Vienna Teng / ??? (born Cynthia Yih Shih on October 3, 1978) is a Taiwanese American pianist and singer-songwriter based in New York City. She began studying classical piano at the age of 5. She took her stage name
Steven Paul "Elliott" Smith (August 6, 1969 – October 21, 2003) was an American songwriter and musician. Smith was born in Omaha, Nebraska, raised primarily in Texas, and resided for a significant portion of his life in Portland, Oregon, where he first gained popularity. His primary instrument was the guitar, but he was also proficient at piano, clarinet, bass, drums and harmonica. Smith had a distinctive vocal style characterized by his "whispery, spiderweb-thin delivery" and use of multi-tracking to create vocal harmonies.
Zbigniew Preisner (b. 1955) is one of Poland's leading film score composers, best known for his work with film director Krzysztof Kieślowski. Preisner was born on 20th May 1955 in Bielsko-Biała. He studied history and philosophy in Kraków; never having received formal music lessons, he taught himself about music by listening and transcribing parts from records. His compositional style represents a distinctively spare form of tonal neo-Romanticism.
My Kappa Roots is the name under which Pablo Clark writes and performs music. Born in Edinburgh, his family moved to Tenerife and then northern Spain, before returning to Scotland, and to a coastal village in Fife.
Xiu is a recent project based in Milan and formed by Oksana (Xiu). Oksana was born in Estonia, studied academic music in Russia. Academic knowledges had a deep impact in the creative process of her musical entity. During several years she also sang in the church's choir which is undoubtedly had influenced her work. Next to the writting of her first musical effort she contributing appearances for the minimal-synth band Newclear Waves. She is familiar with underground musical scenes which emerged during the 80s, from sonic minimal synth experiments to cold wave and post-punk.
Charlyn Marie Marshall, also known as Chan (pronounced "Shawn") Marshall, was born in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. on 21 January 1972. After dropping out of high school, she started performing under the name Cat Power, while in Atlanta, backed by musicians Glen Thrasher, Mark Moore, and others. She soon moved to New York City, United States in 1992, then later opening for Liz Phair in 1994, she met Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth and Tim Foljahn of Two Dollar Guitar, who encouraged her to record, and played on her first two albums, 1995's Dear Sir and 1996's Myra Lee.
American indie rock and avant-garde musician, composer and producer Jim O'Rourke has been a key component in the increasing overlap of the American and European experimental music avant-garde, working in everything from jazz and rock to ambient and electro-acoustic and building many a bridge in between. A Chicago native, his work has found equal luck with experimental jazz and noise fanatics, chill room denizens, and bedroom experimentalists, and has had the resultant effect of cross-pollinating many otherwise isolated compositional communities.
What
The Hollows are made up of Greg O'Brien and Gary Morrisson. The pair met in school and played together in a rock band calling themselves Our Space Age Army before becomming a duo.
The sound is heavily influenced by the likes of Sparklehorse and Sigur Ros but manages to maintain a good deal of originality.
Julia Shammas Holter is a classically-trained keytarist from Echo Park. After infiltrating Human Ear Music headquarters dressed as an intern, she wrote and recorded her own release on the label. Her music is witty, surreal and optimistic. She plays without sarcasm in the terrains that divide sentimentality, passion, and control. Her songs are written instinctively, and treated with an off-kilter fastidiousness, working orchestral variety from minimal instrumentation.