ninja tune | Musicosity

ninja tune

John Matthias

As we stagger onwards into the 21st century, musical genres begin to meld and mutate with increasingly random, and occasionally inspiring results. A number of artists have spent the last few years blending digital sound with acoustic, traditional forms with experimental structures and good ol' fashioned songwriting with the liberating dynamics of 'dance' music in all its myriad forms. Few have done it with the grace, beauty or soul of John Matthias.

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Jon Kennedy

Jon Kennedy’s music came to light when he was twenty four and Mr Scruff played his track ‘Tell Me How You Feel’ on the Unfold radio show in Brighton, Tru Thoughts snapped him up straight away. He released three 12” and in 2000 his debut album ‘We’re Just Waiting For You Now’ came out. Two years later he was snapped up by Grand Central. This time Aim, who was a fan of Jon’s ‘Chocolate And Cheese’ track approached him to remix ‘The Girl Who Fell Through The Ice’.

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Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra

Antibalas1998 is a Bushwick, Brooklyn based afrobeat band that is modelled after Fela Kuti's Africa 70 band and Eddie Palmieri's Harlem River Drive Orchestra. Although their music is primarily afrobeat, their music incorporates elements of jazz, funk, dub, improvised music, and traditional drumming from Cuba and West Africa. Founded in winter 1998 by Martín Perna as "Conjunto Antibalas," the group played its inaugural concert in May of the following year.

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Ultramagnetic MC's

Members Kool Keith, Ced Gee, TR Love and Moe Love released their debut album Critical Beatdown, produced by Paul C., in 1988 and inspired the world of hip hop with their original sound of unorthodox sampling, polysyllabic rhymes, and bizarre lyrical imagery. Kool Keith went on to work with many other groups and solo projects including The Cenobites, Dr Octagon, Masters Of Illusion and Dr. Dooom Their work has been often sampled, most notably in The Prodigy song "Smack My Bitch Up"

Read more about Ultramagnetic MC's on Last.fm.

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Diplo

Diplo, Diplodocus, Wes Gully, and Wes Diplo are all pseudonyms of Wesley Pentz, a Philadelphia-based producer and DJ since 2003. Together with DJ Low Budget he runs Hollertronix, a party and music collective. In addition to his solo career, he has worked with Sri-Lankan/Tamil singer and artist M.I.A.. The two were also romantically involved. Pentz's alias, short for Diplodocus, derives from his childhood fascination with dinosaurs.

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Infinite Livez

Infinite Livez, MC, ex-Bethnal Green, now Berlin-based.
The enigmatic Infinite Livez truly is at the extreme, taking existentialist hip-hop to a whole new level of, er, existence! He has released a solo album on Big Dada in 2004, and 2 subsequent collaborative releases with Swiss minimal-electro-jazz group Stade, as well as numerous side-projects and experiments. * Infinite Livez vs Stade: "Art Brut for da Yoot" (2006)
* Infinite Livez vs Stade: "Morgan Freeman's Psychedelic Semen" (2008)
**NEW LIVE ALBUM OUT: 12 March 2009

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Quincy

There are different artists by this name: 1. Quincy was a new wave power pop band from New Jersey. They released their first album on Columbia Records in 1980 entitled "Quincy". While on their first US tour and playing at the Whisky a Go Go in Los Angeles, a major lawsuit was filed by Quincy Jones demanding a name change. Columbia would not fight and urged the band to change their name. They reluctantly complied. The settlement stipulated that no mention could be made of the lawsuit in public.

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