’s life.
In the throes of quarantine, I finalized the main meat of the song. A few years later, I was able to go into the studio to record it with Alexx and Dennis producing, and they helped me iron out the final bits of the arrangement. The song dropped on Spotify and all of the major streaming services in the early summer of 2023.
From there, I knew that I wanted to create a video for “Lift Me Up,” but I wanted to be out of the box about it. My music is generally acoustic guitar-driven, but I don’t think of myself as having a folksy mindset. I didn’t want to see myself strolling through meadows and wearing a lot of denim while sitting and strumming on the banks of a peaceful river. I like urban settings, cities, and dystopian desolation, so I made my own aesthetic that I call Cyber-Americana. I pictured myself playing my acoustic guitar in the middle of a vast futuristic, cyberpunk city. I figure that the citizens of an urban dystopian need to be lifted up a little more than trees and rocks do.
But how to accomplish these epic visuals? I spent about eight months taking photos of my guitars, downtown Los Angeles, and different neighborhoods of Tokyo, as well as macro shots of Japanese woodblock-printed books and paintings that I found in thrift shops. I combined these elements together in Photoshop, then fed them through some new AI tools that I had been learning, namely Midjourney. Then post-editing in Photoshop and Lightroom, then repeat. I ended up making over 1,000 of these images. At the same time, I was learning about Stable Diffusion and Kaiber AI, and I fed the images into these programs to create flow and camera movement. I had my friend Christopher Gregson film me playing and singing the song, and from there I created tracking shots in After Effects and edited everything together in Premiere.
The journey of writing “Lift Me Up” took over a decade (I write most of my songs in under an hour, trust me), then recording it and creating the video took about a year. It’s been an amazing journey, and I have learned a lot.
As of this writing, I just had the world theatrical premiere of “Lift Me Up” at the iconic Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. The same place where the original “Star Wars” debuted in 1997! The online release will be one week from now, Tuesday, September 19th. It’s been a great ride, and I feel very blessed. I look forward to seeing where my other songs take me, both sonically and visually.
Daniel, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I have always wanted to create art in many different media, but music has always been the core thing in my life. I initially created my company DangerKatt as an umbrella for all of my artistic pursuits. In 2007, I was pursuing a career in comic book writing. I teamed with artist Anthony Diecidue, and we made our first book, “Prophet.” After that, we got to work on “Moriarty,” which was the first graphic novel to ever cast Sherlock Holmes’ nemesis as the title character. We got a publishing deal with Image Comics–the home of “The Walking Dead”–and our work was distributed worldwide. I would later go on to produce one of the first VR comic books based on “Moriarty.” All of this time, music kept calling to me.
I started writing a brand-new batch of songs throughout the teens, and when the quarantine of 2020 hit, I deepened my song catalog and really concentrated on getting the songs under my fingers. I also turned a camera onto myself and started taking macro photos of my eyes, which I would then combine with photos of things that I loved in the outside world, places I’d been, artwork that I admired. This became a project that I called “Map of the World,” and I eventually released a collected book of these conceptual photographs.
The futuristic visuals of “Map of the World” combined with the retro vibe of my music make Cyber-Americana a reality, and it would all eventually come together to create the “Lift Me Up” music video.
What I am providing to the world is a lifestyle that translates sonic and visual learning into meaningful art. I’m just hoping that the work reaches people and touches lives.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
I want to make art based on things I find in the world. Songs come from experience, digital art photos come from travel and exploration, and written stories come from dreams and moments of inspiration. Documenting and sharing my experience shows others that they can do the same. I would love it if everyone could find a way to make something unique and special that is based on their personal journey. The more we can show people, the more we can better understand ourselves and others.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
Seeing a project finished and released to the world. Any release of anything that you have created is a success, regardless of sales numbers. As long as you have made your complete statement and shared it with others, you are a success.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://dangerkatt.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thedangerkatt/ – https://www.instagram.com/dangerkattworld
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thedangerkatt/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dcdkatt/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/thedangerkatt
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/danielcorey1
- Other: The music video for “Lift Me Up”: https://bit.ly/LMUvid2023 Daniel Corey’s music on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3KbFgmK Daniel Corey’s music on all of the major streamers: https://bit.ly/LiftMeUpHN2023
Image Credits
Anabel DFlux