Dom & Roland is a british DJ and producer of drum and bass music. The name Dom & Roland is usually confused as a name for a group, but in reality there's only one person; his name is Dominic. The "Roland" actually refers to his Roland S760 sampler which he purchased for his first attempts at producing music.
His parents were opera singers and he was taught both piano and trombone at school. He grew up in London with the early rave scene, and he started producing when a friend told him that all he needed was a sampler and a computer. Most "bedroom producers" used Akai s1000 samplers, and Dom, who wanted to be different, purchased a Roland S760.
Before deciding to become a musician, he was going to become an architect, and he has stated that while producing tracks he visualizes futuristic cities and buildings.
He started releasing records in 1994 under No-U-Turn records, a small independent label in the UK. In 1996 he was discovered by Moving Shadow recordings, and signed a three album deal with them. Thanks to his early successes, Dom convinced his bank manager to lend him enough money to upgrade his home studio to professional standards. He was chosen to collaborate on Moving Shadow's 100th release, "Distorted Dreams" (SH100) along with Timecode and Goldie.
He also released records on other drum and bass labels such as 31 recs, Prototype Records, and Renegade Hardware. After he completed and fulfilled his contract with Moving Shadow with the production of three albums, he started his own label Dom & Roland Productions (abbreviated as DRP) in 2005.
In 1998 he released his first album, "Industry", which was well received. The album was so popular that it reached the third place on the Music Week Independent Album Chart during the first two weeks of its existence. Several BBC documentaries also used sections of this album for their theme music including Merseyside blues, a popular police reality series.
In 2001 he was commissioned (with Derrick May and Surgeon) to write five exclusive pieces of music for Midnight Club, a videogame for Playstation 2. These tracks were released later on Moving Shadow. He also wrote some tracks for the videogame Rollcage Stage II. Rollcage Stage II soundtrack
He continues to write music for videogame companies, such as Rockstar North.
Dom has engineered for, and worked with, other prominent drum and bass artists, such as Noisia, Black Sun Empire, Gridlok, Skynet, Kemal, Audio, AK1200 and others. Dom is credited with the invention of a widely used sample, the Tramen break, which he created during sessions as engineer for Trace, the first producer who started using it in his productions.
Examples of music
*Opposites
*Through the looking glass
*Mind Feeders
*Aliens
*Sparta with Black Sun Empire
*Moulin Rouge with Kemal
*Moodswings with Gridlok
*Chaos Theory with Hive
*Spooks for Rollcage Stage II
*Slipstream for Rollcage Stage II
External links
*Dom & Roland's official site
*Dom & Roland at Rolldabeats
*Dom & Roland at Discogs