Plus The Side Room Hosted by Nat Geo Music.
Esau Mwamwaya was born in Mzuzu in Malawi, East Africa. He grew up in the capital, Lilongwe, where he played drums in various bands such as Masaka Band. He was a good friend of the legendary Evison Matafale and they played together for several years before he was killed in Malawi police custody in 2003.
In 1999 Esau Mwamwaya moved to London, England has until recently run a second-hand furniture store in Clapton, East London.
Esau’s shop was on the same street as Radioclit’s old studio, and after the Radioclit boy’s bought a bike from Esau they invited him to one of their house warming parties They made friends and started working on music together. Two years later and the project has gotten it’s name The Very Best.
Theophilus London is a NYC based Electronic and Hip Hop rapper. He released a debut mixtape in 2008, JAM!, which was followed by ”This Charming Mixtape” in collaboration with Machine Drum, a confluence of “The Smiths” (This Charming Man) and “Elvis Costello”.This propelled Theophilus to an even broader audience with heavy electronic influences whilst maintaining the natural Hip Hop vibe.
Violens are a New York-via-Miami four-piece formed in the fall of 2007 featuring members Iddo Arad (synths/vocals), Ben Brantley (bass), Jorge Elbrecht (lead vocals/guitar) and Kris King (drums).
Violens songs conjure descriptions of nightmares, the passing of time, speculations on spiritual messages, and accounts of psychedelic hallucinations. Even their most frenetic guitar work and aggressive rhythms are draped in a gauze of reverberant, harmonized vocals and synths which create a sense of creepy, artificial comfort. A fitting characterization, lyrically and musically, for a group whose name is a melding of the words “violence” and “violins”.
Like Tortoise and Trail of Dead, Grandchildren —in a complicated game of musical chairs—switch instruments during their set. The resulting sound is strangely relaxing yet slightly unsettling, like the warm minute after peeing your pants on an early winter morning.
Brooklyn-based duo Ninjasonik, comprised of Reverend McFly and DJ Teenwolf, established itself in fall 2007 with “Tight Pants,” a song that generated an impressive amount of blogosphere buzz as an MP3 and YouTube video. Remixes of the song, along with other similarly styled songs such as “Internet Bitch,” followed, as did a series of downloadable DJ mixes. In terms of style, Ninjasonik falls somewhere between indie dance and irreverent rap, comparable to other fashionable indie electronic/rap acts like Spank Rock, Uffie, and the KnuX. The duo also established itself as a performance act, hosting dance parties at the Knitting Factory and South by Southwest, among other venues.
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