In my last blog I mention that “A New World Is Emerging, And New Opportunities” That could certainly describe China’s music industry. Massive but very immature market, very few choices for music style and selection, very few willing to take the leap to pursue music beyond an initial 2 year attempt to do anything. One of the projects that kept me going during the pandemic starting in 2020 was this group of very talented singers in China together called NUFU2R (“New Future”). Our aim with this group is creating fun, exciting new electro pop music. Led by 3 talented, experienced singers, Z.T. from Hunan, Lulu from Sichuan, and Karina from much farther beyond. If the beat doesn’t grab you, their soulful voices will!
Things went very well in their first year, we released a few songs, once of which reached silver status on the top music streaming platform in China, released a music video, and did some performances. But for singers who make their living from music (which is very rare in China) a perpetual pandemic not only takes a financial blow, but is very discouraging when you can’t perform much and even when you can you need to decide wether to do what you love or do what pays. It’s also discouraging when the public cares more about your Tik Tok (Douyin) videos than music, and really have a very hard time knowing when they hear music that is great unless it become famous…
After a long reflection and planning period, more new songs and videos are coming and the group is determined not to give up. Will they survive China’s perilous but promising industry? These are some of the most talented singers and musicians I have ever worked with in China. Let’s see what they can do.
More information and videos on their official website NUFU2R.com
I am proud to announce cooperation with Audi China to provide official theme music for the Audi e-tron series, under my EDM acronym JAMA Z! It started with a viral video introducing the robot in Shanghai:
The second video in Audi China’s e-tron campaign featuring a flash mob of dancers in Beijing’s famous Sanlitun TaiKoo Li area! See if the e-tron robot can match the dancers moves…
“You know, I spent years of my life listening to Pink Floyd’s The Wall when I was however old I was, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, whatever. I didn’t have access to that much music. Music was an investment. If I spent eight, ten dollars on an album I was gonna listen to it even if it sucked. I was going to listen it until I liked it, you know? I read the liner notes, I read the etching on the vinyl, on the inside ring. I lived with that material, it became part of me. And I don’t mean just that, but the consumption of music was different.
Today, where you’ve got an iPod that’s filled with music you didn’t pay for, and everybody’s… it’s just a different consumption model, between youtube and the internet and people sharing files. Competition for your attention; people spend less time with music. And hence, as an artist that spent years on records, it’s somewhat defeating when you spend a year and a half on an album to get it just right, and it either leaks or comes out, and gets judged and dismissed in the first half a day, forgotten a week later.
That was a long setup for me saying – I thought it would be interesting to look at an album more like a magazine. Let’s do it, not carelessly, but let’s NOT look at it as the next thing that’s my big statement for the next four years of my life. Here was a very intensive and creative six-to-eight weeks of my life I had, as an album. Here it is. It’s free. That’s what The Slip was. It’s fun to do, it was interesting to see if it could be done. I’m proud of that record, it was fun to make. The self-imposed pressure was also matched with [the fact that] if it sucked I didn’t have to put it out.”
– Trent Reznor, Nine Inch Nails. Read more from the source of this quote here.
For some years now, I’ve been working on Heather Dore‘s first original song (partly due to the fact that it started in the middle of my move to China)
I’m excited to share that it’s now been released!
This upbeat “sassy plea to unfaithful lovers” was written by Darryl Kromm of Canadian hit 80′s synth pop band Strange Advance.
Guitar was performed by my long time friend and amazing guitarist, Erol Sora.
Take a listen:
With the aim of creating the perfect 80′s inspired pop song, I looked to colleague and friend Darryl Kromm who already wrote some of Canada’s best loved and known 80′s pop songs.
Reworking Darryl’s upbeat yet dramatic account of the abandoned lover, I created a modern ‘future disco’ musical arrangement to the 80′s inspired lyrics to create a cool fusion of two musical worlds.
Written and recorded in Vancouver, Cool & Careless was produced in Vancouver and Beijing, and mixed in the new Beijing studio.
I titled this latest production, but actually, I’ve been working on so many projects lately, it isn’t the very latest… I’ll post about the rest soon.
Late summer I edited and mixed a oool album by Herb-One.
Herb has been working for years on tracks that he painstakingly and meticulously assembled and created from many different sources in a truly traditional fashion for old school hip hop (which made for some unique challenges for me in mixing the tracks). It’s a great collection of the first of many releases from him, and I think he did a fantastic job on it, not only delivering impressive ‘bragadocious’ rhymes & lyrics, but some classic old school hip hop reminiscent of the days when it was still creative, and innovative, and fun for the whole family (ie: expletive free)
The other cool thing about MC Herb-One is he’s also living in China, and has even incorporated some Chinese traditional elements into the tracks in a subtle way, such as the background to one of my favourite tracks, ‘I Got It’ which you can take a listen below:
Check out the rest of the album online including the ‘classic LP’ artworkhere, and the facebook page here.
For over 2 years now, I’ve been working on a song ‘Eternal Beloved’ with talented singer and composer Elika Mahony as part of her latest album of original new age pop music.
Eternal Beloved is a mystical and exotic journey about the arduous eternal quest for one’s true beloved. The lyrics were inspired by the writings of Baha’u’llah, and in fact some of them were first explored during a retreat at Bosch Baha’i center in the mountains of Santa Cruz, California.
Elika created the perfect melody, uniquely inspired for the music I composed. Her sweet and exquisite voice, and Navid Goldrick’s beautiful Oud performance in the song makes it a song I am very proud, and feel it was well worth all our patient efforts. I have no doubt it will be something I look back on as one of our great achievements.
You can hear it on Elika Mahony’s blog post about the song here:
It has been a long journey to complete this song as there have been several challenges in getting it created. Firstly, it is a very different style than what Elika is used to composing and singing, so it took some getting used to. The combination of ancient and modern, blues drums, Indian percussion and Middle Eastern Oud is no small feat to pull off effectively. Throw into that mix my relocating the studio to Beijing, and then a fire that forced me out of home and studio during mixing of the song, and productivity tends to become severely impeded. In fact, the fire could have prevented the song from ever being heard!
That makes it very precious.
I’m very pleased with how well the mix of the song came out considering I couldn’t complete it in a proper studio… Thanks to the wonders of technology, namely my ARC system!
I look forward to hearing what you think.
Eternal Beloved is available for download on iTunes here.
Despite my lack of updates, I’ve actually been quite busy here since living in Beijing China.
I’ve been working on some cool projects, one of the most interesting being Mikey Dee and Miss Melody’s fusion of western downtempo electronic with poetic traditional Chinese folk music.
The two shouldn’t work well together, yet under the moniker ‘Mobidextrous’ they’ve somehow create something very cool and unique and are breaking new ground here in Beijing and worldwide.
The first track I produced, mixed, and did a lot of the sound design for is called ‘Huan’ which is a poetic account of being lost in the big city, where ‘even the wine glasses are drunk with excess’
They’ve also done a video for it below which has some great footage of Beijing:
You can find more about Huan and their other tracks on the Mobidextrous Soundcloud page, including 2 other songs I’ve produced, Wang Ming Yue, which features the latest and most groundbreaking effects I have used yet, and Woo Yan.
More tracks and videos coming soon, so keep an eye out.
As you may know if you’ve read my blog before, I recently adopted a baby boy from Vietnam.
Of course as a music producer, the first music he heard had to be something I had composed, and appropriately I had some music created just for infants for a video project I was involved in that never got released.
So I thought I should share a sample of it I call ‘Wonder Funtime’:
[audio:Wonder_Funtime_01.mp3]
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I am no expert when it comes to music and children, especially infants, but I did some research and used my instincts to come up with some music that I hoped was appropriate for young ears and delicate minds.
I’ll let you be the judge if I succeeded in that effort. Not sure what I’ll do with this music as I still own the rights, perhaps I should put out an album or license it for something…
Of course Evan loved it and was quite mesmerized.
He loves sound of all kinds, so the bells and vocal like horns seemed to appeal to him.
In the howling wind, sleet and cold, Bahiyyih and I braved the elements to work in a very cold studio during a relentless winter in 2008 and 2009 to record her album ‘Take Me Home’.
Take Me Home is a spiritually inspired collection of songs to sooth and uplift the soul, taking us back to our true home. Although she wanted a very simple production, there are some diverse instruments such as Celtic harp and Oud.
Bahiyyih has composed some lovely melodies, and her angelic voice lifts the compositions to a truly heavenly place.
She talks more about her album on her blog posts here and here.
You can listen and find out more about the album on her website, and get it on iTunes or your favorite online music store.
Over the last few years, I’ve been extremely busy with many productions in various genres with different artists. Most of them haven’t been released and are just starting to get out this year, so you’ll see a lot more postings about them here!
I’m excited to share with you my latest production. it’s a song I started many years ago with the talented Laura Harley and it’s just now been completed.
We started with the music bed tracks which I composed and then Laura added vocals and guitar to.
Vocals were recorded in Vancouver, where I also produced and engineered it, except for some mixing I did in China.
To describe the feel of this song, imagine yourself in the year 2020 deep in the heart of India where on a path of spiritual awareness you find yourself in a struggle with the insistence self, trying to escape the grasp of your own ego.
Laura talks about the meaning behind the words on her website…
I think it really turned out well and it’s a very unique from all my other productions including previous songs I’ve worked on with Laura.
