Blue Stahli

Bret started music at a young age, learning through the use of an old beat up piano he had rescued from a dump. He worked through 3 years of piano lessons, by mimicking his neighbor and playing the melodies by ear. During this same time, he had become interested in sampling and programming music using DOS's Impulse Tracker. Later he received lessons from a friend for guitar, and would play along to music such as Queen's soundtrack to Flash Gordon. He has played in a band as the guitarist, fronted by drag queens; as well as joining a burlesque troupe as a DJ to their shows.[4]

Bret used his self-taught musical skills[5] alongside Collin Landis to enter a demo-tape titled Mainframe into Flaming Fish Music. Once on the label the duo, aided by brother of Collin, Shawn Lanis (Virocity) produced (under VOXiS:MACHINA, and later VOXiS) Lullabies in 1998. Later in 2006, released as VOXiS, was the debut album Darkeworld: Project One. The release was aimed for summer 2001,[6] but complications pushed the album back 5 years. Darkeworld features various collections of songs, demos, and experiments through the years 2000 to 2006, being re-released through FiXT in 2007 prior to his signing on as Blue Stahli.[7][4]

Klayton (of Celldweller; co-founder of the FiXT Music label) discovered Blue Stahli in 2007 through a remix contest for "Own Little World", titled as the "Remorse Code remix". After he was signed he relocated to Detroit, the residence of the FiXT Music label and its studios.[7]

Blue Stahli logo used since 2011-2015

The following year Blue Stahli debuted with his first single, "Kill Me Every Time"[8] then later releasing his first instrumental based album Antisleep Vol. 01.[9] Blue Stahli released additional singles which led up to the release of his first vocal album (with FiXT) Blue Stahli in 2011.[10] He also released two more instrumental albums as sequels to Antisleep Vol. 01 in 2012 and 2013.[11]

On May 20, 2013, Blue Stahli released a stand-alone single titled "Never Dance Again", which featured elements of 80s Dance music, followed by a remix by labelmate Josh Money.[12] In July the same year, Stahli started a YouTube series titled Ask Blue Stahli, a vlogging series where fans can ask him questions on his social sites using the hashtag #askbluestahli for him to answer.[13]

The first song ever officially recorded for Blue Stahli was This Will Make You Love Again, a cover of IAMX. Of the song, Bret tells that it was recorded "in a closet in a family home."[14] It was recorded the night before he left Phoenix, Arizona, to Detroit, Michigan, to begin the Blue Stahli project.[15] Autrey also states that it was singing along to early IAMX records that taught him how to sing.[16]

It could be argued, however, that the first Blue Stahli track is a 2004 demo featuring Rob Buhl of (Torn Skin and Syntax Error) titled 'Untitled Demo 2004' and 'We Haven't Name This Track Yet.' The song was originally slated for one of Rob Buhl's projects, but never got used and was later naturalized as a Blue Stahli track in 2014 on B-Sides And Other Things I Forgot (though it has since been removed).[17]

In 2013, Blue Stahli premiered two new songs, titled "The Fall" and "Down In Flames", both of which were released on December 17, 2013 on the first "chapter" for the second upcoming vocal album, The Devil. This album had received wide coverage from popular online magazines such as Loudwire,[18] Revolver[19] and Bloody Disgusting.[20] In an interview, Autrey stated that he aimed to finish and release the album in late 2014, however, this was later pushed back to 2015.[21][22]

In May 2015, Bret announced the completion of Antisleep Vol. 04 (Chapter 01),[23] it was later released, without warning, on June 5, 2015.

The Devil was released on October 2, 2015.

Since April 2017, Blue Stahli has been working under the alias Sunset Neon, a predominantly synthwave solo project. He released his debut album Starlight on December 1, 2017.[24] On September 13, 2018, the single "Lakes of Flame" was released for the would-be seventh album, Obsidian.[25] Obsidian was originally slated for a 2019 release with "Lakes of Flame" as the lead single, but due to legality and personal issues with FiXT Music and its owner, it never came to fruition.

By the end of September, Blue Stahli posted three teasers for a trilogy of albums called the Dead Channel Trilogy (stylized as deadchannel_Trilogy). The first two were revealed to be titled Quartz and Copper while also confirming Obsidian to be the final album of the trilogy.[26][27][28] The albums were released on October 2, November 13, 2020 and January 15, 2021 respectively; the first independent releases in Blue Stahli's history.[29][30][31]