As our Advent Calendar keeps marching on to victory, that’s door #11 for you: Here is a young lady, dear to our heart and a truly good friend of Cocos and mine who has always created exquisite playlists, from old oriental sounds to the chillest ambient tunes, or like in this case, a soul/rap layered selection of solid tunes that you might have missed, and not your ordinary urban foo soundalike clones. You’ll probably know some of the artists but, as in my case, that’s the tunes that faded you for some reason. Dunjah is here to shed some light on those special tracks that are, for one reason or the other, somehow being swept under the rug. And from here till infinty – as a monthly offering to the gods of music.
Dunjah has always had super solid playlists for the audiophiles amongst us, and had at least one us saying “you should sample that”. True fact, as tarded as that might sound, and it’s always fun to hang out with her, play some video games (hence her playlist cover) while absorbing the homegrown stash. Also her cooking is on point and her warmhearted kindness made her a friend of ours and the entire clique in no time at all!
Starting this month Dunjah, as part of the clique will provide the world with a monthly playlist of her selection and we are happy to have her on board. This is the point where the Chrome label and our blog heritage intertwine.
Happy Monday with a Funk Playlist by Chrome Musics own Dominique
Adventcalendar #10. A personal Funk favourites Playlist by Dominique, who is one of our producers and captains onboard the Chrome Music Label. We met him years ago through another project and we instantly clicked with his vibe and humour, the guys got plenty, as the picture carefully suggests. But alas, he is also a proper church educated musician and pianist, who lives, loves and worships the Funk side of music, no matter what music he produces or works on (currently Reece Lemonius, whom i introduced a few days ago). Coming from a release-wise electronic oriented background he literally likes it all, but his roots, if ever asked, will always be what he packed into this playlist. His Funk bag of goodies.
Coming from the rare groove vinyl collectors era, most of the tracks probably aren’t surprising to me, or others – especially considering the deep knowledge and dedication we put into the musical history. But, and this is a BIG but, you cannot possibly deny the quality of these tracks, and being in his mid to late 20’s i think it’s worth mentioning that this millennial generation of his was brainwashed into different (imho more plastic sounding) music. So here’s a personal applause for gathering such a great collection. Much appreciated Domi!
Behind Advent Calendar Door#8 is literally the best kept secret:
We just started out our Chrome Music Label 3 months ago and tried to handle this release/song undercover, but not as much as that it didnt gain traction by itself.Introducing: Reece is a brilliant young man, hailing from London, UK, who has hit me up with tons of material about a year ago. I liked all of it, and that is super-rare in my world. So we took our time to establish a set sound, stye & feel, nail down the songwriting, as to where it needs to go and worked on the sound we have now established. He is a classical pop, soul songwriter with a modern feel and we are super happy to be working on it and to be creating beautiful music. Ps thanks to our entire Chrome Music team: Coco, Domi, Reece himself, Ralph, Patrick, Toby, Tom, Martin, and everybody else involved.
Ps the Lyric Video is just a little edit we threw together to test another video;) but you’ll still get the feel of it!
This is his first single, that went viral, had 20 mio plays within 10 weeks, until the YouTube channel got deleted for copyright nonsense (sucks). Still a few videos out there with a couple of mio views. It is gaining traction on Spotify & Apple, one of the remixes became viral in France and ended up heading a tv show and whatnot. In total we have worked on over 50 songs, and managed to create 20 blissful tunes, that have me loving my own sound again.
Ps Soon we’ll have a remix competition with his latest tunes.
Love Me has an incredible personal to playlist ratio and the algorithms and curators at Spotify & Apple seem t be picking up on it as we speak. His style is hard to describe, since he is somewhere betw a classical piano based songwriter in the vein of John Legend, Seal or even Ben Howard, if compared to well known artists, but the musical approach we established for his music is modern, filtered down and mostly beat & mood based, and many songs are even club tunes. You will hear it anyway, soon enough. Super proud to present to you : “Love Me”, an honest and real tune, that just opens the door to get a glimpse of what is in store for the future of this young man and our project, that has been carefully handcrafted with passion, patience and a lot of faith.
Ps Reece Lemonius new Track ‘Dirty Habit’ with fellow london based singer Lui Peng is coming out this next Friday December 14th! it’s a slow moody, chilled late night killer tune.
Reece Lemonius’ release slate for early 2019 reads like this so you know there are a big things coming:
Without having introduced Reece himself, and we will save that for Door#5 and a few other doors, bc the fella is amazing, here is a re-edit of Reece’s first official release. The two Beatsmiths Golo & Leo at it again. Another phenomenal yet simple groovy beat break rendering they are offering here. Officially released a few weeks earlier, it mostly was swept under the rug unnoticed, but i think if you are into the sounds of the modern day beatsmiths you can def hear what these two musicians/Djs are cooking. echoua.com. Ps Leo is one of our own – homegrown at the YUM YUM parties in cologne and around and i just wish i had more time to talk to Golo and get him more involved. The sweetest guys ever and their productions are superb. Enjoy this soulful late night gem by Mr Reece Lemonius & Cupidon.
AND in case you missed it. The two fellas had another impeccable release last year, which you can check out here. Go grab the Free DL djs kids, beatmsiths and chillhop enthusiasts.
“Vienna-born, Berlin-based producer and artist narou uses his electro-soul palette and R&B sensibility, combined with the soothing, soulful vocals of New York-born vocalist Hannah Jenkins, for his latest cut “Prophecy” as he continues to work on his upcoming EP. Jenkins takes control of the track before narou finishes strongly with vocals of his own, creating sumptuous harmonies that take the song up another extra level.” Aaron Bishop (@amb1sh) for COMPLEX UK.
“Prophecy” is the first single of narou to be released under CHROME and the first of a beautiful series of collaborations with his creative friends. We’re more than happy to have this beautiful talent on board after his strong release with Temple Haze a few weeks back. Great things to follow and welcome to the family narou <3.
Much can be said about Tommy and pretty much everything of it is positive and most of it is right. I always liked Tommy bc he was an observer and appeared to be the Silent Guy, that knew and exactly understood the musical Zeitgeist. When playing music he added his own touch and showed his love and appreciation for what he liked. Compromises for the dancefloor, sure no problemo, but the magic and beauty of the real art of deejaying is still being able to turn it out and give it your personal touch, spin and je ne sais quois.
I think i actually deejayed only once with Tommy before i hit the brakes with the wheels. But this entire observation of what Tommy is about, comes from a sheerly psychological perspective, that you learn while deejaying. You get that ‘look’ for people’s behaviour – rational, aware and completely zoomed out – that sounds prejudiced but ultimately is almost always a 100% spot on. Tommy is that guy and his own mixes speak for himself, and even when producing music, said quality comes shining right through.
Here he is with his very own productions. his own tasteful niche of sound, if you love soul & hip hop based beats for the floor, which are designed & produced by a tasteful dj for djs,. He was and still is part of the clique we had going called YUM YUM. I bounced for a minute but some of the guys kept on growing and glowing.
You can literally play anyone of these tunes and you won’t go wrong. Even the songs he picked for remixing, reimagining are picked tastefully. Happy Door One with this one!
