Leon Thomas who changed his name to Leone in 1974 made his mark in 1969 singing The Creator Has a Master Plan with Pharoah Sanders and showing that even avant-garde jazz can become popular under some circumstances A fairly conventional singer the mos…

The Danish trio of producers known for its work as Future 3 regrouped as System a guise for its dub productions The trio comprised of producers Thomas Knak Anders Remmer and Jesper Skaaning first came together in the mid-90s for the We Are the Future…

No recording artist has more impeccable street credentials than Joe Bataan the originator of the New York Latin Soul style that paralleled Latin bugalu and anticipated disco His musical experience began with street corner doo-wop in the 1950s and cam…

A classically trained vocalist Mia Doi Todd began writing songs while a student at Yale University Her debut album The Ewe and the Eye was released on Xmas records in 1997 Come Out of Your Mine followed in 1999 on the Communion Label With only sparse…

Vadim was born in the Soviet Union but moved to London when he was three. After becoming interested in hip-hop, he began to DJ and in 1995 released his first EP, Abstract Hallucinogenic Gases, on his own Jazz Fudge label. Later that year he continued…

Arguably the hottest of the 70s Ohio funk bands Slave had a great run in the late 70s and early 80s Trumpeter Steve Washington formed the group in Dayton in 1975 Vocalist Floyd Miller teamed with Tom Lockett Jr Charlie Bradley Mark Adams Mark Hicks D…

If Charlie Parker was the chief architect of the bop revolution of the 1940s, Dizzy Gillespie was its standard-bearer, an evangelist who battled public hostility and incomprehension with rapier wit. A trumpeter of dazzling virtuosity, he matched Park…

Tosca is essentially a side-project for Richard Dorfmeister, one half of Austrian dub-breaks artists Kruder And Dorfmeister and is a collaboration with his old school friend, Richard Huber. Tosca's 1997 debut, Opera, established the duo's unusual and…

b. Christophe Le Friant, Paris, France. Le Friant is a pivotal figure on the influential Parisian dance music scene, particularly as head of the noted label, Yellow Productions. Bob Sinclar is Le Friant's recording and production alter-ego but he is …

British experimental-techno funketeer Jamie Lidell made a name for himself giving mesmerizing live multi-media performances in which the singer continually looped his own effects-laden vocals and beat boxing until a dense sonic landscape emerged. How…

Formed in 1979, this UK band centre around the activities of singer-songwriter Matt Johnson (b. 15 August 1961, London, England). Initially, the unit included Keith Laws and cartoonist Tom Johnston, but the line-up was continually changing and often …

The Bristol collective known as Massive Attack arose out of the acid house scene of late-1980s England to become one of the 1990s' greatest innovators. The group has literally changed the face of music every time out. They invented "trip-hop" on thei…

Depeche Mode (French for "hurried fashion") was one of the first and best of the British synth-pop bands, combining breathless, melodic pop with perky electronics. With main songwriter Vince Clarke's departure for Yaz, Martin Gore took the reigns, an…