The lost legacy of late pop mastermind Stroik is celebrated with today’s premiere of the effervescent new single, “Wash and Repeat,” available everywhere now.
Produced and mixed by Stroik and his longtime friend and musical collaborator Bruce Driscoll (Freedom Fry, Blondfire, Ivy, Camera2) with additional production by Andy Chase (of the iconic indie pop band Ivy), the posthumous track is accompanied by a buoyant official music video. “Wash and Repeat” heralds the long overdue arrival of Stroik’s landmark debut album, ’65th and York’, arriving at last via Unfiltered Records and Caveman Arts Society on Friday, October 24. Pre-orders/pre-saves are available now.
“When Drew passed away in 2022, this song and video risked being lost to time on a hard drive,” says Bruce Driscoll. “Andy and I couldn’t let that happen. Drew was a layered, insanely talented guy who sometimes had his dark moments, but this track is nothing but joy to me. We recorded it in the winter of 2010 on minimal gear in my tiny studio apartment on the Upper East Side of New York. He needed a video for the release, so with only the equipment I had at the time, we went down the street to my laundromat with my friend Leah and filmed it. People were coming in to wash their clothes while we shot and were totally unfazed, which only added to its charm. Drew could be shy, but I think the result reflects the music perfectly – it feels like something you’d stumble across on MTV in the 1990s. This has always been one of my favorite songs of his, and I’m grateful people will finally get to experience it.”
A never-before-heard collection of strange and beautiful songs created by a truly unique – yet sadly lost – musical voice, 65th and York was first unveiled this summer by the tender first single, “Desert Time,” co-produced and co-written by Unfiltered Records founder Andy Chase and available everywhere alongside an official lyric video streaming now on YouTube. “Desert Time” was met by immediate spins on Los Angeles, CA’s KCSN (88.5FM) by legendary DJ Nic Harcourt as well as online attention from such outlets as Zillions Magazine, which raved, “With its gentle fusion of indie pop, dream pop, and lo-fi bedroom vibes, ‘Desert Time’ is a whisper from another time that’s at once intimate and panoramic. It’s a bittersweet welcome from a voice not heard with enough frequency in life, but one that carries a new resonance now.”
In addition, Stroik’s all-too-brief life and career will be explored in the upcoming short film, Drew Stroik: Unknown Pop Wizard, set to arrive next year. A semi-finalist at Brooklyn, NY’s Dumbo Film Festival, the documentary is preceded by an exclusive trailer streaming now.
About Stroik
In November 2022, the music world tragically – and unknowingly – lost one of its most special and irreplaceable voices, Stroik. At only 35 years old, Drew Stroik passed away, leaving behind a catalog of over 100 unreleased songs, all created while privately struggling with poverty, loneliness, and substance abuse in the notoriously dangerous city of Pueblo, CO.
Stroik’s songs are imperfectly perfect pop masterpieces, imbued with heavy doses of relatability and human emotion. Though he referred to them as “generic pop,” to the world at large, they are far from that. Every single one of Stroik’s raw, esoteric, and mesmerizing tracks was made using the same main tools – a guitar he got for his 12th birthday and a Yamaha keyboard made of plastic, meant for children or beginners. The combination of strange synth textures and uncorrected finger-played drum sounds and patterns, fused with his soft, warm, honest voice, adds up to something that is specifically, spellbindingly “Stroik.”
Born in a suburb of Chicago, Stroik displayed an innate connection with music from an early age, captivating everyone with his infectious, quirky sense of rhythm and his intense love for melodies that always seemed to stretch his modest vocal abilities to the very limit. Stroik possessed a rare ability to perceive music in the most mundane, everyday moments, headbopping and snapping his fingers excitedly to the tunes that others often overlooked. With toy guitars and his electric piano, he would play along to his favorite Disney soundtracks until, enchanted and exhausted, he fell asleep. Stroik and his loving mother found themselves living above a funeral home owned by his grandmother and her boyfriend, who, as fate would have it, was the father of Veruca Salt bassist Steve Lack. The iconic 90s alt-rock band would often rehearse in the funeral home’s basement, filling young Stroik’s ears with music, and he would frequently sneak down and bang on the drums.
Stroik and his mother relocated frequently, from Florida and West Hollywood to Las Vegas and ultimately Cary, NC, where the teenager’s demeanor irrevocably changed and he began to feel like an outcast. Recognizing his true calling by the age of 17 – but with no connections in the music industry – Stroik used email as his gateway to reaching his heroes, sending a nonstop barrage of his demos to everyone who inspired him. One of the few responses came from Ivy’s Andy Chase, whose NYC-based label Unfiltered Records had released records by The Postmarks, a band Stroik loved.
Chase saw immediate promise in Stroik’s spellbinding tracks and asked him for the master files so that he could spend time polishing the songs further. However, to his horror, Stroik – unaware that external hard drives could be used to back up his work – had made a habit of making an MP3 and then deleting the files from his old computer as soon as they were finished. Undeterred and smitten with Stroik’s unique and undeniable genius, Chase signed Stroik, then only 23 years old, to Unfiltered Records. But in order to make an album, Stroik would have to start recording his songs again from scratch. Chase introduced Stroik to his longtime friend and musical collaborator, Bruce Driscoll (Freedom Fry, Blondfire, Ivy, Camera2), and over the subsequent frigid winter of 2010, Stroik began weekend treks away from North Carolina to Driscoll’s tiny studio apartment on New York’s Upper East Side, where he began recreating and polishing his original demos.
With Chase involved in the production and mixing, an album began to emerge that encompassed both the innocent, unprofessional charm of Stroik’s earlier efforts and the impressive credentials that his collaborators were known for. Photos and music videos were shot, artwork was completed, and a publicist was brought on board surrounding Stroik’s impending debut album. However, within months, Stroik’s personal struggles got the best of him, and the label was ultimately forced to sever ties, derailing what could have been his breakthrough moment.
’65th and York’ Tracklist
- Apart From the Truth
- The Real Thing
- Wash and Repeat
- La La La
- In The Fresh
- Number One Blind
- Home
- Desert Time
- Halfway
- House of Manners
- Lonely People
- The Other Way
- Get A Little
- James
In his last effort to recognize the talent that Stroik truly was, Chase gave Stroik all his newly finished Unfiltered Records recordings back to him, but for reasons no one will ever know, Stroik never released them or any other music. Perhaps it was the pervasive self-doubt and defeatist attitude that always seemed to follow him like a dark cloud, or perhaps it was the ever-increasing depression and mental instability that ultimately took his focus away from his art. It remains a mystery, but in the decade following his sudden departure from Unfiltered Records, there was almost no visible proof that Stroik even existed.
However, Stroik, in fact, never stopped writing and recording his enthrallingly original music. Eventually, his path led him to Pueblo, CO, where he struggled to make ends meet while keeping his mounting addictions and depression a secret from the rest of his family. Sadly, Stroik lost his battle with substance abuse to one tiny fentanyl-laced pill.
Three years after his untimely passing, Stroik’s music is all that remains, with 65th and York finally allowing the world a gateway into his singular, complex creative mind. To know Stroik was a wonderful whirlwind experience of chaos and grace, and listening to songs like “Wash and Repeat” and “La La La” is much the same. Life’s joys and sorrows are always precariously intertwined, and this yin and yang was ever-apparent within Stroik’s music. Though Stroik is gone, 65th and York gives listeners a long-overdue chance to revel in this powerfully gifted, one-of-a-kind artist and dream about what might have been.
SOURCE: Official Bio
LINKS:
https://stroik.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/stroikmusic/
https://open.spotify.com/artist/1I5dPVhgA46IHA0T5qJ7VV
https://www.tiktok.com/@stroikmusic
https://www.youtube.com/@stroikmusic