For the greater part of the last five decades, Roland has been a leading force in architecting the sound of popular music. While the focus has been on creating electronic music equipment, Roland is happy to announce that the time has come for them to venture into the lifestyle product category. Developed in response to growing demand from Roland fans around the world, the new Roland Lifestyle initiative is here to honor Roland’s musical and cultural legacy.
To bring this project to fruition, Roland has engaged with the lifestyle agency Shines Creative, who will be the driving force behind the initiative of bringing Roland and the culture together through lifestyle products. Founder of Shines Creative, Nathan Chandra, states the following:
“Roland has achieved iconic status by creating instruments like the TR-808 that gave rise to entirely new music genres and ways of making music,” offered Nathan Chandra, founder of Shines Creative. “Music has the power to give rise to very distinctive clothing styles and even entire cultural movements. With the release of these new streetwear collections, Roland has begun to build its own unique bridge between fashion, culture, and music for everyone that loves the brand.”
Photos by Ezra Thorne / Creative Direction by Daniel Ecks
Roland believes that lifestyle products are a way to further engage with their customers and even plan on presenting the market with collaborations by legendary brands in addition to their own in-line products. Roland Creative Director, Martyn Hopkins, added to the idea of style and music intertwining with one another by stating:
“Music and personal style often go hand-in-hand. For decades, musicians have used Roland instruments to create some truly memorable musical moments—not to mention some great nights out. We get lots of requests about whether there’s an official range of Roland merchandise, so it’s very exciting to be working with the team at Shines to give people just that—fresh designs, premium quality, exciting collaborations, with a few surprises mixed in. Stay tuned for more info.”
Early this year we experienced a Roland x Pleasure collab that honored the 40th year of the TR-808 drum machine. If this is a precursor of what is to come from Roland Lifestyle then I am excited to see what’s in store for the coming years.
