Bristol born Caroline Martin started writing and recording in 1996. At this point in her life she was living on the edge of Wentwood Forest in South Wales. With her dog for company, Caroline drew on her surroundings, the isolation and memories from her childhood upbringing in Yate to write her stories of loss, fear and revenge. Caroline released her debut 5 track EP - Young Tender Rabbit Meat - on her own label in 1998.
El Ten Eleven is a Los Angeles-based instrumental rock duo consisting of Kristian Dunn and Tim Fogarty. What separates El Ten Eleven from their musical peers is that they are only two musicians on stage creating pounding landscapes of sound with no laptops or sequencers. Dunn switches off (sometimes mid-song) between a double-neck bass/guitar and a fretless bass, while his feet dance on an extensive floorboard of looping devices and effects pedals. He plays everything live, loops himself and juggles all the layers of tracks on top of each other.
Anders Parker is a modest man who lives in Burlington, Vermont and works as a musician. People who are into American songwriters know him as the frontman of Varnaline. That band enjoyed the support of so many enthusiastic reviews and high-profile fans (most recently Steve Earle, who released the last Varnaline record on his own boutique label ESquared/ Artemis) that it became a widely held consensus that they were underrated. Which was impossible, though not the fault of the listening public, who actually really do have a bit of an ear, sort of.
A self-taught pianist from the age of 7, Dustin O'Halloran's personal histories give us some clue to the thickly-woven tapestries of his music: he has lived in LA (where he studied art at Santa Monica College and formed the much-adored Devics with Sara Lov), Italy (in the depths of rural Emilia Romagna) and Berlin. His arresting, heartbreaking music is as much an elegant exercise in nuance and grace as it is a pure, intuitive, personal expression – and here is where we see some explanation into Dustin's quiet rise to notoriety and his continued ascension.
Jakob is a New Zealand post-rock band, based in Napier, Hawke's Bay, New Zealand. The band consists of guitarist Jeff Boyle; bassist Maurice Beckett; and drummer Jason Johnston. They have been compared to such bands as Mogwai, Sonic Youth, and High Dependency Unit, though they largely eschew any vocals or samples in their songs. The band formed in July 1998, and began by opening for New Zealand bands Salmonella Dub and Pitch Black at the local pub O'Flaherty's.