September 8, 2011
PFFR (or Pre-natal Fighting Frightening Remembrances Forever Ltd.) is a Brooklyn based production company/art collective/electro-rock band consisting of Alyson Levy, Vernon Chatman, Jim Tozzi, and John Lee. The group has been active since 2000. The group’s portfolio of work includes albums, live performances, various art exhibits such as ‘An Attack On All Americans Or The Tyranny Of Weed’ shown at the LFL Galley in New York, and the script for the film ‘Final Flesh.’
PFFR are also active in television comedy. They wrote, directed, produced and starred in the MTV2 variety program ‘Wonder Showzen’ (2005–2006) and the Adult Swim CGI series ‘Xavier: Renegade Angel.’ For both these shows, Chatman and Lee are the directors and main voice talent, whilst Tozzi and Levy are the animation/character designer and art director, respectively. Levy provides additional voices for both shows whilst Tozzi does only for ‘Xavier.’ PFFR are also responsible for producing, directing and co-writing Jon Glaser’s Adult Swim show ‘Delocated.’
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September 8, 2011
Motion Trio is a Polish accordion trio founded in 1996 by Janusz Wojtarowicz. The group has worked with such artists as Bobby McFerrin and Michał Urbaniak.
Its members consist of accordionists Janusz Wojtarowicz, Paweł Baranek, and Marcin Gałażyn.
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August 18, 2011
Michael Nyman (b. 1944) is an English composer of minimalist music, pianist, and musicologist, known for the many film scores he wrote during his lengthy collaboration with the filmmaker Peter Greenaway, and his soundtrack album to Jane Campion’s ‘The Piano.’ He has composed operas, concertos, string quartets, and many other chamber works, many for his Michael Nyman Band, with and without whom he tours as a performing pianist. Nyman has stated his preference for writing opera to other sorts of music.
In 1969, he provided the libretto for Harrison Birtwistle’s opera, ‘Down by the Greenwood Side’ and directed the short film ‘Love Love Love’ (based on, and identical length to, The Beatles’ ‘All You Need Is Love’) before settling into music criticism, where he is generally acknowledged to have been the first to apply the term ‘minimalism’ to music (in a 1968 article in The Spectator magazine about the English composer Cornelius Cardew).
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August 1, 2011
Billy Preston (1946 – 2006) was an African American rhythm and blues musician from Houston, Texas, raised mostly in Los Angeles. In addition to his career as a solo artist, Preston collaborated with some of the greatest names in the music industry, including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Nat King Cole, Little Richard, Ray Charles, Elton John, Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, and Johnny Cash. He played the Fender Rhodes electric piano and the Hammond organ on the Get Back sessions in 1969.
Preston began playing piano while sitting on his mother’s lap at age three, and he was considered something of a child prodigy on piano and organ. By the age of 10 he was performing in the bands of gospel singers Mahalia Jackson, James Cleveland, and Andrae Crouch. In the 1960s he performed with Little Richard and Ray Charles, and in 1963, aged just 16, he played organ on the Sam Cooke album ‘Night Beat.’ He also began a recording career as a solo artist with the 1965 album ‘The Most Exciting Organ Ever.’
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July 29, 2011
The Invisibl Skratch Piklz were a group of Filipino American turntablists. The members of the group were originally hip-hop DJs, who were among the pioneers of the turntablism movement in the 1990s; turntablists create musical pieces by mixing samples from records, by using multiple turntables as instruments.
The group started in 1989 as Shadow of the Prophet, with DJ Q-bert, Mix Master Mike, and DJ Apollo, who left the group in 1993.
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July 29, 2011
Grace Jones (b. 1948) is a Jamaican-American singer, model and actress. She secured a record deal with Island Records in 1977, which resulted in a string of dance-club hits. In the late 1970s, she adapted the emerging electronic music style and adopted a severe, androgynous look with square-cut hair and angular, padded clothes. Jones is a contralto, the deepest female classical singing voice. Although her image became equally as notable as her voice, she is a highly stylized vocalist. She sings in two modes: in her monotone speak-sing as in songs such as and in an almost-soprano mode in songs such as ‘La Vie en rose’ and ‘Slave to the Rhythm.’ Her voice spans two and a half octaves.
In 1981, her ‘Pull Up to the Bumper’ became a Top 5 single on the US R&B chart. Jones is also an actress. Her acting occasionally overshadowed her musical output in America; but not in Europe, where her profile as a recording artist was much higher. She appeared in some low-budget films in the 1970s and early 1980s. Her work as an actress in mainstream film began in the 1984 fantasy-action film ‘Conan the Destroyer’ alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the 1985 James Bond movie ‘A View to a Kill.’
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July 29, 2011
LMFAO is an American electro hop duo that formed in 2006 in Los Angeles, consisting of rappers, and DJs Redfoo (Stefan Kendal Gordy, b. 1975) and SkyBlu (Skyler Husten Gordy, b. 1986). They are the son and grandson, respectively, of Motown record label founder Berry Gordy, making them uncle and nephew.
Their music incorporates a theme of partying and drinking, and the group commonly refers to their music style as ‘party rock.’ The name LMFAO is an initialism for ‘Laughing My Fucking Ass Off’ (although it is often sanitised to ‘Loving My Friends and Others’) and is pronounced letter by letter.
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July 23, 2011
Kid Carpet, real name Ed Patrick, is a musician from Bristol, England. His music has been described as ‘kiddy disco punk’ and ‘shit-hop,’ as it is recorded in his home studio using instruments such as samplers, Casio keyboards, and various children’s toys including plastic Fisher-Price guitars and Tamagotchi innards.
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July 19, 2011
The Dungeon Family is a hip hop collective, based in Atlanta, Georgia and specializing in Southern hip hop with heavy funk and soul influences. The group derives its name from ‘The Dungeon,’ the name given to record producer Rico Wade’s basement studio where many of the early members of the collective did their first recordings. Rico Wade, Ray Murray, and Sleepy Brown constitute the production/songwriting team Organized Noize, who have produced hits for the main popular Dungeon Family groups OutKast and Goodie Mob.
Only once has the collective been brought together for a project: the 2001 collaborative album ‘Even in Darkness.’
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July 19, 2011
The Wild Bunch was a sound system based in the St Paul’s district of Bristol, England from 1983 to 1986. The group was renowned for playing sets that drew large crowds from the club scene and had performed shows as far away as London. They performed against other Bristol sound systems in soundclashes, musical competitions where crew members from opposing reggae sound systems pit their skills against each other. The Wild Bunch’s sound incorporated a wide and disparate variety of musical styles – an unusual thing at the time. Their shows included elements of punk, R&B and reggae, with a focus on slower rhythms and ambient electronic atmospheres that would become a cornerstone of the Bristol sound, more popularly known as trip-hop. They were a key member of what became the Bristol underground scene. The first Wild Bunch record was a cover of Burt Bacharach’s ‘The Look of Love,’ featuring Shara Nelson on vocals, and released in 1985.
The Wild Bunch is perhaps best known for having been the first group of several notable British DJs and performers: Robert Del Naja, Grant Marshall and Andrew Vowles, went on to form Massive Attack in 1987. Tricky, also a part-time member of the outfit, performed with Massive Attack on their first and second full-length releases, Blue Lines and Protection respectively, before pursuing a successful solo career. Nellee Hooper, who moved to London after the group’s dissolution and worked as a producer and remixer for a number of major artists, including Madonna, U2, No Doubt, Björk and others. Miles Johnson, aka DJ Milo, who subsequently moved to New York and released deep house records as Natureboy.
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July 13, 2011
Jordan Roseman aka DJ Earworm is a San Francisco/London-based mashup artist who has achieved recognition for his technically sophisticated, songwriting oriented music and video mashups. His annual ‘United State of Pop’ mashups, short mixes featuring the top 25 songs of the year according to Billboard magazine, have reached the Top 100 for national radio play. He began making mashups recreationally in 2003 using ACID (he announced in 2008 that he had switched to Abelton Live). After encouragement from DJ Adrian at Club Bootie, Roseman created the moniker DJ Earworm (‘earworm’ referencing a song that repeats uncontrollably in one’s mind) and began releasing mashups.
DJ Earworm has a unique mashup style that consists of a compositional, songwriting approach. He gradually layers samples on top of one another, matching keys and subtly altering melodies. His mashups often convey an entirely new meaning than the original material, such as a political message in ‘No More Gas.’ He has been contrasted with mashup artist Girl Talk, who has a more DJ-oriented style. He is the author of Audio Mashup Construction Kit (2006), a how-to manual for creating mashups.
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July 8, 2011
Jean-Yves Prieur (b.1964), aka Kid Loco is a French electronic musician, DJ, remixer and producer. His style has been compared to Air and Dimitri from Paris. His best-known album is ‘A Grand Love Story’ (1997), and he has also compiled and mixed a DJ mix album for the ‘Another Late Night’ series on Azuli Records.
He has worked with Jarvis Cocker (of Pulp), with Italian band The Transistors (Maurizio Mansueti and Luca Cirillo) and Glasgow bands A Band Called Quinn and Mogwai, and produced the album ‘Too Late To Die Young’ by the British group, Departure Lounge.
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