Hi, we are lofi hiphop producer duo from Berlin travelling the ocean of sound. We love chilled vibes, jazzy guitars and dusty beats with a forward-looking left-leaning edge. Please feel invited to check out our music, our videos and our story in depth here:
One year ago we dropped our hottest tune so far: „floating“. Happy birthday! The track was born under a good star with strong wind in the sails. Kick started by Indieshuffle the track travelled to Hypemachine top 20 which carried him over to playlists on Apple Music (The Lounge & Yoga). Later on Mr. Suicidesheep picked the tune followed by numerous features on Spotify Dicover Weekly and big time streams from playlists of influental people like Kalyn Nicholson (yoga) and Dakotaz (games) or the really strong Trip Hop / Downtempo playlist by Totox66.
Everything that happened last year makes us believe in the force of: 1.music of quality and distinction, 2. the wonderful global lofi community and 3. the surprising and sometimes peculiar paths music finds on its own in the digital space. All driven by influential music lovers and following them algorithms and curators that understand music consumption.
Today we can count more than one million plays on „floating“ with more than 900.000 plays on Apple Music (while everybody is talking only about Spotify nowadays). Thanks EVERYBODY for listening and for your support. We hope the journey will go on.
One source of income for lofi producers is selling instrumentals to rappers. This isn’t our cup of tea but we are open and curious when there is a chance to listen to our music in new contexts – when our music is travelling. This time „bouncy“ again went all the way to New York to meet the great storyteller Des Brennan. He transformed the beat into a bittersweet rap tune by his beautiful poetry and flow:
Greystone Freestyle
Word to myself I only write these words for myself If you like em it’s a bonus Can’t get caught up if I’m living in the moment I don’t chill I don’t lay low You ain’t come here to win then what you play for? Took the greyhound out to greystone Kept a couple quarters for the pay phone Heaven’s somewhere on the west coast Before we get close we’re stopping at Ernesto’s 2012 tales ridin on the metro Tell inside jokes and wearing retro’s It’s love and war back east Livin life on the line like a trapeze Was freestyling over trap beats Quiet in person just let the tracks speak And I always mention phases Cause I’m goin thru em brain failing these equations Can’t figure out shit what’s the plus minus Way too many’s the amount of fucks I give Used to be none, life really hit me hard Swear I can’t explain it all in these bars None of em are make believe I’m putting in the ground work like masonry I imagine that I’m in Belize Dime on my side Her hair blowin in the breeze Breaking bread makin peace with my enemies Letting go of all the baggage that I didn’t need
Everything is turning around in spirals. We are spiraling around our music. There is always a new, a better idea even after release… While we were not sure if the original version of „bouncy“ will make it on the Cozy Friends Beat tape we messaged on Facebook a lot with Garot Michael Conklin from New York. He had already released a track on a Chillhop Records sampler – whow. And he plays a beautiful trumpet – a trumpet? Oh yeahhh. We decided to give it a try and we started to experiment a lot. Garot was very patient with us and together we developped the track more into a bouncy banger. Thumbs up to Dust Collectors for releasing „bouncy“ under their umbrella. Thanks to Kaltblut magazine the Lofi Vibes and Golden Ticket Tape playlists to feature it. Check out „bouncy feat. Garot Michael Conklin“ here: 🎧 https://spoti.fi/2I3J766 or here: 🎧https://apple.co/2uNPyBp.
Beat Tapes are a very, very nice platform even for mostly unknown artists like us. The quality of the music is everything that counts. In december we submitted a beat for the Cozy Friends Vol. 2. This beat came from chops done more or less by accident with the drums and chords from „somewhere else“. Suddenly the vibe changed from melancholia to an easy desert ride. Ivo from Stereofox wrote about the track: „subtle guitar chords and easy vibes“ and he was absolutely on point like always. If you listen closely there is a lot going on within the guitars. To achieve a soundscape like this we used (among others) an efx chain that we have built on our own for Ableton Live. Within Ableton it simulates some common lofi hiphop effects of the Roland Sampler SP404 . The effect chain can still be downloaded for free here.
SP404 simulator free download
The Sp404 sampler is used in lofi hip hop to build tracks based on loops and/or use the famous sound and the effects to remix full tracks. We used the simulator in Ableton not on the whole mix but to transform some guitars here and there with the chopper combined with the delay. We recorded jam sessions with the MIDI controller where we manipulated the guitars and found formerly unheard „subtle“ guitar sounds – digital magic. To get even more nerdy in this article: we tested the digital marketing tool Toneden to build a fangate for the free download that helped us to increase profile followers and playlist followers on spotify. Toneden is an amazing integrated marketing box that combines f.e. fangates with automated and highly targeted digital advertising. You should give it a free 7 days trial if you are deeply interested in digital marketing and growth strategies.
Two months later we were truly happy when The Cozy Collective featured „bouncy“ on the beat tape – especially because of the lovely cover artwork done by Rude Manners. By the way: while we waited for an answer we talked to a guy called Garot Michael Conklin who played beautiful horns on another version of the track for a release later on – but this is another chapter. Here is the original track:
At the beginning of 2019 we released „somewhere else“. Our first single track release on a label – thank you Dust Collectors! We worked on that track about six months in 2018 and „somewhere else“ was not the most obvious track as a follow up on „floating“. By the way: at the same time we released the song out of the sudden „floating“ has been picked by the MrSuicideSheep favourites playlist on Spotify. We would wish to know where it came from because it really boosted „floating“ again.
„somewhere else“ went through many stages and in many directions while we produced it. In fact we have just finnished two other versions that will be released soon. These versions came out of short loops of the track but their vibe will be totally different – more easy and banging at the same time. On the surface „somewhere else“ is a smooth and innocent tune featuring one of us howling like a (chilled) wolfe. For us personally „somewhere else“ goes really deep. It’s about fading roots to childhood with all of those melancholic farewell vibes coming allong with it. Did we fell the right descision to go public with such a bland and tender one? YES! No Indie Shuffle this time but amongst many others we were happy about unexpected features for example by the lovely CZECH VIBES YouTube channel which actually was one of our goals when we started rocomoco. Czech Vibes are two girls from the Czech Republic who dedicates their life to photography & videography. We admit the vibe and the taste of this freelance duo consists of Marketa and Magdalena. And we got picked by STEEZYASFUCK for the Relax Lofi Playlist on Spotify (OMG) which brought an amazing bunch of listeners! We were happy to read nice posts by Beautiful Song of the week (that is where the headline comes from) and really nice one by Ivo from Stereofox within a premier feature for the track:
Berlin’s scene is heavily dominated by techno music, but there are a lot of hidden gems when it comes to instrumental beat music. One of them is rocomoco. If you’re feeling down today, I’ve got the perfect cure for you – their new beat and today’s premiere „Somewhere Else“. Built around a subtle piano melody, the melancholic sound escape feels like that invisible hand which pats you on the shoulder saying that everything will be alright. Absolutely delightful.
By the help of our friend Bretsil from Dust Collectors we also got love from Apple Music again with a pick for their BEATstrumentals playlist. When MrSuicideSheep and the promotion for the new track came together we peaked at 16.000 montly listeners on Spotify. Yeah! So, we are still indie as hell and under the radar but sometimes we are almost spotted below the water surface of this big wild ocean called the internet. This is still unbelieveable for us! Let’s see what’s coming next. Enjoy the video:
Do you now SubmitHub? That is a fantastic service allowing every musician to pitch music to blogs. You have to pay a little fee and you get guaranteed response on your submission from the blog of your choice – which doesn’t mean you get featured automatically… In August 2018 we were lucky again: Indie Shuffle gave overwhelming placements for the remastered long version of „floating“. Beside others they featured us even on their homepage. Thank you so much! Jason Girshkoff from Indie Shuffle wrote about „floating“:
Why do we like this? Groovy and mellow beats – what more could I want on a grey and rainy Sunday afternoon? rocomoco has made it onto Indie Shuffle before as part of a downtempo playlist. And now with „floating,“ he’s propelled himself all the way to the homepage for a feature. At roughly 2 minutes in length, this one sets the perfect tone for me. Props to this duo from Berlin.
Best new songs Tyler The Creator and rocomoco – what???
Afterwards we saw a domino effect boosting us Top 20 on hypemachine. We recieved a good amount of attention and love by music enthusiast worldwide who gave us likes on hypem which is important to get popular on hypem.
Popular on hypemachine
And the domino effect went on. Spotify and Apple Music spotted us first time. Spotify added us to a small dicovery playlist called Fresh Finds and lifted us into their Music Radar. Apple Music featured us in a Yoga playlist and in „The Lounge“of Apple Music Electronic. Bang!!! That was not something we counted on might happen. Thank you Apple Music for 300 k plays!
Based on that story we continued pitching floating to blogs and got more features for example on the lofi blog Stereofox or on the YouTube channel Lazy Vibes. One of these features was remarkable on the editorial side. Christoph Kiss touched ground on giveitaspin.gr a music enthusiast blog from greece:
Dreamy Lo-fi Banger by Rocomoco: Starting off with a jazzy Bass-sample and hard hitting drums, this beat slowly builds up with a dreamy piano to a very atmospheric beat and is a must for all Beat and Lo-fi Lovers. I especially liked this song because it stands out from the homogenous “Lo-fi 24/7 Live stream anime picture“-mass. As a producer, I’m not very enthusiastic about the current development of the “beatmaking” scene, because these Lo-fi streams make the music a uniform mush.Most Lo-fi producers copy the beats they hear in these live-streams and lose their face or artistic character.
Christopher Kiss got it on point. We definitely want to find our own path, our own style. But we disagree that lofi music is a uniform mush. As beatmakers and fans we see so many personal styles and playforms. Lofi music is still innovative, developing and exiting when you dive in deeper.
End of the article – the jouney will go on. Here is „floating“ our „dreamy banger“:
The lofi family is friendly and open. We love that. After we had a super collaboration with The Hidden the next target was: Take part on a relevant Lofi Beat Tape. And that was easy by chance. When we started our facebook profile in the beginning of 2018 a nice guy called Bretsil sent us a wave via facebook messenger just to say „hello“. As a friendly person I waved back and we started discussions about digital distribution, promotion and stuff. In one of these dialogs Bretsil wrote something really important about promotion in the digital age: it’s all about networking. He offered the chance to communicate, we came into communication – easy. By the way: Bretsil was and still is Producer, Manager and A&R at Dust Collectors a lofi US label that exploded in 2018. Later on Bretsil took our latest track „floating“ for the Dust Collectors Sesonal Sounds Beat Tape. Thank you, Bretsil! Mission completed.
A tape comes with a limited space of time so we were asked to shorten the track down to 1:42. Some days later when we heard the track on the dc tape between all the other ones we felt that we need to rework and to remaster it for a re-release. We had an unbelievable number of versions and internal discussions about micro details – and at the same time we were both convinced of the quality of this song. So we went on tweaking until we reached a stage that was cool for both of us. Here is the 1:42 version at 45:51 on the Seasonal Sounds Beat Tape
In April 2018 one of us broke his thumb from skiing. Time to explore the ocean of vibes again. One musician who has been spotted earlier because of good artworks and tasty music was Dan McRae aka The Hidden from Southampton. He asked for collaboration on soundcloud and we made a track within two weeks. That was by far the fastest track being finished for us ever. Usually we spent months and years propelling around our babys on ableton. „A Sunday Morning Hangover With Spring In The Air (dope mix)“ is a cute haiku with solid delay on the snare. That’s why we added (dope mix) to the title of the track and the other reason was: the one of us with the broken thumb was filled up with painkillers. On the promotion side it was more or less a quite release with a single comment „love this so much“ on soundcloud by our english collaboration partner. Yeah! We also love this one so much – what more do we need? This was the start of a wonderful relation with Dan via facebook messenger, our personal anti brexit.
There is a light that never goes out – „stay“ was the second track to be released. It has the vibe of late 60ies movies like „The Thomas Crown affair“ combined with a smooth hiphop beat and a good bunch of glitch effects you will discover when you listen twice. And above all that: dreamy melodies with lots of tremolo giving themselves a nice call and response. „stay“ brought the first lucky punch on the promotion side: Jason Grishkoff founder of Indie Shuffle and SubmitHub discovered the track and Philip Friedman picked it on indieshuffle.com as the opener of the playlist „The Sunday Night Chill: Food Coma“. You can still listen to the playlist here: https://www.indieshuffle.com/playlists/sunday-night-chill-food-coma/. That was attention beyond imagination. Soundcloud plays began to rise and the track also started to travel a little bit. What was really nice: „stay“ made it to the opening soundbed in a YouTube film from One List One Life. One List One Life is weekly wonderful and moving videos following Dillon and Clay’s journey in making bucket list dreams possible for people greatly affected by cancer. Here is the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtR-WpMz0qw&feature=youtu.be
„jiu“ was our first release. The strange title comes from the artifical female like voice sample we used. The foley by the way came from field recordings we made at the Hong Kong airport. Have we already mentioned that one of us is a pilot and the other one is working in the music industry? No? Well, it’s not important anyway. We got one comment, a ❤️ from a small lofi YouTube channel called „Behind clouds“. That was really great and exactly what we’re looking for. Every single response means a world for us. It’s telling us the boat might be able to swim. There is a shimmer of hope on the horizon. YEAH!
rocomoco official website 