Thursday, January 2, 2020

2019 Year in Review

After a month or more in China to visit family, I’m back in Adelaide and able to access the rest of the internet allowing me to share what a year it has been for me and my music.

It’s hard to think 2020 will already be 5 years since my first signed track, ‘The Ghost Music’ was released by Deep Garnet Records. In this time, I have improved so much as an artist in things like sound composition, automation, mixing, compression and space, as well as performing live – yet I know I still have so many areas I can improve. Got to keep chasing perfection!!!

2019 started off with a guest DJ mix for Chinese New Year for Adelaide’s EDM radio station Fresh FM. As someone who has married into a Chinese family and speaks Mandarin, I really enjoyed putting together a cross-genre set that combines some of the best Chinese and Western sounds and beats together.

Of course, the big news this year was the release in June of my first artist album One-Life.

I look back over my musical heroes and all of them have released albums that I come back to and revisit over time – and I do that much more than listening to their single releases. Their albums define their musical journey for that period of their career and I wanted to do the same.

One-Life took me 3 years to put together and while I have further improved as an artist since then, I am still very proud to have released it. I managed so get some really good and honest reviews from some reputable media including: 
I also had fun putting together music videos for some of the tracks including 'Don't Stop Believing' which got some really nice words from one of my musical heroes in A Skillz.


My album release went on iTunes, Amazon, Youtube and all over the place, but interestingly Spotify tells me I had listeners from 40 countries on their platform last year which is really cool. For me though, the best bit is listening to my two children aged 11 & 13 plugged into their headphones at home listening and to my beats and asking why aren't I more famous for my music lol!

I’m still working on new music for release in 2020 (but nowhere near as ambitious as a whole album) and I have something exciting planned for Chinese New Year that I look forward to sharing soon.

Thanks for all you support in 2019 and have a great 2020!!

Aaron