Jarome Matthew's Blog

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.

I’ve added my latest favorite song to the player on the right sidebar of my blog.

This song just send shivers down my spine, the ultimate sign of a great track for me.
Something about the chord progression and dreamy vocals…

For those who may not know, Canadian producer/composer Deadmau5 (’Deadmouse’) released a song with a similar melody years ago called ‘I Forget’, possibly the inspiration for this song…

Bought a ton of new music lately that i’ve been meaning to for some time now. Haven’t listened to it all yet, but from what I’ve heard, this is my current fave: So Human from Brit rapper Lady Sovereign’s second album

Derived from The Cure’s brilliant track ‘Close To Me’, the idea for this track shouldn’t work, but somehow it does.

You can check it out on my ‘Fave Tunes’ player on the right of my blog —–>

Rapper Lady Sovereign, singing! Who woulda guessed? Luv ya Lady Sovereign!
And good on ya for ditching your lame record label.

I’ve been working on a new trance track for songwriter Deborah Caldwell over the last few months called ‘I Know I Should Run’. It’s about when your madly in love with someone who is totally wrong for you to be involved with and you know it.

Deborah wrote and recorded the song some time ago but wasn’t happy with the style and feel of the song. I redid all the music as a more trance pop dance style at her request, but so that didn’t distract from the well written song, while trying also to enhance the emotional impact of not only the music, but the vocals. Hopefully you’ll feel we achieved that. My role for the track was basically arranging, programming bed tracks, music production, audio engineering and mixing/mastering. I assisted with some minor melody changes as well in some key parts of the song for more emotional impact.

We auditioned a lot of singers to get the right performance and feel for this song, and decided on the talented Isreali singer, Noya. She did a great job of conveying the emotion and was a total pro to work with.
We had a specific sound in mind for the vocals and despite this being different to her typical jazzy style, she gave us exactly what we wanted.

The song isn’t really written specifically to sell to a ‘trance music’ audience, but is more to license in Film, TV, and Ads, or to be covered by another artist.
We’re also working on a slower acoustic version.

You can listen here.

Let me know what you think!

Playing For Change: Song Around the World “One Love”:

“The earth is but one country and mankind its citizens. So powerful is the light of unity that it can illuminate the whole earth.”
— Bahá’u'lláh

Artist Elika Mahony has made a special release of a song we worked on called ‘Persecution’ dedicated to Baha’is in Iran who have been persecuted for their Faith despite posing zero threat to the government, or showing any signs of aggression in any way towards anyone.

You can find out more about it, and listen/download it on Elika’s blog post about it here.

It was a rushed production, so not as refined or elaborate as usual, but Elika wanted to get it out without delay to help spread awareness… The amazing thing about this kind of web release though is that within 24 hours of mixing the song, we were getting feedback from hundreds of people who had listened to it and downloaded the song! It was also impressive to see the web activity of people sharing the song online. Immediate feedback, rather than months later was very exciting.

Leaders of the Baha’i Faith in Iran, recently arrested for their beliefs

The plight of the Baha’is in Iran is a truly sad one, many have been martyred, including Elika’s own great uncle, and the current head of the Baha’i administration in Iran were recently arrested soley for their beliefs, although the Iranian government makes up all kinds of other reasons for detaining them. Information from a friend who knows a relative of one of the prisoners who was finally able to talk to them said they use psychological torture on the prisoners, such as keeping them in a white room, in white clothes, with white food for weeks on end without beds or chairs. This is apparently so there are no signs of physical torture. The ultimate objective is to get them to recant their beliefs, as the fundamentalist clergy in Iran feel the Baha’is are a threat to Islam.

The bizarre thing is that Iran feels that by disrupting and eradicating the Baha’i Faith there, they will somehow affect the Faith in a concrete way, despite the fact that there are Baha’is in over 220 other countries and territories around the world! But perhaps the most interesting thing is the backlash that is happening in Iran and worldwide as a result of these recent arrests. Many Iranians who know Baha’is personally know this is an unjust and cruel act on the part of the government, and is causing an uprising against the government giving them more trouble than they could have every imagined.

Everyone likes Christmas music during the holidays, so here’s a link to my post from last year with some of the few original Christmas tunes I’ve done over the years:
Some Old Christmas Songs

The difference is, this year, as a Christmas gift, you can download & do whatever you like with them:
www.jarome.com/downloads.html

For a limited time only!

We’ve had a lot of snow in Vancouver, and across Canada lately, I posted about ‘The sweet serenity of snow’ last year as well.

I went to see the new James Bond movie Quantum Of Solace the other day with low expectations. I know the new movies are about Bond’s early days, but the modernized Bond has lost all the things that made Bond unique in the action adventure genre, and now it’s become just another Mission Impossible, Die Hard standard film. Don’t get me wrong, it was good, but it lacked the unique entertaining qualities Bond used to have, and without Q and his gadgets, it’s a tough sell really. (I really loved John Cleese as Q and miss him a lot)

What was really appalling though was the theme song for the intro credits that every Bond film has with the dancing silhouettes and Bond pointing his gun and all. This song, “Another Way To Die” performed by Jack White and Alicia Keys, was just atrocious and a terrible choice for a Bond film that in the past have had very strong themes to introduce the film, a trademark of the series. That a song this bad and poorly suited to the film could be placed in such a major release is a sure sign of the record industry’s demise (It was coordinated by Warner Bros). Just my opinion, but I thought it was a lame choice.

But for me this goes a lot further than opinion, and is really all about what makes a good song, something the record industry seems to have forgotten. Luckily, the Do It Yourself movement and the new music industry, which is putting music business back in the hands of artists, is going to be all about the quality of the song, and of music in general, something that has been a long time coming.

Call me old fashioned, but these are songs worthy of a Bond movie (ignore the retro visuals…):

Duran Duran: “View To A Kill”

Sheena Easton: “For Your Eyes Only”

I am very selective about doing charitable work because of the amount of free time I have, but I have done my share philanthropy through various productions for organizations helping those in need primarily through education, more recently for a CD in Mandarin to help children of all backgrounds throughout Asia learn spiritual attributes and virtues.

My latest such production is with talented musician and writer, Alicia Cundall who wrote a theme song for the charity organization Red House called ‘One Story’ Which I did backing tracks for, recorded, produced and mixed.

RED House is a non-profit, non-governmental organization in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania that provides educational programs for disadvantaged and orphan children, ages 3 to 18.
Here is a video to give you a more of a sense of Red House:

Here is the website for Red House with the full length song:

http://redhousetanzania.org

It was great to help such a worthy cause that is helping youth through education. If your in Washington DC, attend the fundraiser and you can see Alicia peform this song along with a number of other talented performers.

So I’m thoroughly embarrassed to admit it, especially publicly, but I like a few of the new Coldplay tracks on their new album. Their sound isn’t really my thing, but they have some more edgy, upbeat and interesting production on songs like Viva La Vida (my current fave song) and Violet Hill from the new album.

But when I went to their website, there was no music! Oh, except for a free song that was so poor, it was a slap in my face. NO MUSIC ON A BAND WEBSITE?? How does this kind of thing happen? Maybe it was there and I just didn’t see it? That is just as bad.

Note to major labels, if your going to jump on the ‘free song’ bandwagon, if you offer a lousy track, it is like the 30 second preview, it’s just a slap in the music fans face!

But eliminating the entire music section from an artist website? That is beyond belief.

You know the only place online you can hear more than one full length song from the new Coldplay album? ‘Illegal download’ torrent sites.

But since they offer non DRM tracks on iTunes, perhaps I will get a few songs from there… Maybe.