Majestic

Welcome to the official home page of progressive rock recording artist Majestic. Band members Jeff Hamel and Jessica Rasche together create an innovative atmosphere of symphonic neo-prog mixed with psychedelic sounds. In July 2009, Majestic released the highly acclaimed “Arrival” CD on the russian progressive rock label MALS.

The Story

Everything started back in April 2007 when I first posted a couple of tracks to MySpace.  I grew on orchestral music and in high school threw away the violin and began to play guitar. I spent the first couple of years learning guitar basics from Joey Mazzola (Former Sponge guitarist). Back in the late 80’s and early 90’s, I played with various metal bands in and around Detroit. I graduated from RID (Recording Institute of Detroit) where I learned the whole engineering side of music. By the mid 90’s I fell into other lines of work and put music to the side, well sort of. I always enjoyed writing and recording new ideas even if for myself. I spent the next 10 years basically in seclusion, writing, recording and experimenting. Something else happened as well in the 90’s. The Seattle scene was very popular here in the states and that just wasn’t for me. I found myself going back a couple of decades and listening to bands from the 70’s like Yes, Floyd, Genesis, King Crimson, etc. I loved the complexity and dramatics of this progressive music. So during this 10 year phase of self-discovery, I was writing music like this progressive stuff I liked to listen to. At the same time, I was developing my own style of playing and writing free from headaches involved with playing in bands.

So back in April 07 while working on ideas, my son suggested I put up a couple of tracks on MySpace. After some arm twisting, I did. Now I have used the screen name of Majestic for many, many years even dating back to the old Prodigy, CompuServe days. Since I have always liked the big dramatic type music it seemed fitting.   So I put up a site under MajesticSongs not really expecting it to go anywhere.  The initial feedback was very positive, so I posted more tracks. The fans grew as I would write music and post it. At the time, most of the songs were shorter due to MySpace’s size limits.  I had enough inquiries about purchasing that I had a demo CD duplicated and was able to sell a few of those. This demo cd would later become Descension.

The last half of 07 I was approached by Andromeda Recordings. This record label was known for EDM style and they wanted to branch off to rock. I agreed to write them a release.  So I spent a little time and recorded String Theory.  They released S.T. at the beginning of 2008. Nearing the end of recording S.T, I was approached by Mike Lanin of MALS Limited. MALS is a prog/metal label out of Russia and Mike was interested in releasing some material. Unfortunately, everything I was working on was going to Andromeda and at the time, I said he was welcome to release Descension stuff if he wishes.  He did.  So here I was within about a 4 month span, 2 releases with 2 different labels since the first year of going public with any music at all. Very shortly after release Andromeda decided to drop the whole rock thing and S.T was dropped with it. MALS however continued to promote Descension and getting the Majestic name out there. The major consensus of Descension was that the music was good except for the vocal which is understandable, looking back I still cringe at some of those tracks.   S.T. which I thought was a much better CD was virtually unknown in the prog world.

When I recorded S.T., I was lucky enough to collaborate with a couple of artists (Elzbeita, Di) on two tracks. So in 2008 I started looking for other artists which might be fun to work with.  I met Gregg Johns of Slychosis. Gregg and I started throwing ideas back and forth, via working over the internet. This soon became the Proximal Distance Project and its own entity.  I also stumbled across a vocalist named Jessica Rasche.  She had worked on a couple of online collaborations and was looking for a band. I invited her to work on a couple of my tracks.  Once I heard the results, I knew right away she was the voice of Majestic.  Thus the writing of Arrival commences.

With Arrival, now that I had the vocalist that the music deserves I wanted to go all out with monster epic tracks. The result of that effort was released in July 2009 again with MALS spearheading the promotion.  The response to Arrival has been wonderful and the music continues to spread out.  Gregg Johns and I continued writing and recording music with the Proximal Distance project and combining Majestic and Slychosis members produced a debut CD in Feb 2010. Responses to the P.D. project have been excellent as well.

When I look back over the last four years, I am truly amazed at how far these musical ideas have traveled.  All the love, support and dear friendships made along the way makes me feel blessed. With everything crazy going on in the world these days, it is nice to know that music can take the listener somewhere else if only for a few moments.  I am very lucky to be part of that.

~Peace and Love

Jeff Hamel