Euphoria

Bio:

"Sleeper" was featured on the "Up In Smoke" episode of CSI. It's a song I recorded with Tina Dico and is available as a bonus album track @ iTunes.



It's that hypnotic fusion of acoustic and ambient rhythms that wafts over the hit television show. It's the contagious blend of slide guitar and psychedelia at the beginning of the film. It's the heart-quickening combo of electro and 12-string that sets the perfect backdrop. It's been called many things. But, simply put, it is Euphoria.

The brainchild of Toronto-based, Emmy-nominated composer, Ken Ramm, Euphoria is poised to become a household name among guitar aficionados and electronic music lovers alike with the release of its third album, Precious Time, (Zo/Rounder Records) which has Ramm collaborating with everyone from Steve Sidelnyk to Tracy Bonham.

Labeled as everything from "guitronica" to ambient to "rock chill out," Euphoria is an energized blend of slide and 12-string guitar layered over programmed electronic beats. It is soaked with blues inflections of Ry Cooder, before meandering through psychedelic strands of Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, then cascading into an Eno-influenced electro landscape. Ramm's hybrid of electronica and guitar has made Euphoria as genre defying as collaborations between hip hop and country, and the recent mash-up craze. "My music is a fusion of forms," Ramm says.

Euphoria rose from obscurity in 1999 when the track "Delirium" from the self-titled debut release broke onto the American Triple-A radio charts, becoming a favorite on the playlists of influential stations like Los Angeles' KCRW, Denver's KBCO and San Francisco's KFOG. The hit drew attention from the worlds of film, television and advertising, making its way onto series like "Malcolm in the Middle," the trailer for "Vanilla Sky," and commercials for Nissan, Lee Jeans and Apple's iPod. To date, every single off the Euphoria debut has been licensed for use, and remixes of "Delirium" by artists like Fila Brazilia and Dave Ball of Soft Cell fame have kept the single perpetually popular.

Once a composer for daytime television, Ramm was nominated for an Emmy Award in 1992 for a song he wrote for Lauryn Hill's character on "As the World Turns." Euphoria was born about a year later, around the same time that industry-savvy musicians began using the Internet to promote their work. The Internet Underground Music Archive (IUMA) was Euphoria's first online home, and by 1996, the cyber venue had gained such momentum it became the subject of a Time magazine article, which noted Euphoria as one of IUMA's early loyalists.

That same year, Ramm inked a deal with Six Degrees records, and his debut, Euphoria, was released in 1999. A second album, Beautiful My Child, was released in 2001, once again garnering attention from the film and television worlds. The single, "Little Gem," has been used on the hit TV series, "CSI," making its way onto the show's soundtrack, while Apple's Steve Jobs used the track "Sweet Rain" to launch MacWorld 2002.

With its third release, Precious Time, Euphoria takes its sound to new levels, partnering with internationally acclaimed vocalists and producers who make a unique mark on the album's tracks and help create full-length vocal tracks, which will no doubt enjoy radio play in the U.S. and abroad.

The most noticeable thumbprint on the album is likely that of drummer/producer Steve Sidelnyk, a fixture in the U.K. music scene who has collaborated with such artists as Madonna, David Gray and Massive Attack. Though Sidelnyk and Ramm collaborated on Euphoria's second album, helping to give it a noticeably modern sound, Ramm says Sidelnyk's influence is much stronger on the latest release. "The major energy of the project did come from [Steve] Sidelnyk," says Ramm. "He really did help me take it to another level. There's no doubt about it."

Tracks like "The Getaway," which Ramm names as one of his favorites on the new release, will have any Massive Attack fan conjuring memories of dark and dreamy electronic hits like "Angel." Also noticeable on Precious Time is the influence of co-producer Sean Spuehler (Madonna, William Orbit, No Doubt), a longtime Sidelnyk collaborator.

And Donal Hodgson (engineer for Sting) makes his third Euphoria album appearance as co-producer on the latest release. But just as Sidelnyk lends a very Bristol-influenced electronic edge to the album, harmonica player Howard Levy (Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Paul Simon) gives it an undertone of Chicago blues, like the distorted sound of Paul Butterfield.

Probably the biggest departure on this album is the inclusion of full-length vocal tracks by singers Tina Dico and Tracy Bonham, whose fourth album, blink the brightest, was released on Zo/Rounder Records in 2005. Dico, highly regarded for her stunning vocal contribution to Zero 7's most recent album, When It Falls, recently released her international debut, In the Red, which was produced by Chris Potter (The Verve). Potter and several other influential industry figures suggested the collaboration between Dico and Ramm, who had both, coincidentally, previously been recording at Metropolis in West London. "I had heard her stuff," Ramm says of Dico. "I just had a feeling."

Going with that feeling led to the inclusion of two vocal tracks, "Blue," a ballad that perfectly balances acoustic and electro components, and the more aggressive, rock influenced "Sinners and Saints," where Dico meanders from deep, sultry tones to high-pitched wails for emotional choral components.

The first track on which Bonham contributes, "Precious Time," is heavily influenced compositionally by Brazilian music in terms of its harmony and chord structure, Ramm notes. But the track also marks a distinct shift in the flow of the album, he adds, transitioning it from rock influenced to more of a sensual, dreamy mood. And Bonham, who many know as a critically-acclaimed singer-songwriter and electric-violin-wielding rocker, shows a softer, gentler vocal side with both "Precious Time" and "Anyone Can Lose."

While listeners could easily imagine any of these vocal tracks being featured in an indie film or serving as background music for a television show, Ramm says he was conscious of those mediums favoring strictly instrumental tracks. So additional tracks were mixed without the vocals. Rounding out the album is a 10-plus-minute extended track that mixes 12-string guitar ambiance with Philip Glass-like rhythms and progressive rock influences.

Though Ramm's aspirations for Euphoria and for this third release very much include continued work in the worlds of film and television, he is cautious not to create his music solely with any one market in mind. "I am open to all kinds of creativity with Euphoria," says Ramm. "It's not a work of hire. It's a work of heart."

Member Since:

December 02, 2005

Members:

Ken Ramm

Influences:

..Classic songwriters..: The Beatles (especially the Rubber Soul/Revolver period), Jerome Kern, Antonio Carlos Jobim and Ray Davies

..Canadian songwriters..: Joni Mitchell and Neil Young

..New songwriters..: Tina Dico, Andrew Harris

..Bands old and new..: Massive Attack, Radiohead, U2, Pink Floyd, The Who, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Pentangle, Sly And The Family Stone

..Guitarists..:Duane Allman, Bert Jansch, Ry Cooder, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, The Edge, John McLaughlin

..Great all round musicians..: Miles Davis or Prince

..Electronic and Ambient music..: Eno, Fila Brazillia or Kruder And Dorfmeister

..World Music..: Suba and Talvin Singh

..Contemporary Classical composers..: Oliver Messiaen and Philip Glass

Record Label:

Zoe / Rounder