Returning to Alaska with a gold record under his belt, Ralph Castelli stakes his future on home

A decade ago, Ralph Castelli left Anchorage on a journey that took him around the world as he made music and found audiences — often in surprising ways.

Now Castelli is back in Alaska with a gold record under his belt and a mandate — both personally and professionally — to make the state his home.

Castelli’s 2019 release “Morning Sex” was recently certified gold and has more than 190 million plays on Spotify. But the 27-year-old, who operates as a producer as much as a recording artist, left an industry stronghold in Los Angeles to stake his future on producing music out of a studio in Hope.

So far, Castelli has been able to recruit some major artists to the space, including Alaska-rooted duo Wendlo, who recently recorded at the studio.

“I think in my ideal world, I’d never have to leave,” Castelli said. “I would just be in Alaska all the time and the opportunity has to be insane for me to move.”

As a kid in Anchorage, Castelli was into snowboarding, spending hours at Hilltop Ski Area with friends. And while he was interested in music, that took a back seat until later in his teenage years.

Once he turned 18, Castelli almost immediately left the state for Australia.

“I heard it was warm and heard you could just kind of like, chill there,” he said. “No gnarly winter.”

But he needed work, and that meant taking a job as a dishwasher at a quirky business that was both a streetwear store and a restaurant.

“They sold fried chicken out of shoe boxes,” Castelli said. “I just ended up in a scene and that’s where I learned to produce music.”

At first, that production work was utilized on his own songs as he created fun but flippant tunes like “I Hate Swimming.” He uploaded his early works to SoundCloud and YouTube.

“I had my guitar and my mic and I would sample stuff,” he said. ”I’d bring this little sampler around, this Zoom recorder and I would just make drums out of, you know, tapping the table. So the first EP was purely samples that I’d recorded on walks to work or whatever.”

Then suddenly, they started to take off. With the help of other YouTube creators who used the songs, his music began to find a huge audience.

“I didn’t even know how to get my music on Apple Music or Spotify or anything,” he said. “They were essentially like, YouTube curators. And they had big fan bases of people who would go listen to their YouTube channel, pretty much like the first beginnings of playlists.”

Castelli’s success brought him to Los Angeles, where he was fully immersed in the music world as a producer, building out his own studio space. In 2021, two years after it was released, “Morning Sex” blew up with creators on TikTok.

“I didn’t even have TikTok at that time, so I wasn’t promoting it,” he said. “People telling me, like, ‘Dude, this song is huge on TikTok. You’ve gotta get a TikTok and start telling people it’s your song.’”

In Los Angeles, Castelli continued to record music but resisted having a producer for his own work.

“When I moved to LA and you get managers, the quintessential thing is, ‘You’re gonna get produced. We’re gonna put you in all these rooms with all these producers,” he said. “And I guess I’m arrogant enough to think that I should be the producer, even though I was nowhere near as talented as them.”

While his time in LA was instructive as Castelli started making industry contacts and producing other artists, it still left him feeling hollow. When Castelli and his wife, Vanessa, found out she was pregnant, relocating out of Los Angeles became a priority.

But returning to Alaska meant starting his production business from scratch.

He had access to some family land in Hope, purchased more nearby and started building his own studio. There, Castelli has already recorded a number of notable artists — Glaive, Gallant, Dora Jar and Blu DeTiger — and is continuing to expand the space.

Each of the four artists have substantial audiences, with more than 380,000 monthly Spotify listens.

“I built the studio with the sole intention of, instead of producing for people in LA, I’m gonna ask them to come to Hope and we’ll record there,” he said.

He would also like to develop a separate studio in Hope that would be specifically for Alaska artists. So far, it’s been a family-oriented project with his dad helping Castelli with much of the construction and his wife handling design duties.

“All these artists, like, they need a place like Hope,” Castelli said. “I know a lot of artists at this point and have produced for a lot of people, and they’re all craving it. Everyone wants to leave LA to record, like destination studios are a real thing.”

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While producing is a significant part of his focus, Castelli is continuing to release new music of his own. He dropped “Why Are You So Uptight?” last month and has another pair of singles due out this month. All three songs are from his new album, which is set for release in early 2025.

With more of an indie-pop vibe, the new songs are a change from some of his earlier synth-pop music. Castelli said that while the new album might not appeal to some fans who enjoyed his earlier work, he doesn’t want to get stagnant.

“You get comfortable when you have success,” he said. “My whole career has been (doing) 180s. ... If you really know me or my music, I think you’ll understand why I’m doing this.”

And while he may play shows in major markets to support his new album, Castelli also has some Alaska music goals to check off — like playing a show at the Bear Tooth Theatrepub, a place where he saw a lot of bands in his teens. He headlined the New Year’s Eve show at the Sitzmark in Girdwood, with Wendlo opening the show.

“I’m so in love with Alaska right now that I just want to play here,” he said. “That’s all I’m thinking about.”