Kendra Morris official site | Kendra Morris on Facebook | Kendra Morris on Instagram | Kendra Morris on Twitter

Kendra Morris recalls singers who straddled soul and rock during the early ’70s, such as Ruth Copeland and Chaka Khan, while her contemporaries include the likes of Mayer Hawthorne, Alice Russell, and Leela James. Morris’s musical taste was developed through her parents’ record collection, a library heavy on late-60s and early-70s soul and funk. During her childhood Morris’s main companion was her karaoke machine, which she also used for the sake of recording. While enrolled in college in Tampa, FL, she became so involved in performing with bands that she decided to leave behind her studies and take on music full time. She took up the guitar, as well as songwriting, and eventually involved herself with a band, Pinktricity, which moved to New York in 2003 and split shortly thereafter. Morris took to recording songs on her own, and self-released a pair of EPs: This Won’t Hurt a Bit (2007) and Milk and Cookies Never Lie (2008). Her first proper recording, a self-titled EP (2010), was recorded with producer and multi-instrumentalist Jeremy Page (of That Handsome Devil). After touring with legendary guitarist Dennis Coffey and releasing a series of singles which included “Concrete Waves,” whose b-side was remixed by DJ Premier, Morris released the album Banshee (2012) on Wax Poetics. In 2013, Morris returned with the covers album Mockingbird.

Both Banshee and Mockingbird received critical acclaim and a cult following, with several film + tv placements. The title track “Banshee” was used prominently in the Showtime hit series Ray Donovan, while her cover of Pink Floyd’s “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” found itself in the trailer for major motion picture Dead Man Down.

In between extensive international touring and promotion for Banshee throughout 2013 and 2014, Morris worked on a small side project band with friends Scarlett Johansson, Julia Haltigan and Holly Miranda, releasing one single called “Candy.”  After taking some time to write and record her follow up EP titled Babble, Kendra Morris will return with its release scheduled for late spring of 2016.

Chico Mann, a time-travelling multi-instrumentalist-producer who with drum machines, synthesizers, and guitars has singlehandedly filled the 30+ year gap between afrobeat, afrocuban, freestyle and electronic music while throwing a wrench into the cogs of musical history.
 
Chico Mann grew up in a musical family in New York and New Jersey. His father was the owner of a Latin record label based in Hell’s Kitchen in New York City and a young Chico observed the ins & outs of the biz while practicing his guitar and piano. It was then that he began to propagate his deep musical roots with such influences as Afrika Bambaata, Lisa Lisa, Willie Colon, Celia Cruz and Fela Kuti. Ignoring his father’s advice to stay out of the business, he found his voice at age 12 and began his journey into sound.
 
It was in the winter of ’04 that Chico began putting together a series of tracks during his offtime from touring with Antibalas. What started as a lo-fi beat making excursion quickly became “Manifest Tone Volume 1”, a musical lesson that spoke volumes on the music of New York City, Miami, Cuba, Africa and the previously unknown love affair in sound that ‘could have been’ had Afrobeat, Electro, and Freestyle cross-pollinated. Hailed as an instant classic, it proved as the first step in a groundbreaking career that is destined to re-write the history books.
 
Chico Mann has created a musical time machine that simultaneously fuses the sounds of 1970s Afrobeat, 1980s Freestyle and Afro Cuban in a hybrid beast of culture and tone. Its the big ‘what if’ Freestyle, Afrobeat & Afro Cuban converged and hit the mainstream for an army of Chicos to pick up where Stevie B, TKA, George Lamond, Sa-Fire, Information Society, Noel, and Cult Jam, and Exposé left off. Chico’s choruses of multi-layered vocals with funky guitar lines helps to cool off the heat created between the bass and rhythm… creating a unique conversation of color and value that pays homage to the past but raises the bar for the future.

DJ Daniel Biltmore on Twitter