About the Artist

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Motivations


It has been an undeniable fact for years now that there’s next to no instrumental music to be found in current popular music anymore. As a studied and proven audio engineer, Daniel is working to form a kind of antipol to bring back crystal clear audiophile production and positive atmospheric instrumental music into today’s world.




Involved people


Daniel composes and produces all of his music himself, but he also works together with guest musicians on different occasions. Some of them add their own melodies, and others play the melodies Daniel composed. Most of these guest musicians are good acquaintances or friends of Daniel.



Milestones


In 2008, Daniel wrote the music for the PC game “Foobyland”. For different reasons however, the project was never really finished and published. In addition to that, Daniel’s music can be found on various videogame remix samplers. Occasionally, he participates in international composition competitions with the goal of creating an original piece of music within an hour. There he won the 1st prize multiple times out of usually more than 20 participants. According to ReverbNation, he’s the most popular Swiss instrumental artist (as of Apr 2013).



Sound ideal


As a child of the 80s, Daniel loves that unmistakable melodic and atmospheric mix of synthesizers and real instruments with majestic ambiences that was typical for that decade. When the overall sound of popular music shifted towards less ambience and atmosphere starting in the early 90s, his interest in popular music gradually faded away. He still calls the 80s a musical “golden age”, the pinnacle of hi-fi sound. According to him, neither before nor after that time there has been such a predominant high sound quality.

The 70s and before, while having a lot of good musicians and songs, didn’t have the technical possibilities, and in the 90s and after the loudness war began.

Good ambience and reverb lost their importance because of that, and a lot of depth and atmosphere in the songs was sacrificed for raw loudness. Over the years, pop music got more and more the same, and artists (and their looks and way of life) got more important than their music.



Influences


Consequently, Daniel chose to take a different direction for his music that is rather uncommon these days. The Bremen-born loves atmospheric, mystical and positive music and is strongly influenced by instrumental music and (video game) soundtracks of the 80s and 90s. His musical influences are mostly japanese composers like Joe Hisaishi (Studio Ghibli movies), Takanori Arisawa (Sailor Moon, Digimon), Yasunori Mitsuda, but also European artists like David Wise, Vangelis or Michael Cretu. His first arrangements, remixes, MIDI versions and compositions have therefore been for computer and video games.



Even in his early days as a self-taught producer, his works already had a notable sound quality. When he finished his audio engineer diploma in 2006, he was even able to add significantly to that quality.

Starting from the beginning, he produced all of his songs himself. As a rule for technical production quality he uses albums from the 80s, while Michael Cretu (Sandra, Enigma) could be specifically mentioned as a producer reference for him.



City in the Clouds


Daniel’s debut album will be available in summer 2013 through his label asme music. People who share Daniel’s musical interests or generally love audiophile positive instrumental music will be blown away by this release that took Daniel over a year to complete.



Timeline


1988            Daniel got his first keyboard
1994            At the age of 14, Daniel composed his first song
1999            Daniel got his first synth, a RolandED SC-8850 and learned a lot of production basics
2004            Participation in some OverClocked ReMixes
2006-2008    Soundtrack for the game “Foobyland”
2010-2012     Participation in One Hour Competitions (OHC)
2013            Release of his debut album “City in the Clouds”



Contact / Info / Management

daniel [at] asmemusic [dot] ch