Back before the great internet download free for all of the early noughties and way before iTunes, Amazon Prime and Spotify, pioneers of the internet created diverse websites which fostered creativity instead of stifling it. One such groundbreaking website was called Peoplesound which encouraged and facilitated unsigned bands to release their music through the site who would curate and aggregate their works to potentially new fans.
For many bands this would be their first foothold into the world of music, indeed, a number of former Peoplesound artists went on to be hugely popular for example Sugarplum Fairies to name one. But more on Peoplesound in the future.
One of the Peoplesound artists I fell for was a french group called Arom. Now, if you’re ever thinking of starting a band, can I suggest that you use a word or phrase that is Googleable because Arom brings up all sorts of results, very few if any, relate to the band Arom. Or, for that matter, the band Arom I’m writing about, as it appears there have been several other bands with the same name.
The particular itteration of Arom we’re interested in today is one, possibly from France, maybe Canada or Belgium, who have a bit of a “Bjork meets Portishead” sound. I actually have two versions of the album – the Peoplesound EP and the official album which is available on Apple Music.
The Peoplesound EP (2000ish) features 5 tracks, 3 of which, after much post-production, made their way to the official album (2007) which features 11 tracks – all of which have been heavily processed and, in my opinion, have lost the haunting focus of the EP.
Jardin d’Eden by Arom is available on Apple Music and Amazon
This is the penultimate album from Benny and Sylvia’s Sugarplum Fairies (SPF).
Way back in the early days of internet and Windows Millenium, I obtained a compilation CD from an innovative music website known as Peoplesound. The idea behind Peoplesound was years ahead of its time, crowd funded/supported bands could sell their EPs, demos and albums via the site and hipsters everywhere could potentially discover artists years before anyone else. I claim that privilege with Mull Historical Society and
Stegzy's Music Project 
Alone in This Tree – Hieronymus [#676]
by stegzyOxford’s Hieronymus are another band I discovered through Peoplesound later discovering they were a little bigger than they first appeared but then virtually disappearing. I don’t really know that much about them. They’re tight, they performed around the Oxford gig circuits, released Alone in This Tree in 2003 followed up with Save the Day in 2006 and yeah…that’s it. Victims of both digital music proliferation and the early noughties great music heist.
I’m not sure who, possibly former work colleague Tim Worthington, recently lamented on social media how the advent of the Great Download Free-for-All and accessibility to an unstructured, unguided global catalogue of music often meant that up and coming bands came and faded immediately from memory citing the likes of Gravenhurst, Clearlake and Madasun as examples of bands who were everywhere then seemingly vanishing from cultural memory.
I guess Hieronymus was a victim of that time too. In “normal” times, they would have sky rocketed – NME, Music Maker and even Just Seventeen would have featured them. Now perhaps only those who saw them play in the Three Horseshoes in Witney might vaguely recall them, discovering the bands CD they bought out of support when clearing out the junkroom.
The tracks on Alone in this Tree are better produced than the 40% of tracks that were released on the Peoplesound sampler I originally owned. Lyrically, there’s a level of perverse humour, musically a really great blend of influences such as Blondie and Transvision Vamp but toned down to dreamy levels. My all time favourite song is Clueless – a lyrical tour de force about either a dog being abandoned or one overly devoted half of a relationship who is in an abusive relationship.
Sadly all that remains of the band online are a few videos on Youtube, this album, their other album Save the Day, a mention in local music press and an entry in the abc directory which links to their long disabled website. It doesn’t help that their band name has poor SEO clashing with at least two other international bands using derivatives of the name Hieronymus but at least there’s the music project entry you are reading right now.
Available on Apple Music https://music.apple.com/gb/album/alone-in-this-tree/138327167
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Peoplesound 2003 Hieronymus Cold Chapel Records