Eloquent:

Read More...

Steven Cochran & Randall Erkelens

Steven was a music major at Pasadena City College in California, studying composition, voice, piano and guitar, then a continued study of voice with the highly proclaimed Gloria Rush, who amongst her students during this time was Lisa Marie Presley. This study period of three years during the late 80’s and early 90’s included voice workshops, recording studio workshops, performance workshops,

along with performing in showcases.

In 2001, a discovery of MP3.com was made, which encompassed a wealth of

musical artists without vocalists, or in search of vocalists. eloquent collaborated with various artists, then settled on a few to record the debut album ‘Future Pop’ in 2003. eloquent enjoyed great success on MP3.com, with several Top 10 songs and two #1’s. With the charts changing daily, it was very difficult to have a #1 song for more than a few days. “moonlight over London” enjoyed the top spot for more than a month and a half on the New Wave Chart.

With the sad end to MP3.com in late 2003, many synthpop artists moved over to ElectroGarden for their continued public exposure. eloquent enjoyed much success there as well with four #1 songs : “moonlight over london”, “nobody’s diary”, “future pop” and “paris in our hearts”. These songs continued to be #1 off and on until ElectroGarden’s unfortunate demise in 2004, in which “paris in our hearts” remained #1 on the final day.

During work on the “Future Pop” album, Steven worked with Patrik Sjöström of

“A twice blessed man” on a couple tracks. With his appealing “retro-synthpop” sound, they decided to form the synthpop duo Royal Visionaries. Their first release “Back to Yazoo” has been released with much acclaim. Along with several compilation appearances, more information can be found at www.RoyalVisionaries.com

As preparation and consideration for artists to collaborate with began for the follow-up to the “future pop” and the continuing search for a permanent music partner ensued, Steven met Randall at A Different Drum’s Synthpop Festival, 2004. Randall was performing with his darkwave/synthpop band Tristraum. The two began a friendship and eventually collaborated on a song that was originally slated to appear on the debut Tristraum album. After recording “Carte Blanche” together, the two quickly realized that a partnership was unavoidable. Steven was searching for a permanent music partner and Randall needed an outlet for writing lighter synthpop songs.

Randall began his musical journey in college djing four nights-a-week at a dance club and had a regular show on the campus radio station. After graduating,

Randall co-founded Twitch Remix Service in San Francisco. Twitch released

over 25 double albums, compilation cds and various dj loop tools geared towards

the underground dj. Twitch held remixes for D.A.F., Celebrate the Nun, The Prodigy, The Shamen, The Orb, Prefab Sprout, Moby, Anything Box and Front 242.

After six years of Twitch, Randall partnered with Pierre Norman and Krystyna Eller to form Tristraum. Their first single ‘Shiver’ was released in Spring 2004 and was followed-up with ‘First Embrace’ in 2005. The trio began work on their debut album ‘Gray’ while producing a string of remixes for other artists that include Underworld, Color Theory, Project X, T.O.Y., Somegirl, Assemblage 23, Fiction 8, Fr/action, Sasha and Echo Image. Randall and Pierre formed Section 44 Records to release The Fixx and Dead or Alive tributes, the ‘4x4’ series and upcoming Tristraum releases.

eloquent's second album is currently in production

User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License and may also be available under the GNU FDL.