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.

Over the last year I’ve been working on some very exciting new music with Elika Mahony that I have co-written, produced and engineered.
I’ve always felt the music Elika has done in the past has not shown all of her musical potential and talent, it only represented one aspect of her musical influences and interests. So we’ve been on a musical journey to more completely represent and express Elika’s creativity and interests through the music. That journey is ongoing but we have the fruits of our initial efforts in three new songs, Edge of Forever, Missing You, and Listen.
(click on the song links to read more about each song on Elika’s blog)

Each explores different musical styles combining progressive electronic elements with Latin, Persian & Middle Eastern, New Age and pop styles. I think they all merge together very well with Elika’s beautiful voice and pleasing melodies. These songs will also be enjoyable to new listeners who may not connect with Elika’s previous music.

Another goal of these new songs was to convey more of Elika’s feeling and emotion in the vocal performance with more nuances and latent facets of her voice and I think through great effort and striving she has accomplished fantastic results.

We decided to release the songs in batches as an ‘EP’ CD rather than have you wait for the full album to be completed.
Get the full details and links to download the songs online here: www.elikamahony.com/music/edge-of-forever

Let me know what you think.

Over the last 3 years I have been producing an album that is quite different than what I usually do by the very talented composer, pianist, and singer, Elika Mahony.
I have blogged last year about some of the challenges of producing an album like this, and about how intense a project like this can become.
With it’s combination of electronic elements with piano, live cello, guitar, and flute and other exotic live instruments such as Persian santur, nay flute, and Chinese erhu, I have to say that this album, called ‘Fire And Gold’ is not only the most diverse and elaborate production I have worked on, but one of the most expensive. But it has done extremely well, selling over a thousand copies shortly after release thanks to Elika’s innovative music promotion techniques worldwide. You can listen here.

For those who are familiar with the musical styles I usually produce, the classical and new age overtones of this spiritually inspired Baha’i album on the theme of tests and difficulties of life may not be your thing. But you will most likely still be able to appreciate Elika’s sweet voice and elegant melodies.

Elika is also using some of the latest online music promotion techniques such as selling electronic versions of her songs online by donation, and offering discounts for multiple CD orders. One of her fan’s have even created a music video for one of the songs, This Is Faith.