Exclusive: Rohan Solomon marks his annual Christmas tradition with 'It's Christmas'; says 'feels incomplete.."
Indie artist Rohan Solomon, in celebration of Christmas, unveils his music video for "It's Christmas," continuing his annual tradition. During an interview, he reflects on his 20-year musical journey and discusses his latest album, "Strung Out to Dry," crafted to commemorate this milestone.
FollowIn the realm of indie music, there exists a prominent figure who has ascended to the pinnacle, and that name is Rohan Solomon. In a musical journey spanning from the streets of New Delhi to the metropolis of New York, Rohan Solomon, the multifaceted singer-songwriter, composer, and audio engineer, has emerged as a prominent figure in the music industry. Once the lead vocalist of Cyanide, an influential Alt-Rock group that made a lasting impact on the Indian Indie landscape, Rohan Solomon has transformed into a renowned producer and artist. His single "We Demand Change" was submitted for Grammy consideration in the 'Best Rock Performance' category.
Maintaining an annual tradition, Rohan Solomon consistently releases a Christmas song, and this year was no exception with the unveiling of "It's Christmas." Although the song was originally released in 2021, the official video was launched on December 4 of this year. In an interview with AsiaNet Newsable, when questioned about this recurring tradition and the motivation behind crafting Christmas songs each year, Rohan shared that the festive tradition holds great significance for him, dating back to his childhood, making it an integral part of his annual musical journey. "Music and Christmas songs in particular are a huge part of my Christmas experience ever since my childhood. It feels incomplete without that. So, the next natural step for a songwriter like me was definitely to write some original Christmas music. I guess it’s just become a “Rohan Solomon Tradition” of sorts" he said.
Watch the video here:
Furthermore, he revealed the reason behind the delayed release of the "It's Christmas" video, citing the impact of COVID-19 and the unfortunate loss of individuals close to him. He explained that during that challenging period, it didn't feel appropriate to launch a music video. "The reason is COVID. In 2021, we got hit with the worst wave of Covid-19 and lost people that were close to us. It just didn’t feel right at that time to put together a music video. Specially for this song, which needed a party scene, which needed various people with parallel stories, which needed this lively get together and a group of people singing together and laughing together etc. That’s the whole vibe of Christmas. I didn’t want to put out anything half baked, so I waited till it was safe enough to get people together to do a video." he expressed.
When questioned about the perceived challenge of delving into the Christmas music genre as an Indian artist, Rohan clarified, "I don’t see it as a challenge personally, just because I grew up around Christmas music. So to me, it actually comes very naturally."
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On reaching a milestone of 20 years in the industry in 2023, he released his new album "Strung Out To Dry" which has been hailed as conceptual masterpiece. In the interview, he delved into the process of creating this album, emphasizing that it was a 'conscious' choice to commemorate his two decades in the industry. The album, which took four years to make. But it originally didn't begin as an album project. Revealing that it was an organic journey he said, "In fact, it didn’t even start off as an album. I made ‘Victoria’s Secret’ and put that out as a single and that has orchestral elements in it. This was supposed to be a one-off thing. But then, as I worked on my next single ‘Without a Trace’, I started to miss some orchestral stuff, so I got my friend Tiffany to work out and record some string parts and send it back to me and got Harshit (who also doubles up as my assistant in my studio) to compliment those parts with a nice and sparse brass section. "
He further added, "But even after that, I wasn’t bored of the orchestral stuff, I wanted more. So the next song I worked on was ‘Set Me Free’ and in that one I asked Harshit to compose a full-on orchestral score. No holding back. And so, he did, and we loved it and followed it up with ‘We Demand Change’. It was around this time, that I realized that this vibe is going somewhere, and it deserves to be an album. So hence forth, all the songs that we worked on were picked based on how we can put them together to formulate a story and make it a concept album of sorts. That started out the whole process and the rest is history."
In response to inquiries about exploring different genres, Rohan conveyed his affection for his current genre, stating, "Not really. I have my own sound. I’m certainly open to experimenting and trying to open and expand my horizons, but I think we’ll always be able to tell when we’re listening to a ‘Rohan Solomon song’ and I love that. I’d like to give that identity the respect it deserves. "
As for his recent ventures, Rohan Solomon has opened his new music studio by the name "Synergy Audio Productions" and is working on launching other artists. His future plans as revealed by himself - "I’m constantly writing or producing new music, so I'm sure I’ll be coming up with some stuff next year too. But for now, I want to ride the wave of my album and spend my time in my brand-new recording studio “Synergy Audio Productions” and focus on producing other artists for now and help them achieve their vision and goals."
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