'Fallen Empires' Remix Competition Winner Announced

Shure Europe, together with UK rock band Snow Patrol, have announced the three winners in their Fallen Empires remix competition.
The band selected the bronze, silver and gold winning remixes of their most recent album's title track from a shortlist of 20 chosen by Shure Europe in early January, following several weeks of intensive listening to all of the entrants' lovingly crafted remixes. Styles varied from orchestral and techno workouts to all-acoustic, stripped-back versions of the original band arrangement — but the eventual winner beat them all by the time-honoured trick of turning up the track to 11.
The third place (bronze) winner was Janusz Zalewski, who wins Shure equipment worth €500 for his remix, which slows the original and adds a funky feel.
In second place was a remix by Peter Galaksikov, who impressed Snow Patrol with their tense, string-heavy take on Fallen Empires and receive a Shure voucher worth €1000.
But the winner was Juha-Matti Koppelomäki, a Media student (and former studio intern) from the University of Tampere in southern Finland, who won the band over with his hard-rocking, guitar-heavy complete rework of the track.
Snow Patrol said it all: "This remix is massive… a worthy winner!"
Juha-Matti declared himself "very surprised" when he got the call to say he had won the competition. When asked what had inspired him to increase the rock content of the original track, he replied: "I really liked the original track, the lyrics and the melodies — but as a fan of rock and metal music I decided to speed up the track, play my own guitars and add some of my own drums. The rest fell into place very quickly, because the song already had the required rock attitude."
As the golden first-prize winner of the Fallen Empires competition, Juha-Matti has now received a Shure voucher worth €1500, which may be redeemed against Shure equipment of his choice.
Although he was still deciding at the time of writing, he felt it was likely that he would be expanding his microphone locker, as he explained: "I already own some Shure microphones, and my most recent discovery is the SM7B; I used it on a guitar cabinet and it sounded great. It's a very versatile microphone — I might have to get one of those at least!”
Paul Crognale, Marketing Manager at Shure UK and one of the instigators of the Fallen Empires competition, commented: "This has been a hugely successful venture from start to finish, with remixes of a very high quality from all over Europe. We were amazed by the amount of time and effort that many of the entrants spent on their submissions and Juha’s amazing remix is a testament to this. We’d like to thank everyone who took part, and of course Snow Patrol and their management for their help and trust!"
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