Tom Stræte Lagergren (born 29 May 1991), professionally known as Matoma, is a Norwegian DJ and

record producer A record producer or music producer is a music creating project's overall supervisor whose responsibilities can involve a range of creative and technical leadership roles. Typically the job involves hands-on oversight of recording sessions; ensu ...

Early life

Lagergren was born in

Åsnes Municipality Åsnes is a List of municipalities of Norway, municipality in Innlandet county, Norway. It is located in the Traditional districts of Norway, traditional district of Solør. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Flisa, w ...

, Norway. He started playing the piano as a child. During that period, he won a contest to perform alongside Norwegian pianists Håvard Gimse and

Leif Ove Andsnes Leif Ove Andsnes (; born 7 April 1970) is a Norwegian pianist and chamber musician. Andsnes has made several recordings for Virgin and EMI. In 2012, he signed with Sony Classical, and recorded for the label the "Beethoven Journey" project, whi ...

. As he grew tired of classical piano, Lagergren began mixing on his computer. He holds a bachelor's degree in Music Technology from the

Norwegian University of Science and Technology The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU; ) is a public university, public research university in Norway and the largest in terms of enrollment. The university's headquarters is located in Trondheim (city), Trondheim, with region ...

Career

"Free Fallin Tropical Mojito Remix (John Mayer Tribute)" was produced with fellow tropical house producer Nelsaan and was released on Matoma's 23rd birthday. Matoma was asked by

Universal Universal is the adjective for universe. Universal may also refer to: Companies * NBCUniversal, a media and entertainment company that is a subsidiary of Comcast ** Universal Animation Studios, an American Animation studio, and a subsidiary of N ...

Germany to make a remix of

Marlon Roudette Marlon Roudette (born 5 January 1982) is an English singer, songwriter, and record producer. He is the former front man for the duo Mattafix who had their first number 1, "Big City Life", in 2006. After the group split, Roudette embarked on a s ...

's "When the Beat Drops" in July 2014 which was released one month later. His remix of " Old Thing Back" by The Notorious B.I.G. became popular when it charted in Norway, peaking at number two on

VG-lista VG-lista is the primary Norwegian record chart, charting albums and singles from Norwegian and international artists. It is presented weekly in the newspaper ''Verdens Gang, VG''. The data is collected by Nielsen SoundScan, Nielsen Soundscan Inte ...

, the official Norwegian singles chart. It also charted highly in Sweden, Finland, Denmark and New Zealand. It reached number 1 on the music blog aggregator

Hype Machine Hype Machine is a music blog aggregator created by Anthony Volodkin. History Hype Machine was originally a music database created in 2005 by Anthony Volodkin, then a sophomore computer science major at Hunter College.Heilemann, JohCapturing the ...

with many record companies including Big Beat Records expressing interest in Matoma's work after hearing the remix. Ja Rule, who is featured on the original track, also tweeted that he loved the track. He also remixed the song " Bailando" at the request of

Enrique Iglesias Enrique Miguel Iglesias Preysler (; born 8 May 1975) is a Spanish singer and songwriter. He started his recording career in the mid-1990s on the Mexican label Fonovisa where he released three Spanish albums ''Enrique Iglesias (album), Enrique ...

' team. After musician Hedegaard released his single "Happy Home", he and Matoma had a consultation about a remix of it. This was officially released by Copenhagen Records in September 2014. In October, Matoma's remix of

Eminem Marshall Bruce Mathers III (born October 17, 1972), known professionally as Eminem, is an American rapper, songwriter, and record producer. Regarded as one of the greatest and most influential rappers of all time, he is credited with popula ...

's "

Business Business is the practice of making one's living or making money by producing or Trade, buying and selling Product (business), products (such as goods and Service (economics), services). It is also "any activity or enterprise entered into for ...

" was released. During this month, Warner Music Norway published another remix, the Nelsaan & Matoma Remix of

Marit Larsen Marit Elisabeth Larsen (born 1 July 1983) is a Norwegian singer and songwriter. She began playing violin aged five and played it until the age of eight. She gained international fame during her teenage years as a member of the pop duo M2M with ...

's "I Don't Want to Talk About It". It is the second remix of Nelsaan and Matoma. In January 2015, Matoma released a remix of MYNGA featuring Cosmo Klein's "Back Home". In total, Matoma has published more than 136 tracks on his own

SoundCloud SoundCloud is a German audio streaming service owned and operated by SoundCloud Global Limited & Co. KG. The service enables its users to upload, promote, and share audio. Founded in 2007 by Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss, SoundCloud is ...

page. On 15 October 2016, he collaborated with British boy band, The Vamps to release the single " All Night". An official music video was published by The Vamps. As of February 2019 the single had received 375 million Spotify streams. Matoma and The Vamps' second collaborative single " Staying Up" was released on 1 September 2017. In 2020 he released his new single "WOW" with singer Emma Steinbakken. In the same year he released a Christmas song titled 'It's Christmas Time' with singer Michael Bolton. From 2021 to 2022, Matoma served as a coach on the Norwegian version of ''The Voice''. He mentored country singer Erlend Gunstveit to victory in the sixth season, who won the competition on 28 May 2021. In September 2021, it was announced that Matoma co-founded the AI music tech startup Masterchannel, together with Simon Hestermann and Christian Ringstad Schultz. The startup has developed a novel

Artificial Intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

approach to automated

music mastering Music is the arrangement of sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm, or otherwise expressive content. Music is generally agreed to be a cultural universal that is present in all human societies. Definitions o ...

and was awarded 'Norway's Best Creative Tech Startup' in 2022.

Equipment

Matoma uses Cubase 8 Pro to produce music and Massive, a

Digital audio workstation A digital audio workstation (DAW ) is an electronic device or application software used for Sound recording and reproduction, recording, editing and producing audio files. DAWs come in a wide variety of configurations from a single software pr ...

plugin to program his

synth A synthesizer (also synthesiser or synth) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis a ...

sounds. He also uses piano, guitars and flutes.

Discography

*'' Hakuna Matoma'' (2016) *'' One in a Million'' (2018)

Awards and nominations

References

External links

* {{authority control 1991 births Living people People from Åsnes Tropical house musicians Norwegian electronic dance music DJs Norwegian remixers