Ten months ago, Wolfgang Gartner voluntarily entered rehab after a period of “on-again-off-again sporadic drug and alcohol use and abuse” the prior six years. He’s dealt with addiction since he was in his teens and was sober for 8 years between 2002-2010 but broke his sobriety when he played Coachella that year.
At the time, he wrote, “I share all of this with you to let you know that you aren’t alone if you are battling with the same things I am. No matter how dark the times seem there is always a way to make a change.”
Now, he’s out of rehab and just dropped his first new song, “Supercars.” It’s a pumped up electro song with fun vibes and the sort of complextro sound that has been so noticeably absent in EDM.
In a new interview with Billboard, he opens up about his experience surrounding his addiction and his time in rehab.
Speaking to when he knew it was time to enter rehab, he says, “Everything just kind of fell apart in my life, and there was a moment when I realized I was going to have to get help. I had started seeing a therapist with the sole reason of trying to get off drugs via therapy, which is… I even knew that was an insane thing to try and do, but I was trying to do it low-key and undercover without going to rehab, so nobody found out what I had been doing. I was trying to make it so nobody knew it had ever happened. It did not work.”
“Supercars” was supposed to come out on an EP back in January, but obviously things changed when he made the decision to enter rehab, and of course COVID-19. Asked “why now,” he says, “Well, the right time to release the EP was January when it was originally supposed to come out. So now it’s the right time because it exists and I need to get it the fuck out there.”
You can read the full interview on Billboard here.
