Zola Jesus is the endeavor of a solitary girl named Nika Roza Danilova to simultaneously combat and invoke the approaching apocalypse using the only weapon/offering she has: her voice. After a decade of opera study and a musical awakening involving such varied inspiration as Billboard bubblegum, classical arias, no wave, avant industrial, she was able to thread her influences into a sound uniquely her own.
The Necks are an experimental jazz trio from Sydney, Australia, comprising Chris Abrahams on piano and Hammond organ, Tony Buck on drums and Lloyd Swanton on bass guitar and double bass. The band plays improvisational pieces of up to an hour in length that explore repeating musical figures. As well as jazz, they are strongly influenced by Krautrock.
Typically, a live performance will begin very quietly with one of the musicians playing something very simple. One by one, the other two will join with their own melodies, all three independent yet intertwined. A piece of music usually lasts about 45 minutes and over this time grows in volume and pace and complexity before petering out. They are quite simply an extraordinary live experience.
The Necks are also well known in Europe. Their soundtrack for The Boys was nominated for ARIA Best Soundtrack Album, AFI Best Musical Score and Australian Guild of Screen Composers Award. They have also recorded soundtracks for What's The Deal? (1997) and In the Mind of the Architect (three one-hour ABC-TV documentaries, 2000). Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.
Ghostwood are an alternative rock band formed in Sydney, Australia in 2006. Ghostwood members are Gabriel Navidzadeh (lead vocals), Paddy Harrowsmith (guitar), Tom Crandles (bass), and James West (drums). Still in high school, the band were signed to Modular in late 2006 for a one EP deal and are heavily influenced by bands like Oasis, The Stone Roses, Joy Division and My Bloody Valentine. The band used to be called The Ghosts, but changed their name to Ghostwood "because 7 million other bands already have the name 'Ghosts'".
Francis Plagne is a Melbourne-based musician and songwriter whose work engages with both popular and experimental music.
Spoonbill aka Jim Moynihan grew up in the bush north of Melbourne, Australia, discovering the excitement of playing the drums at the age of 12. He began playing gigs in pubs before legally being allowed to enter. As the years rolled on he moved into the realm of percussion and then shifted his concentration to electronic production, investing in his first sampler in 1998. He has won a range of audio production awards including the first place and peoples choice award, Electrovision, Melbourne Fringe Festival 2004 & 3rd place 2003.
Sounding like a pack of untamed gypsies singin', pickin', screamin' and skankin' with flailing limbs to a grinding Balkan barbershop-doof-quartet at a drunken barnyard rasta hoedown, Double Entendre's high-energy trademark style of "GypRock" shakes stirs and blends genres of world music, gypsy jazz and roots into their own intoxicatingly dancy original concoction. With unshakable vibe and a strong, healthy pulse, these vagabonds from WA's alternative capital of Fremantle jam-pack a double-bass, drums...
There are at least four bands with this name, one is an ethereal post-dreampop band based in Australia, the second is a Canadian band that plays filk and folk music, the third a 70s funk outfit, and the fourth a jazz / pop unit from Latvia: 1) Dandelion Wine are an ethereal post-dreampop band that while based in Melbourne Australia, inhabit a very different world. A world where the centuries bleed into one another to create a seamless whole.
Keith Fullerton Whitman is a composer/performer obsessed with electronic music; from its mid-century origins in Europe through its contemporary worldwide incarnation as "digital music." Currently he is working towards implementing a complete system for live performance of improvised electronic music that incorporates elements from nearly every era: a reel-to-reel tape machine, a selection of small "jerry-rigged" / "circuit-bent" battery-powered sound-producing boxes...
Aphex Twin, born Richard David James, August 18, 1971, in Limerick, Ireland to Welsh parents Lorna and Derek James, is an electronic music artist. He grew up in Cornwall, United Kingdom and started producing music around the age of 12. Richard has been hailed as "the most inventive and influential figure in contemporary electronic music", with his works ranging from ambient pieces to acid techno.