First, there was Sam.
These photographs weren't made to illustrate a future biography. They were simply family photographs: a child around his dad, around music, around keyboards, and apparently quite interested in whatever all those buttons might do.
Years later, they read differently.
He seems rather interested in the television.
There is something particularly satisfying about this photograph with hindsight. Sam is completely absorbed by the screen.
The next photograph in the sequence makes the coincidence even better: before the professional video work came along, Sam was already beginning to move from watching pictures to making them.
The photograph knew nothing about that, of course. That's what makes it good.
Then he got behind the camera.
The television photograph becomes even more interesting beside this one. Sam is no longer simply absorbed by pictures on a screen — he is operating the camera himself.
Years later, that interest became professional work: Amruze spent a number of years as a videographer for a television channel.
Seen together, the photographs give the story a progression that nobody could have planned at the time.
LEMON FRESH
AMRUZE
Sam developed his own musical identities, including Lemon Fresh and Amruze. The family connection eventually came back into Paul Cruse Music in a very literal way.
Honey Tree
meets Amruze.
Honey Tree began life decades earlier as one of Paul's songs. In 2019 it acquired another branch when the Honey Tree (Amruze DnB Remix) was released for streaming and purchase worldwide.
That makes the remix more than another version in the catalogue. It is also a collaboration between two generations whose musical story had been overlapping since these photographs were taken.
It joins things that didn't look connected at the time.
A child at a keyboard. A child staring at a television. A musical alias. Years working with video. A remix released decades after the original song was written.
Individually, they're photographs and catalogue entries. Together, they're a story.