Swedish born sound and recording artist BJNilsen has been releasing work in various constellations since 1990, Primarily his work is focused on the sound of nature and its effect on humans, field recordings and the perception of time and space as experienced through sound, often electronically treated. He has worked for documentary film, television and as sound engineer. Nilsen has collaborated with Chris Watson, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Fennesz, Stilluppsteypa, DJ Musician, Curver, Pétur Eyvindsson, Hildur Guðnadóttir, Z’ev, Lina Baby Doll, Joachim Nordwall, Darri Lorenzen and as part of and Spire and Freq_out collectives.

"I remember frequently listening to a taped copy of closer in the bus on the way to school. This was around 1987 and growing up in the swedish countryside meant that getting decent music was as rare as getting booze..or even harder! Home taping truly saved my life. Now 20 years since I first heard Closer, It still travels with me, like a pair of shoes that never wears out."

www.bjnilsen.com

For 17 years Vicki Bennett has been making CDs, radio, and A/V multimedia under the name People Like Us. By animating and recontextualising found footage collages Vicki gives an equally witty and dark view of popular culture with a surrealistic edge. People Like Us broadcasts an ongoing experimental arts radio and podcast show on WFMU, called "DO or DIY", which, since it began in 2003, has had over three quarters of a million Realplayer hits.

Vicki has shown work at, amongst others, Tate Modern, The National Film Theatre, Purcell Room, The ICA, Sydney Opera House, Pompidou Centre, Sonar in Barcelona, The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the BBC and Channel 4. She has also performed radio sessions for the BBC's John Peel, Mixing It, and also CBC, KPFA and many more in the US. There have been features in The Observer, The Wire, NME, BBC website and Bizarre Magazine.

The art of People Like Us centres on the appropriating or sampling of works that exist with a previous context. This "raw" footage is sometimes recognisable with its own history and connotations, and sometimes obscure, abstract or concrete sounds. The golden rule is always to recontextualise the source's sound or meaning, the aim being to take this footage on a journey, where along the way it meets other material, all collaborating on a platform that could never happen in real life, creating a unique atmosphere.

Over the past six years Ergo Phizmiz has developed a reputation as one of the most inventive and imaginative composers working in the world today. Across albums, radio-pieces, soundtracks, and installations, his work has been disseminated across the world and media to widespread acclaim. His work is marked out by a playfulness and mischievousness, coupled with an inside-out and upside-down knowledge of his medium. Although often associated with the sampling and plunderphonics movements, his music takes in a much wider scope of ideas, and can veer between 3.5 minute Dadaistic pop songs, 3.5 hour sound-collages, deranged multimedia installations, radio comedy-adventures, improvised and ambient music, solo instrumental compositions, visual collages, and text works in all sorts of contortions. Despite the breadth of his practice, the sound and spirit of the productions is always unmistakeably that of Mr Phiz.

Vicki Bennett: "I always liked the Beatles and Wings and wanted to choose a song by Wings where there was room for manipulation.  But really I just like bagpipes."

Ergo Phizmiz: "Paul McCartney's my uncle and it was the only way to stop him telephoning me everyday."

www.peoplelikeus.org
www.ergophizmiz.com

Fennesz uses guitar and computer to create shimmering, swirling electronic sound of enormous range and complex musicality. "Imagine the electric guitar severed from cliché and all of its physical limitations, shaping a bold new musical language." - (City Newspaper, USA). His lush and luminant compositions are anything but sterile computer experiments. They resemble sensitive, telescopic recordings of rainforest insect life or natural atmospheric occurrences, an inherent naturalism permeating each piece. Christian Fennesz is published by Touch Music. He lives and works in Vienna and Paris. Fennesz has collaborated with a broad range of musicians including Ryuichi Sakamoto, Keith Rowe, Peter Rehberg, Jim O’Rourke, and David Sylvian.

www.fennesz.com

For the last 27 years the Newcastle based music group :zoviet*france: has tested the edges of known music both in recording and performance. Their approach to composition defies adequate description: its form is instrumental non- song based and derived from an eclectic mix of electronic and acoustic instruments.

Though wilfully obscure and underground their music has an international audience. They have released over 20 albums and have featured in the catalogues of Mute Records (UK), Staalplaat (the Netherlands), Soleilmoon Recordings (USA) and their own Charrm label. Over recent years they have worked extensively with contemporary dance companies and have been commissioned to compose soundtracks for new works by Karas (Japan), Zero Visibility (Norway), Nye Carte Blanche Danseteater (Norway), and for award winning productions by Random Dance Company (UK).

Recently, the group completed the soundtrack for The Making of Doubt: a new production by the Glasgow based choreographer, Colette Sadler, which was premiered at Tramway, Glasgow in May 2008, and the soundtrack for Deadly Cargo, a new documentary film about the Nukewatch campaign. Earlier this year, they formed part of the group of musicians who performed the rarely seen John Cage work Variations VII, which was the opening gala event for the 2008 AV Festival at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art. Their album 'Digilogue' has just been reissued by Soleilmoon Recordings who have also scheduled the release of the soundtrack to Designer Body, a commissioned work for the contemporary dance production by balletLORENT.

"Motörhead make our hearts singe."

Japan's leading electronic composer, Ikeda’s work focuses on the minutiae of ultrasonics, frequencies and the essential characteristics of sound itself. Using computer and digital technology to the utmost limit, Ikeda has been developing particular "microscopic" methods for sound engineering and composition since 1995, producing numerous sound recordings, installations and concerts. His albums +/- (1996), 0 degrees (1998), Matrix (2000), dataplex (2006) and most recently test pattern (2008) have all been hailed by critics as some of the most radical and innovative examples of contemporary electronic music. Gaining a rare reputation as one of the few international artists working convincingly across both visual and sonic media, his audiovisual concerts datamatics (2006 – present), C4I (2004 – 2007) and formula (2000 – 2006) and his acclaimed installations ( data.tron, data.film, data.spectra, spectra and db) continue to diffuse Ikeda’s aesthetic of ‘ultra minimalism’ to the art world, suggesting a unique orientation for our future multimedia environment and culture.

"Because AC/DC is the king of rock bands, loud as fuck."

www.ryojiikeda.com

Mika Vainio is one half of finish experimental music duo Pan Sonic, a group considered to be one the most interesting and experimental electronic bands, alongside artists such as Autechre and Oval, as pioneers of early electronic minimalism. Vainio is active as performer, solo or in short collaboration and is also involved in installations and performances at museums and galleries.

www.phinnweb.org/vainio

Born 1969 in Munich, Henke moved to Berlin in 1990 and  studied sound engineering and computer science. Hneke's work is about the exploration of time, of space, and of rhythm and sound. Where does structure begin? What is needed to turn some noises into music?  How much change over time is desirable for a given musical idea?  How does a sound redefine physical and mental spaces? He creates music that needs attention and focus, that slowly builds up intricate and fragile structures, morphing timbres constructed of millions of microscopic sonic particles, cathedrals of filtered noises, dynamic and dramatic processes which grab the listener and throw them into a new state, or music that is almost invisible, floating around like air, music that grows when performed live using multiple channels of audio. Henke also create music people can dance to, but this is another story.

"Lucifer was used in German television in the eighties as theme for a popular news show.  What amazed me most about this track was the sound, the air it breathed beneath the steady pulse, and the mixture of acoustic instruments and synthetic textures. My interpretation is like a faint echo of it, its decay, thirty years later."

www.monolake.de

Susan Stenger has pursued a dual interest in rock and art music from an early age. As a teenager in 1970s Buffalo, New York, she played in rock bands while at the same time studying experimental music with Petr Kotik and Julius Eastman. After intensive classical flute studies at the Prague Academy of Music and SUNY Stony Brook, she joined Kotik's New York City-based SEM Ensemble and devoted herself to performing music of twentieth century composers such as Kotik, Phill Niblock, Christian Wolff, and John Cage. She soon began making her own work for flute and electronics, as well as touring with Rhys Chatham's all-electric-guitar band. In 1986 she joined Robert Poss in founding seminal guitar group Band of Susans; her role expanded from electric bassist to singer and songwriter as BOS went on to release nine critically acclaimed CDs during the next decade.

After moving to London in 1996, Stenger formed experimental group The Brood and all-bass-band Big Bottom, made up of both visual artists and musicians. Her music for Big Bottom embodies her continued fascination with the gestures and vocabulary of rock and heavy metal. She has collaborated frequently with dancer/choreographer Michael Clark, toured as a bassist with Siouxie Sioux, John Cale and Nick Cave, and recently composed a 96-day sound installation as part of Soundtrack For An Exhibition, presented at MOCA Lyon in 2006. She is currently working on projects with writer Iain Sinclair and artist Cerith Wyn Evans.

"Why? Sex and a great bass line ("Runnin' down the length of my thigh")...I first arranged this for Big Bottom (five electric basses) and the Michael Clark Dance Company; however, part of why it worked was the surprise of the early drones slowly morphing into the familiar, glorious riff. Although I kept the introduction, this time I found myself focusing mainly on the octave change and the "My Sharona" melodic cell, while the instrumentation drifted into strings, heraldic trumpets, and sackbutts...Sharona in the Age of Chivalry? ("Ooh, thou pretty little one, thou pretty one...")."

www.susanstenger.co.uk

As the lead singer of the no wave revisionist punk act Erase Errata, Jenny Hoyston gained international noteriety for her energetic performances and innovative songwriting.  In between Erase Errata albums she released many collections of solo work under the name Paradise Island and also as Jenny Hoyston.  She lives in Portland, OR.

"I wanted to pick a track where I would have to trick my drum machine into playing outside of its usual 4/4 time signature.  I had been playing around with this Buffy Ste. Marie song that has always been one of my favorites, even though the lyrics are a bit corny - she and the baby pine away by the window, waiting for him to come home from work.  I started singing it through several different delay pedals and liked the etherial sound I was getting - like the waves and the wind rushing outside of the lady's window."

www.myspace.com/jennyhoystonparadiseisland

“In Nicolai’s work neither music nor visual art are by-products of one another – the one calls the other into being” – Rob Young, Modern Painters, 2006

Berlin based visual artist/electronic musician and producer Carsten Nicolai performs and records using the pseudonym alva noto. Nicolai transforms audio sources ranging from sounds generated within the computer to Ryuichi Sakamoto’s acoustic piano in insen and, more recently, a range of collected recordings of ambient sounds for xerrox.

Described as ‘metal machine music of a most beautiful kind’, Nicolai’s powerfully synaesthetic live performances combine minimal electronic sounds and his now legendary real-time visualisation of sound as video or installation. Nicolai’s works captivate consistently through their elegance, simplicity and cool technicism.

Carsten Nicolai has performed and exhibited in many of the world’s most prestigious spaces including Tate Modern London, Solomon R. Guggenheim Musuem NYC, San Francisco MOMA, NTT Tokyo, Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin and Venice Biennale. His exploration of the physicality of sound continues in his collaborations with Ryoji Ikeda, Mika Vainio, his celebrated recordings vrioon and insen with Ryuichi Sakamoto and in the pioneering raster-noton record label he cofounded.

Nicolai won Ars Electronica Golden Nica prizes for Digital Music in 2000 and for Interactive Art in 2001.

"As I see music as a feedback system, where progressive results are often based on reactions on former developments, i chose Africa Bambaataa, because in this track he incorporated Kraftwerk and thereby linked white music culture with the black music underground. At that time this was an incredible step that marks how innovative those feedbacks can be. I wanted to react on that track in order to keep up the exchange and carry on the feedback to just another cycle."

www.alvanoto.com

US based experimental electronic duo Matmos is M.C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel, working in collaboration with many others to produce numerous acclaimed recordings and performances. In 1998, Matmos remixed the Björk single Alarm Call. Subsequently, Matmos worked with Björk on her albums Vespertine (2001) and Medúlla (2004), as well as her Vespertine and Greatest Hits tours.

Their own work over the past decade has featured the sampling of endless unexpected and often bizarre objects, themes, people and processes to create compelling, playful and surprisingly accessible and melodic experimental techno and electronica. Musical compositions have included the sounds of (amongst many others) amplified crayfish nerve tissue, the pages of bibles turning, a bowed five string banjo, slowed down whistles and kisses, water hitting copper plates, the runout groove of a vinyl record, a $5.00 electric guitar, liposuction surgery, field recordings of conversations in hot tubs and frequency response tests for defective hearing aids.

Signed to Matador records, Recent album releases include A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure (2001), the Civil War (2003), The Rose has Teeth in the Mouth of the Beast (2006), and Supreme Ballon (2008).

www.brainwashed.com/matmos

Born in Hagen, Germany. Barbara Morgenstern describes herself as self-taught.

From 1992 till 1994  Morgenstern  was making  music as well as singing in an a cappella group. She also played keyboards in a band. From 1996 onward she began to concentrate on her own music.

Early 1997  saw the release of the cassette "Enter The Party" on  Hausfrau Im Schacht, a mail order label set up by former bandmate Florian Dietz (a.k.a. Jo Tabu). Then came the release of the EP Plastikreport, produced in tandem with Michael Mühlhaus, later to join Blumfeld.  In 1998, she toured Germany, Austria and Switzerland and released  her first  album Vermona ET 6-1 on the Monika Enterprise label. 1999 saw the release of a remix EP, Fan No.1.

For her  2000 album Fjorden, Morgenstern worked with Stefan Betke (Pole) and Robert Lippok of To Rococo Rot. The 2001 release of the EP Eine Verabredung was accompanied by gigs in Glasgow and London. Another EP followed in 2002, Seasons, a collaboration with Robert Lippok, which was released as a limited run of 500 copies through Domino Records. 2003 saw the release of Nichts Muss, on which Stefan Betke and Thomas Fehlmann assisted with the recording.  The album Tesri working in collaboration with Robert Lippok was released in 2005.

In 2004, at the invitation of the Goethe-Institut, Morgenstern undertook a 34-date world tour together with Maximilian Hecker. Bill Wells' 2004 mini-album Pick Up Sticks featured contributions from Morgenstern on two tracks. She also joined Paul Wirkus and To Rococo Rot's Stefan Schneider in September Collective, a project which had its origins in encores that they joined together to play at their own individual concerts while on tour in Poland.  In 2006 Morgenstern's released her  latest  solo album, The Grass Is Always Greener.

www.barbaramorgenstern.de

Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti's first band, the seminal Throbbing Gristle successfully fused electronic and acoustic instrumentation in such a unique way that an entirely new musical genre was born out of it: Industrial Music. Then out of the ashes of Throbbing Gristle's demise in 1981 they formed their successful electronica duo Chris & Cosey. In1983 Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti began recording, videoing and releasing experimental material as CTI on their offshoot Conspiracy International record label. During the 1980s' and 1990s', as Chris & Cosey, they were constantly recording (more than 30 albums), performing internationally and collaborating with such musical luminaries as: Monte Cazazza, Coil, Current 93, John Duncan, Erasure, The Eurythmics, Boyd Rice, Robert Wyatt and many more. In 2001 Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti merged their CTI project with Chris & Cosey to form their current musical incarnation: Carter Tutti. In 2003 they also begin collaborating once again with TG cohorts in a 'regrouped' Throbbing Gristle. This resulted in a new TG album and an ongoing series of live performances and events. As Carter Tutti their creative output has now diversified into exhibitions, installations and film making and their most recent album 'Feral Vapours of the Silver Ether has been met with universal critical acclaim.

"Lucifer Sam is from the Pink Floyd album 'The Piper at The gates of Dawn' which was released in 1967 and unusually for a song of that period the lyrics aren't about love or politics, they're about a cat. When we first met in the 1970s' we  discovered that we both had an affection for that album, and the song Lucifer Sam in particular. Besides the personal reasons the track, Syd's unique vocal style, the lyrics and instrumentation just made it such great track for us to cover."

www.cartertutti.com

Robert Lippok was born 1966 in Berlin. He studied theater. Since his youth, he was active in different formations as a musician and visual artist. In 1983 he co-founded «Ornament und Verbrechen,» a group that existed up until  the mid 1990s. The group «to rococo rot» was founded in the 90's together with Ronald Lippok,  Lippok's brother, and Stefan Schneider from Düsseldorf. Since 1996 the group has released  on various labels, among them,  Kitty-Yo («Untitled,» 1995), City Slang («Music is a Hungry Ghost,» 2001, «The Amateur View,» 1999, «veicolo,» 1997) and Staubgold («Kölner Brett,» 2000). In addition, «to rococo rot» created sound recordings for other artists, such as Olaf Nicolai («30 Colors,» Music for an Exhibition by Olaf Nicolai, Bonn Kunstverein, 2000), Doug Aitken («Music for NEW OCEAN,» A Video Installation by Doug Aitken, Serpentine Gallery, London, 2001) and Takehito Koganezawa («JAPAN MEDIUM LIGHT,» Sounds for «On the Way to the Peak of the Normal» by Takehito Koganezawa, Montevideo, Amsterdam, 2000). Also credited to «to rococo rot» are collaborations on radio plays produced by the network Bayerischen Rundfunk, and  the composition of a new version of Walter Ruttmann’s «Weekend». Lippok stages solo, music performances («Falling into Komeït,» Monika Enterprises, 2004). As a visual artist, his works consistently confront architectural spaces: in this context, he participated in the exhibition «Space to Face» (Westfalen Kunstverein, Münster, 2004), in which audio-concepts developed by 4 different artists for the exhibition space serve as interim projects. Lippok’s solo exhibitions at the Wohnmaschine Gallery took place in 2003 («Field Recordings») and 2001 («Steady»). as a stage designer he worked on several opera project such as "Orfeo" by Georg Friedrich Haendel, Komische Oper Berlin, 2006 and "Tosca" by Giacomo Puccini, Volksbühne Berlin, 2008.

Manchester based vocalist Caroline Thorp met Robert Lippok in 2006 whilst performing on the same bill at The Sage Gateshead. Briefly discussing the idea of working together on a future project they kept in touch. Caroline has lent her vocals to previous projects such as the 2005 release  ’Chronophobia’ with Cathode and the 2006 Self titled debut album as a member of The Matinee Orchestra (with Andrew Hodson).

Caroline is currently recording and playing live with the ‘symphonic pop’ four-piece The 1,2,3,4s.

Robert Lippok: "Since Club Tropicana by Wham! hit straight through my armor of good taste, coolness and aesthetic concepts, in 1983 i was a young punk rocker living in East Berlin, listening to music like the Virgin Prunes, Flying Lizards or Joy Dvision, I liked the music of George Michael very much. Even so I had long discussions about it with my friends during the years. When I was asked to participate on this project I knew this would be the good chance to show my love for his work."

www.myspace.com/robertlippok
www.myspace.com/cartho

snd formed in 1998 and were quickly placed at the forefront of new digital minimalism. With a series of influential releases on their own label and on the now defunct Mille Plateaux (Frankfurt), snd pioneered a sound that combined the linear minimalism of Ikeda and Oval with the rhythmic geometry of techno artists such as Thomas Brinkmann or Derrick May.

snd promote an approach to the organization of sound, space and form that owes more to origami than any time based medium. They explore the transformation of musical data: music folds and unfolds, closes and opens, atomizes and regroups; a piece switches to a parallel version of itself, or gradually shifts into its opposite.

Recently completing their second tour of Europe with Autechre, snd have also performed internationally at major festivals, performance venues, and museums including: SONAR Festival of Advanced Music and Multimedia (Barcelona), Mutek (Montreal), ZKM (Karlsruhe), Anchorage (New York), The Barbican (London), Schirn (Frankfurt), Liquid Room (Tokyo), All Tomorrows Parties (UK), New Forms (Den Haag), Volksbuhne (Berlin), Videotage (Hong Kong), and Zouk (Singapore).

“…snd's tracks are polished, transparent solids, meant to be seen through in four dimensions, grasped in space and glimpsed in time simultaneously” The Wire, UK

snd's most recent recording - a limited edition triple 12" vinyl pack - was released in May on their own label.

Three albums recorded for Mille Plateaux and out of print for a number of years are soon to be made available for digital download.

"The cover version was originally a means of repackaging and remarketing so-called underground black musics to a more mainstream white audience. In our case we aimed to do the opposite."

www.makesnd.com

Richard Chartier (b.1971), sound/installation artist has created critically acclaimed recordings for labels such as 12k/LINE (USA), Raster-Noton (Germany), Die Stadt (Germany), Spekk (Japan), NonVisualObjects (Austria), Mutek_rec (Canada), DSP (Italy), ERS (Netherlands), and Trente Oiseaux (Germany), including collaborations with noted artists Taylor Deupree, William Basinski, COH, and Asmus Tietchens. Chartier has appeared on numerous international compilations. His digital minimalist work explores the inter-relationships between the spatial nature of sound, silence, focus, and the act of listening. Chartier's work has been presented internationally. at noted digital art/music festivals and  exhibits. In 2000 he formed the recording label LINE and has since curated its continuing documentation of compositional and installation work by international sound artists and composers exploring the aesthetics of contemporary and digital minimalism. The premiere release on LINE, Chartier's Series was awarded Honorable Mention in the category of Digital Music at  Ars Electronica in 2001. In 2006 he made Specification.Fifteen, commissioned by the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Specification.Fifteen is  a collaborative sound performance work in conjunction with the Hiroshi Sugimoto exhibit. and was awarded an Honorable Mention for outstanding contemporary artistic positions in digital media art by the Jury of Transmediale.07 

Ivan Pavlov is a Russian-born resident of Sweden who has been releasing his work under the name COH for the past 10 years on various record labels, such as raster-noton, Mego, Eskaton, Staalplaat, etc.  Ivan has collaborated with Coil, Little Annie Anxiety, Cyclobe and Richard Chartier. In his most recent work , titled SOISONG he works with Peter Christopherson [ex-Coil, Throbbing Gristle]. His latest COH album entitled COH PLAYS COSEY is recorded in collaboration with Cosey Fanni Tutti [Throbbing Gristle, Chris & Cosey].

NICE BOX is a joint effort by Ivan Pavlov and Richard Chartier. The two have previously collaborated as a performance duo in the framework of CHESSMACHINE and have since long discovered a common interest for Slava Tuskerman's LIQUID SKY as well as the early SOFT CELL's output. With a hope to produce more covers of the obscure songs from the 80-ies, BLEAK was chosen as a test-ground for uniting the vocals of both within the aesthetics of digital sonic minimalism they have been exploring from different ends in their solo careers.

www.3particles.com
www.post-pop.org

Nick Currie, more popularly known under the artist name Momus (after the Greek god of mockery), is a songwriter and blogger who writes regular columns for art magazine Frieze and the New York Times' T magazine.

For more than twenty years Currie has been releasing, to great critical success, playful and transgressive albums on labels in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Japan. In his lyrics and his other writing he makes seemingly random use of decontextualized pieces of  philosophy and has built up a personal world he says is "dominated by values like diversity, orientalism, and a respect for otherness." Currie also works as a producer. He is fascinated by identity, Japan, the avant-garde, time travel and sex. Momus is infamous  for his  public performances.

In the last two decades, Momus has lived in London, Paris, Tokyo and New York. He has made Berlin his home since since 2003.

Germlin: barely out of his teens Joe is a leading figure in the emerging Glasgow breakcore scene, promoting gigs & running his own DIY label, Megapixxels. An entertaining live performer, you are more likley to see Joe jumping up and down on a table screaming into a mic rather than behind his laptop. Germlin has been already receiving considerable radio airplay, on Radio One's Breezeblock and One Extra (recently recording a cover of the Beatles' Helter Skelter for One Extra's John Lennon tribute programme) as well as recording sessions on Resonance FM

Momus: "Ashes to Ashes isn't so much a pop song as a ping pong match between Coco the Clown and Major Tom. Batted by the paddles of inner and outer space, drugs and travel, the 60s and the 80s, pop and paranoia, verse and chorus, call and response, mumble and screech, episode and sequel, capsule and ground, the celluloid ball bops back and forth with a series of satistfying "thwack" and "plock" and "boiiiiiing" noises."

www.imomus.com
www.myspace.com/germlin

Jason Forrest is a Berlin-based electronic musician working in a variety of forms. He has released records in the US, UK, Europe, and Japan. Credited as being a forerunner in the emergence of the Breakcore genre, Forrest’s sample-based music has been a pioneering force within the experimental music community. Currently he has 3 active musical projects. As Jason Forrest he continues his sample-pop music and is in the process of completing his 5th full-length album entitled Friday Night's Alright. With The Jason Forrest Band he joins Ethan Shaffner and Elisabeth King to form a post-funk/hiphop-prog rock power trio. Having toured extensively, they are currently working on new material for their debut recording. Forrest also recently brought back the time-tested DJ Donna Summer moniker and in February 2008, he released Panther Tracks, his first record in 2 years and first as Donna Summer in 5 years.

www.myspace.com/jason_forrest

JG Thirlwell is a composer/producer/performer based in Brooklyn. He was born in Melbourne, Australia,where he studied art at Melbourne State College for two years before moving to London in 1978. After working with experimental group Nurse With Wound, JG started making his own records in 1980, initially releasing them with his own label,Self Immolation. He was inspired by the post-punk explosion of creativity in the UK which engendered the accessibility of DIY, and the writings of John Cage and systems music,among other things. He then relocated to NYC in 1983 where he still lives in Brooklyn, between travels.

JG's catalog is extensive,under many pseudonyms including Foetus, Steroid Maximus, Manorexia, Baby Zizanie, Wiseblood and others.If there is a common thread to his varied musical styles it is a dramatic intensity and an evocative,  cinematic quality. He considers the studio his main instrument. His oeuvre stretches the gamut from cathartic noise-rock to abstract electronics, orchestrations, big band and sound sculpture, serial music and imaginary soundtracks, sometimes all in the same piece.

In recent years,with works for Kronos Quartet and Bang On A Can, and in his occasional eighteen piece ensemble he has been  increasingly interested electronically and sample generated music being rescored for traditional instrumentation played both conventionally and not. JG is also a member of the "freq_out" collective, who create on-site sound and light installations with Carl Michael Von Hausswolf . Additionally, he has made some site specific laptop performances and collaborations, and he scores "The Venture Brothers" show on Adult Swim/Cartoon Network. 

"I chose Warm Leatherette by The Normal as a classic and significant piece of minimalism. It blew me away when it came out and it endures today.  It was also one of the first releases on the seminal Mute Records. Its been covered many times... I thought it was interesting to change its stark minimalismn to bombastic cinemania."

www.foetus.org

Jóhann Jóhannsson is an Icelandic composer.  His stately, slow-building and hauntingly melodic music, which frequently combines electronics with classical orchestrations,  has been quietly bewitching listeners for the last few years. Jóhann Jóhannsson's first two solo records - Englabörn (2002), written for string quartet, percussion and electronics, and Virðulegu Forsetar (2004), written for brass ensemble, drones and percussion – were released by the singular British independent Touch label. Both releases met substantial critical acclaim, whilst his latest release IBM 1401 - A User's Manual (2006), is his most ambitiously orchestrated composition to date involving a 60 piece string orchestra and incorporating electronics and vintage reel-to-reel recordings of an IBM 1401 mainframe computer. Johann's new album, Fordlandia, is out in November 2008 on 4AD.

Johann's many projects include the all-analog Apparat Organ Quartet and Kitchen Motors, the art organization/think tank/record label which specializes in instigating collaborations and art projects across diverse artforms. Johann also composes frequently for the screen and stage.

"When I was 12 years old, I thought OMD's Architecture and Morality was one of mankind's greatest achievements. Then they went all John Hughes on me a few years later, and by then I'd also discovered that their earlier sound, which I had believed to be bold and original, was in fact simply watered down Krautrock. The illusion was shattered, innocence was lost and I felt betrayed. This, then, is my revenge."

www.johannjohannsson.com