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:
Paying respect to Frank White, who was on TV Christmas Eve 1993 in NYC. Back when 555Soul was the place for Mixtapes and Rock & Soul was rocking. Jeru had come out that year and the first Wu-Tang track was out. Slaughterhouse was my album, Souls made the anthem of the year and Flex’ radio show was the shit. As i reminisce about the cold winter of 1993..
This Advent calendar Door is a special one and this album is a faint memory of the winter 93/94 is pent in New York City with my halfblood cousin Dominik. So it must be fate that i produced these pictures of my mental memory lane with one of my favourite musical partners also called Dominik. Must be my subconscious at work.
But nonetheless, we tried to capture that rough and rugged feel, that you could feel all over town and in every gritty dirty little sidestreet and corner you saw. It was that early 90’s New York. Babylon 5 was on TV, we watched Christopher Walkens King Of New York on Christmas Eve and went down to some of the most bizarre and grimey places, that are simply not around anymore. There was a liveliness that you do not have in NYC anymore, and musically it was the time when Acid Jazz crossed over into Hip Hop, and that rough and rugged sound of Nas, Mobb Deep didnt exist yet. It was more the era of Supercat, Gang Starr, Jeru, Triple 5 Soul Mixtapes, Masta Ace and of course Krs-1’s first solo “Return of The Boom Bap”. Queen Latifah, Naughty by Nature, Onyx was huge and Tupac Hoodies were sold on every corner. Early 90’s Dj Premier was the man on the street and Wu-Tang had just come out the summer before with the Protect Ya Neck/ Method Man 12″.I will never forget how much i thought of my brother and recognized how connected i am to him, an ocean away… as well as that New Years Eve show at Union Square, where Krs-1 & Wu-Tang played their first show. I remember running into the RZA a few years back and telling him that and the look on his face was like a man who just went all the way down memory lane. That show was legendary. And here is the kicker,besides being the only 2 white guys in that place, we bootlegged & recorded the whole effing show ;) …But that’s an upload for another time.
It was a time before Puff, Biggie, and the rest, it was jazz, soulful loops, breaks, with solid drum break, proper mellow vibes, fender chords, live basses and the amalgamation of the hip hop state of mind and music of days long gone by – just like these days are by now. You had your roughest gear on and tried to find your way during that christmas blizzard, that made the Empire State sway from left to tight.
The songs each tell a story that happened and that feel i had back then.
Hey folks and everyone else, it has been exactly 7 years since i did my last honest, passionate YUM YUM Top Tunes. And exactly 14 years since i started the whole thing. So here we are ;) Crafted with flextape, this is just a solid selection of the latest released tunes, many moods, NPC feels for your sonic entertainment and soundtrack to life. I tried to keep it clean. Top Tunes on Spotify – bit.ly/yumyumtoptunes
All tracks were released within the last 4 weeks (with few exceptions). And it’s good to see that our own releases can keep up or do even better, with the quality new releases/songs out there. What used to be our remixes are now actual songs and quality material that can hang in our global top tune selection,.
Top Tunes are back – just as planned .And just like the good old days, it’s filled with our own versions, productions – the difference this time is that we own the copyright, and no tech giant is gonna bitch about it, or delete it. The technocracy is falling anyways. Long live the new land. Have fun with these sweet tunes and our new selection. Still prefer Mixtapes any day over any Playlist. But that’s coming too.
