Aruna Remix Contest

From the Judge

Grand Prize Winner

 

Honorable Mentions

 

Grand Prize

Merchandise from Aruna.
Merchandise from Sony valued at more than $1500, including:
ACID Pro software.
Sound Forge® software.
Sony Sound Series™ Premium Collection: Songwriter's Acoustic Guitar Companion™.
Sony Sound Series Premium Collection: Sonic Excursions for Acoustic Guitar™.
Sony Sound Series Box Set: Drums from the Big Room™.
Sony Sound Series Loop Bundle: Rock Shop™.
Sony Sound Series Loop Bundle: Songwriter's Pack™.

About the Contest

We first met Aruna when her song, "Break You Open", took first place for Pop in the USA Songwriting Contest, which Sony Media Software has sponsored for the past six years. To bring it full circle, we requested the opportunity to present this song for a remix. After some wrangling and paperwork, we're glad to finally present it to you. Enjoy.

About the Band

Guided by a compass of seemingly magnetic emotion, songwriter/artist Aruna travels a deeply personal path of art and music marked by impeccable songcraft, a burnished voice and an accomplished musicality.

It's been a circuitous route to this center. Born in Flemington, New Jersey -- a concrete geography distinguished mostly by imposing outlet malls -- Aruna channeled her emerging sensitivity into music. She began writing songs at age 9; by thirteen, she was traveling to New York City to attend music education events. Her initial aspiration was to be a session musician. Under the training of her mentor, also an accomplished studio ace, she practiced the music of Chopin, Debussy and Thelonious Monk for up to ten hours a day.

As a high school freshman her sense of alienation revealed itself through immersion into dark, heavy music: Obituary, Sepultura, Napalm Death, "Monster stuff," she laughs. The day after her high school graduation she departed for Boston to enroll at Berklee College of Music. When she was moved by hearing a record from the band Cynic, an international touring act based in Florida, she sent them a letter expressing interest in joining them in the studio. Surprisingly, three weeks later they replied: within months Aruna had moved to Miami to collaborate on the group's next record.

When Cynic imploded in a shower of record company detritus, Aruna interned with Miami-based hit songwriter Desmond Child; improbably, she also gigged at Howl at the Moon, a watering hole that featured a format of dueling pianists performing scabrous ditties for a rowdy, alcohol-fueled audience of up to six hundred patrons nightly.

Eventually, Aruna made her way back to Boston and Berklee. Then, in 2000, Capitol Records put out the call for local acts to support the "Girl's Room Tour" and she was selected to open the Boston shows. Press reviews and major label contacts followed. She recorded an impressive three-song CD with Alain Mallet, noted for his work with Jonatha Brooke. But Boston offered scant opportunity for her emerging solo artistry and introspective songs. After weighing the options of other music capitals, Aruna opted for the sunniest: Los Angeles.

One week after her arrival she performed at an open mic at the venerable acoustic venue, Highland Grounds. Within weeks she was selected to showcase at the club. "After a month in L.A, I was drawing more people than I ever did in Boston," she notes.

Aruna continued her consistent local and regional gigging for over a year, until she felt her skills were honed and her songs were primed. In October 2002, she retreated to the studio for six months to complete what would ultimately become her debut LP, Running Red Lights. "It was an amazingly complex and challenging process", she recalls. "I wanted it to have a modern, polished, upbeat sound, while still maintaining depth and radical honesty as well as more subtle, organic elements. It was a constant negotiation between those potentially disparate concepts, but in the end it all somehow came together."

Since the record's completion, Aruna and her team have been hard at work promoting the release, generating attention and exposure, and continuing to build on Aruna's ever-increasing fanbase. With a recently completed five-week international tour under her belt, glowing press reviews in publications all over the world, and her single "Break You Open" recently moving up to #44 in the R&R Top 50 Pop chart, it appears the hard work is beginning to pay off. "This is the fun part," she laughs. "I feel I've grown so much since my last recording, as a writer, an artist, and particularly as a person. My hope for this album is that these songs will speak to people, touch them in whatever way. If I can do that, I've done my job."