Blue Stahli

History

Autrey got his start in music by picking up a beat-up piano he found in a dump and teaching himself to play. He took three years of lessons, but learned a lot by copying his neighbor and playing songs by ear. Around the same time, he got into sampling and programming music with Impulse Tracker on MS-DOS. A friend later showed him how to play guitar, and he would jam along to Queen's Flash Gordon soundtrack. He has played guitar in a band where the lead singer was a drag queen, and also worked as a DJ for a burlesque troupe. Being largely self-taught, Autrey teamed up with Collin Landis to send a demo tape called Mainframe to Flaming Fish Music. With help from Collin's brother Shawn Landis (known as Virocity), they made the album Lullabies in 1998, first as VOXiS:MACHINA and later just VOXiS. In 2006, VOXiS put out Darkeworld: Project One, which was originally planned for summer 2001 but got delayed by five years. That album collects songs, demos, and experiments from 2000 to 2006, and FiXT re-released it in 2007. Klayton from Celldweller, who co-founded FiXT Music, found Autrey in 2007 through a remix contest for "Own Little World" where Autrey submitted the "Remorse Code remix." After signing, Autrey started the Blue Stahli project and moved to Detroit, where FiXT's studios are. The name Blue Stahli comes from the painting "untitled blue" and its artist Susanne Stahli. His first single was "Kill Me Every Time," followed by the instrumental album Antisleep Vol. 01. More singles led up to his first vocal album, Blue Stahli, in 2011. He released two more instrumental albums as sequels in 2012 and 2013. On May 20, 2013, he put out the single "Never Dance Again," which had an 80s dance sound, and later a remix by labelmate Josh Money. In July 2013, he started a YouTube vlog series called Ask Blue Stahli, where fans could send questions using #askbluestahli.