Oceans On Other Planets – Breaking Musical Boundaries, One Song at a Time
Who says you can’t do it all?
That’s the thought process behind Oceans on Other Planets, the latest musical project from Nick Wolf (of Icarus Landing fame).
The Los Angeles based foursome will likely be called an alt-rock band, but it’s everything their “alt” encompasses that makes them truly interesting. Their first three singles alone include influences that range from synth pop, to electronic rock, to Motown.
Consisting of Wolf (photo: center, w/ beard), along with (photo: L to R) Zak St. John (drums), Mike St. Michaels (guitar), and Jack Glazer (bass), the only interest Oceans on Other Planets has when it comes to musical boundaries is breaking them.
With that in mind, these are Oceans plenty of listeners will want to crank up to eleven.
I caught up with Nick Wolf over Zoom, and he discussed what ties the many musical influences of Oceans on Other Planets together, as well as the excitement he feels starting fresh, and the time the band risked their lives for the perfect group photo.
Oceans on Other Planets is a new project, but you also front Icarus Landing, which has been around for over a decade. Is that band still active?
Short answer, yes. There’s not much happening right now. Some of the material that I created to birth Oceans on Other Planets was potentially going to be Icarus Landing songs, but didn’t quite fit, and honestly, I just wanted to do something new and fresh, and really just come at it from another angle.
So Icarus Landing is still a band. I think the last show we did was January 2023.
I was gonna ask what gave you the itch to start the new band, but clearly it was wanting to go in a different direction sound-wise.
Different direction, and just ripping the band-aid off to start fresh.
I did Icarus Landing for quite a long time, and we had little bit of success in the indie world – we did three tours of Europe, we were signed to a British label – we had some cool little milestones. We also played with some pretty big names from time to time.
Our first record was pretty metal, and don’t get me wrong, I still love metal, but I think I’ve grown out of it as a writer a little bit. I mean, I can still crank my amps. You see behind me …
Yeah, you have a stack of Mashall amps behind you.
Exactly. So I still love to play heavy, but as a songwriter, and an artist, I wanted to go in a different direction.
Also, from a marketing standpoint, as much as I hate to dwell on this, if you build a new project from the ground up, and it’s fresh, and you can kind of tap a new audience through Spotify, Instagram, etc., to me there’s something really powerful if you do it right. It’s much harder in my mind to take a band that’s been around a long time, that’s had a little bit of a plateau, and then really uplift that into the next echelon. Not to say it couldn’t be done.
I’m also writing all the time. I’m doing unique experimental things. I didn’t want to have the boundaries of the old project anymore. I didn’t want to release stuff, and have people say, “Hey, that doesn't sound like Icarus Landing,” and stuff like that.
So part of it’s about freedom, and I got to be honest, I really do feel a pretty profound sense of freedom having launched something brand new, and I think it’s best music I’ve ever done. I mean that wholeheartedly, so I’m pretty excited.
It’s interesting to hear you say the launch aspect excited you, because I know many artists feel that’s legitimately the hardest part, trying to get people’s attention initially.
Yeah, it is hard, but it’s exciting.
I mean, I’ve also been a producer, and project manager in a lot of different fields. I’ve done music videos. I’ve produced other bands’ records. I’ve done a lot of big technology projects, and all of those things have one thing in common, which is it’s about strategy and execution. So I really get off on checking the box, so to speak, completing the project, birthing it into the environment, and seeing how people react to it.
Now with Oceans on Other Planets, in April we launched the first single, “The Other Side,” and the first video, and it did really well, and we've been doing new singles every roughly six to eight weeks. So the cool thing about that is you continue to get that spark of deploying your art into the world. That also sort of keeps us accountable, like we’ve got to keep writing to keep fueling the beast, so to speak.
Where’d the band name come from? I want to hazard a guess, because it seems like it could be a metaphor for finding life elsewhere.
I like that a lot.
It kind of ties back to what we just talked about, which is – can we find success in a whole new world, so to speak? Can we find fulfillment, and a rewarding experience with a new product in a new territory? So there’s a tie to that.
As far as how the band name came to be, I agonized over this, honestly, I really did. I had a Google doc with hundreds of names, and I was whittling them away. Then I went to five of my trusted advisors, and I said, “Hey, I’m not gonna give you any direction here, just go through, and highlight the ones you like.”
The cool thing was all five of those people highlighted Oceans on Other Planets independently, with no influence from me. That was a really good sign. Each of them really loved it because it was unique. It kind of stands out right away. It paints a vivid picture.
The first three singles you’ve released, “The Other Side,” “Die Alone,” and “Damaged Goods,” are all radically different musically. You have alt-rock, synth pop, and electronic rock with some Motown R&B/soul thrown in. Are some of these old influences you’re exploring for the first time, or are they new rabbit holes you’ve gone down, and want to experiment with?
I like that question. That’s very cool.
It’s about artistic freedom.
The ability to do different styles is something I crave. So there’s that as a kind of a fundamental thing.
I think if you go back to Icarus Landing, the last two records, we were starting to weave synths in there. They were like indie, or alt-rock songs with a little bit of synths going on, and also some electronic effects, and stuff, and we were trying to do that live, as well. I don’t think we were great at that because we were still really very much a rock band.
But pulling on that thread, utilizing more modern soundscapes, textures, and instruments is definitely part of Oceans on Other Planets’ core blueprint, if you will. So all three of the songs do share that in common. There’s not a lot of guitar in these songs. It’s more synth based, and more electronic based, although with “Damaged Goods” the guitar is back in there, and it’s a pretty big, fat guitar.
With that particular song, I wrote that demo years and years ago in my apartment in Hollywood.
When I went to work with Sahaj (Ticotin), my current producer, he really loved that demo, and said, “Let's work on this.” Honestly dude, that surprised the hell out of me. I never thought we would resurrect the demo from those old days, but we made the song better than it ever could have been, in my opinion.
Vocal melodies, he helped me shape those. The production, I think, is really crisp, and top notch. We also have the synth elements backing in there, like that guitar riff is doubled by a synth. So I think those soundscapes are what ties the three songs together.
Is there any road you wouldn't go down musically with Oceans on Other Planets?
Short answer, no.
I want to keep it wide open, but I do want them to all kind of fit.
Imagine it’s like a family of people. You can have very different personalities, but you can tell they’re all part of the family. So there should be some consistency, some thread that ties them.
With that being said, I don’t see it being a metal band ever, but we might have some heavy moments. I don’t see it being a punk rock band, even though I love punk rock. I have a separate project to do that.
So even though this is kind of wide open, I wouldn’t dilute it, or pollute it with things that are unnecessarily left field.
I was going to say your influences are wonderfully varied, because you’re also in a Misfits cover band named We Bite.
Yeah, that’s my project with my brother (Mario).
The Misfits … to me, this is really legendary, timeless music. Anybody who writes off the Misfits because it’s punk, or because their recordings were shitty, I will argue with that person, because it’s all about the song. I mean, those melodies, and song structures, it’s perfect to me.
Even back in the early Icarus Landing days we used to play a few Misfits songs. We played “Die, Die My Darling,” for example. On Halloween, we would do a Misfits cover show just for fun.
I remember in high school, people would have their parents hire us to come play their Halloween parties. We’d be in some, big nice house in the suburbs in Ohio, in the living room, playing Misfits songs, with fake blood going everywhere. So that's just a part of my youth I don’t think I’ll ever let go of.
That basically lets us get our rocks off with that fast, raw, high energy stuff, and that way I don’t bring it back home to Oceans on Other Planets and like, disturb the force.
Speaking of forces being disturbed, I was going through your Instagram, and I need to know the story behind the PR photo that, based on one of the comments, you risked your life for.
Oh yeah, man, so that photo was taken the same day we did “The Other Side” video shoot.
We have this photographer named Eric Quiros. He’s actually a really brilliant guy, super talented. He was there to shoot behind the scenes footage, and pictures for the video shoot. We got a lot of good stuff, both in the formal video, and in the behind the scenes, but we had not done a proper band picture for the Oceans project.
Since everybody was there, and it’s sometimes hard to get everyone in one place … basically, we were standing in the street, maybe around 11pm in L.A. It was a pretty busy street. The photographer himself almost got taken out by a car, and man, my buddies were grabbing me like, “Yo, this dude’s crazy. What’s he up to? He almost killed himself.”
Anyways, the images turned out great, even better than we expected, so the joke is like, hey, you know, you got to sacrifice for your art, and Eric almost died getting this image, we better fucking promote it.
What’s going to be next in terms of singles, videos, maybe an EP, LP, tour?
We’ve got a video brewing right now for “Die Alone,” because the single came out in June, and we didn't have the opportunity to make the video at the same time, which is fine.
We’re actually using AI for this video, along with footage recorded of me in this very cool, hyper lighting kind of space. That video is going to come out like end of August, and there’s a preview video to two of them on my Instagram.
The next single will probably be around September 1st. We’ve got three new songs in a certain state of production right now, so I don't know which one’s going to be next.
There is one song I do want to give people a heads up about, it’s called “Best Friend,” and I think it’s got some pretty ridiculous potential. That might be a home run song for us.
Then we’re going to do a video for “Damaged Goods.” I’d actually like to do sort of like a big old school production with a bunch of dancers and stuff, because it’s kind of a swingy, almost like historic Hollywood kind of sound. I’m thinking like a Bruno Mars sort of video, or like when the Chili Peppers had a video where they had a marching band, and they had everyone dancing in the street in New York.
This is what I’m envisioning, but those those things take time, so I don’t want to promise anything on that yet.
For more Oceans on Other Planets, check out oceansonotherplanets.com.
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