Crywolf

Born Justin Taylor Phillips, Crywolf launched his career in 2012 by diving into the burgeoning American dubstep movement, where he created remixes and sharpened his production abilities. Raised in Raleigh amid a large musical family, the North Carolina native relocated first to Hong Kong and later to New York, where he studied economics in college. What began as a casual pursuit eventually prompted him to abandon his studies and commit to music on a full-time basis. As the EDM landscape swelled with generic productions and hollow excess, Phillips pivoted his style toward intimate creative statements and emotional resonance instead of relying on massive climactic builds. His initial EPs, Ghosts in 2013 and Angels in 2014, blended prominent rhythms and pop-EDM touches inside layers of atmospheric sound and introspective songwriting that marked him as distinctive. An early signal of his artistic shift emerged through the 2014 split EP Runaway, created with Canadian electronic musician Ianborg, along with the Remixes collection issued the subsequent year. Two further albums appeared on his Okami label in 2015: Dysphoria, an atmospheric journey, and the lush, sweeping Cataclasm, which was recorded in Iceland.