.png)
Rose Ringed creates music that works in all settings and transcends genres. His first EP 'Spring Memories' became an instant success after its release in 2018, when Kölsch played 'In Your Arms Again' during his BBC Radio 1 show. It marked the moment from which Rose started to be recognised internationally and streaming numbers increasing on a daily basis. His openness to a wide range of sound is what has both made him a widely loved favourite, but also someone who operates in his own parallel musical world. We had a chance to talk to him, so enjoy your reading and check out his latest releases.
Hey Rose Ringed, welcome to Chromatic! Can you tell us a little about yourself; where are you from? And how did you get into music initially?
Hey there! So I was born and raised in the beautiful city of Amsterdam. I’ve been into music from very early on. I’ve read one of my mum’s diaries lately in which she wrote that I was humming or singing along to all the melodies I heard on the radio all day. This evolved to playing drums and eventually jazz piano when I became older. A few years ago I also started singing and have recorded my own vocal for my new EP too.
How would you define your sound? And how do you want your music to influence or impact your listeners?
This is a hard one for me, it’s a never ending struggle in my head whether you can define your own sound. A friend of mine who studies film told me once that you can only get your own sound by writing. This made so much sense to me. So that’s what I focus on, writing as much music as I can. Recently I’m starting to see something common to all tracks, they are high energy and mostly uplifting and euphoric. Which brings me to your second question: I want people to feel happy, uplifted, energised when listening to my music. My main goal as a musician is trying to catch certain feelings, translate them into music so I can spread it to different people all around the world. Music helped me through many difficult times in my life, and I hope I can help others too with mine.
You’ve just released your three tracker ‘Quintessence’. We love it! What was your aim with this new EP? Tell us a bit about where you created it and the inspiration behind it...
So quintessence means the pure essence of a thing, that’s exactly what I tried to express with this EP. The first track tells a story of someone that has been anguished with feelings of love that he isn’t able to express. It’s a high energy (133,5 BPM) track with an 80’s feel, with its Juno 106 chords and bright synth melody. Also, everything in this track was analog except for some drum samples.
I wrote it after I saw a documentary about LGBTQ+ activists in Romania who were fighting against a discriminating law against them (the law didn’t get through luckily). I’m disgusted by the fact that there are so many cultures and beliefs in this world where being queer isn’t allowed, or looked badly upon. I find it ridiculous that people can’t be themselves, this track was written with this in mind.
The second track is a typical example of some happy accident that sometimes occurs when producing. I recorded this 8 chord progression which was nice, but did not inspire me enough to continue, so I started playing around with the chords and looped 1 chord and accidentally shifted the timing. I was blown away by the groove that was suddenly there, the rest of the track followed automatically and I was very happy I could put 3 solos in there. I love playing jazzy solos and for this track it finally made sense.
The last track called ‘How do you feel’ is somewhat more of a classic Rose Ringed track. It started with the chords and the melody you hear, the main melody which drops in was
made on my Nord Piano which has this amazing preset which you can hear in my track: ‘What we do for love’ too. Every time I play with it I get inspired, it feels kind of cheesy but in a good way. I get huge summer vibes from this track and hope people agree.
What other projects are you working on right now?
So I release a new EP every 2/3 months, I love making new music and tend to make about 2 tracks a week so you can imagine there are many lying on the shelves :). The other thing I’m working on is my first album, I’m writing this in honor of my mom who passed away when I was 11 so you can imagine this is a very personal work and requires lots of rethinking and polishing. I’m planning to release this next year on the 14th of July.
What artists and genres are you enjoying listening to yourself right now?
Many many many types of genres and artists, I’m a huge fan of ambient and listen to artists like 36, Stars of the Lid, or Bibio has some amazing ambient works like the Phantom Brickworks album. Also I listen to lots of piano music, either jazz (Ashley Henry/Bill Evans/ Kamaal Williams) Or minimal piano (Joep Beving, Joram Feitsma, Nils Frahm).
The main electronic artists I’m a big fan of at the moment are, Fred Again, Howling/Frank Wiedemann, Marlon Hoffstadt, Axel Boman, Fort Romeau and Youandewan.
Do you have any final words of wisdom?
Well, since we’re living in this crazy pandemic time, I hope people are holding on to the positive sides of life and are realizing we’re almost there!
