Guy Sweens

Guy was born in the South-East of the Netherlands. Already as a child, Guy showed many interest in music and he was spending much time listening to pop- and classical music. His grandparents had a very good sounding piano which his grandfather used to play and when Guy was visiting them, he often tried to play the piano too. It was in that time that he discovered how much fun it could be to compose music by himself in stead of just playing music that was made by somebody else. Although Guy couldn't read notes, he already managed to compose simple musical pieces. When Guy reached the age of 16, he found out about a rarely new technique in the pop music scene that was and still is very popular: (re)mixing of already existing records. By coincidence, Guy discovered the weekly broadcast remixes of world famous Dutch remixer/producer Ben Liebrand in 1986. Inspired by Liebrand's remixes, Guy started to make remixes himself. He used a room in front of his bedroom in his parents house that became his home-studio. In that time, Guy often worked together with his schoolmate Patrick Lahaye, who was regularly working as a DJ in a club in Valkenburg. The equipment became more professional and Guy bought his first synthesizer: the Yamaha DX-21 (little brother of the famous DX-7). With this synthesizer, Guy was now able to add new instruments, like bass-lines, to the original track which made the remix more attractive. Almost all of Guy's remixes were broadcast on Belgium radiostation "Maasvallei Radio" in the show "Golfbreker" from DJ Raoul Morreau. Many times, Guy went to Maasvallei Radio to announce his new remix and to give short a interview about how he made the remix. The remixing went on until the beginning of the 1990's. Guy found out that, although remixing was very much fun, he was still just re-arranging music that was made by somebody else. Now it was time to create his own music and so he started to compose dance-music. At first, Guy worked together with Sven Curfs who was also interested in making music and owned two synthesizers. They decided to join forces and made some very nice dance-tracks that were also broadcast on Maasvallei Radio. In 1993, Guy decided to compose a totally different style of music, called New Age Music. This music was not new for him, since he already discovered it in 1987 while listening to a radio-show called "Het is te Hoopen" from DJ Jan ten Hoopen. The first New Age song he ever listened to was "Dawnlight" from Karunesh. After hearing this song on the radio, he quickly wrote down the title and went to an esoteric store in Maastricht where he bought the complete album. From that moment on, Guy found out that there where many very good New Age and World artists and bought a lot of cd's in this genre. Guy went on composing both Dance-Music (mostly Trance) and New-Age Music until the year 2000. Then he decided to concentrate only on composing New Age and World Music. Guy found out that he liked composing music in this genre more then composing Dance-Music, because it is more varied and everlasting. New Age and world Music gave him much more freedom to express himself without the obligation to constantly keeping up with new musical trends, which is always the case in the Dance-scene. Guy has always been very much interested in the Middle-Ages and the music of that time. But also traditional Asian and Indian music, the moody style of Jazz and Classical music have his interest. These musical styles have an enormous ability to express all kinds of feelings. Guy's music can best be defined as vibrant, passionate, spiritual and full of melodic warmth with gentle rhythm. It is a fusion of western and exotic styles with clear Indian influences. To create this, Guy uses a lot of different instruments from all over the world, combined with modern synthesizer sounds. In 2003, Guy started his own record label "Rivendel Records Limited" for the release of his first cd-album "The Passion for Music". In 2005, Guy became a professional composer/producer. He won the MG Music New Talent Competition and signed a record deal with MG Music later that year. MG Music is a record company based in the UK and owned by highly acclaimed New Age artist Medwyn Goodall and his wife Wendy. In Spring 2005, Guy released his first album with MG Music "Gaya of Wisdom". This album tells the story of Gautama Siddharta who became the Buddha. In 2006, Guy participated in a cd-project called "OM" and wrote and produced the track "Mahayana" featuring Medwyn Goodall on guitar and pan-pipes and Terry Oldfield on the Bansuri-flute. 2007 saw the relaese of his second New Age album "Kamadeva". Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.