Esau Mwamwaya was born in Mzuzu, Malawi in southeast 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 Matafale 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, UK.

Esau's shop was on the same street as Radioclit's old studio, and after the Radioclit boys 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 its name: The Very Best.

Sites: Discogs.

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Theophilus London is a Brooklyn, USA based hip hop artist with heavy electro influences.

London released his debut mixtape JAM! in 2008. In 2009 he collaborated with Machine Drum for his second mixtape This Charming Mixtape which brought London to a wider audience. In 2010 London released the mixtape I Want You which features covers of classic songs.

London's track Flying Overseas (featuring Devonté Hynes and Solange Knowles) enjoyed popularity with music bloggers in November 2010.

London found himself causing a stir with his performances at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. The title of his debut album, Timez Are Weird These Days is a reference to the tidal wave of fame London found himself riding. (I Stand Alone Songfacts).

Most of London's music can be downloaded from his blog: http://theophiluslondon.wordpress.com/

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Violens summon influences as diverse as 60s psychpop,thrash metal, and Miami freestyle. Their music channels the sophistication of Roxy Music and the no-wave roar of Sonic Youth, all within the laughing nightmare spaces of Stanley Kubrick or Nobuhiko Obayashi. The New York-based 3-piece release their highly anticipated debut album Amoral November 9th via Brooklyn label Friendly Fire Recordings and their own imprint Static Recital.

Producer/multi-instrumentalist Jorge Elbrecht, also a member of the art company Lansing-Dreiden, formed Violens in late 2007 as an additional outlet for his songwriting. Iddo Arad (synth) and Myles Matheny (guitar) complete the vocal harmonies, and currently join Elbrecht at the core of the group's sound. Since releasing a self-titled EP in 2008, Violens have toured the US and Europe, performing with the likes of Grizzly Bear, Bat for Lashes and Deerhunter. Now, after furthering their studio prowess with remixes (MGMT, The Very Best), runway scores (Patrik Ervell, Yigal Azrouel), and a seasonal mixtape series showcasing their influences and collaborators, Violens have completed their extraordinary debut album.

"There are plenty of records we love that present a band in a more documentary way. We can definitely imagine a future Violens record sounding like that. But making Amoral was really about the songs being animated environments for people to cruise through- like a shark pool, or touch tank. Group vocal harmonies getting dragged out to sea by reverb or eaten by flames of distortion, choreographed call & response percussion, delayed shadows under certain instruments, animal noises, etc..." -V

Blending the ambient synths of Cocteau Twins and Sisters of Mercy with blistering guitar textures evoking Crass and Minor Threat, Amoral presents psychedelic sonic collages layered with 60's vocal harmonies. The album shifts from the impossibly jaunty optimism of opener The Dawn of Your Happiness Is Rising to the baroque doom of the nightmare described in the title track:

...And as I've never had a strong stomach for bloodshed and gore, it was all quite terrifying... Perhaps the most horrific dream I can remember. At the same time, there was a euphoria to it all. I recall the most vivid colors and patterns, lights and strange forms...

Amoral pulses through dream-pop crescendos (Trance-like Turn), and epic washes of looping melody (Generational Loss). While goth-tropical recent single Acid Reign fits synthetic piano leads and frenzied guitars over dance bass lines and apparitional harmonies, Violent Sensation Descends veers from a vertiginous wash of synths into a chorus that could only have been written after overdosing on Zombies records.

Self-recorded, self-produced, and self-mixed, Amoral is a collision of comfort and violence, cushion and crunch, attack and embrace. This is unforgettable music, full of possibility and unfathomable depth.

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The drums smack you in the face first, like a hailstorm with no sign of letting up. Then, as waves of harmonies emerge unexpectedly, a joyous sensation sets in, as if someone just snapped you out of a fever dream. The beat-driven, orchestral-pop epics unfold like an audio scrapbook of memories from the life of Grandchildren songwriter Aleksander Martray.

"I was restless from a really young age," explains Martray, the son of a high-ranking military officer, born on an Army base in Germany and raised on both sides of the Atlantic. "Growing up in flux between different places I gravitated towards more intangible things like stories, melodies, movies, and dreams, and so early on music became a way of making a home for myself."

Grandchildren's debut album, Everlasting, feels like a culmination of all that restlessness. A sonic collage of the sentimental and the confrontational, the album is a safe haven for multiple realities- fusing tribal beats, frayed electronics, fireside folk melodies, richly-woven orchestral-pop flourishes and even field recordings from Martray's journeys across Central America, the Caribbean and Africa.

"The project began during my nomadic mid-20s. I was constantly split between Baltimore, Philadelphia, DC, and travels abroad. I think the music is a reflection of a young person processing their own coming of age through constant self-inflicted culture shock. The textures of the final album span time and space," he says. "And yet, it comes across as one seamless reality. You can feel the influences but you can't put your finger on them."

During this time Martray's closest thing to home was a tiny third-floor bedroom in a dilapidated Victorian house in West Philadelphia known as Danger Danger. At the height of its illegal phase, this notorious DIY 'venue' hosted everything from IDM-infused metal (Genghis Tron) to frantic free-jazz (Marshall Allen of the Sun Ra Arkestra). These eclectic sounds billowed upstairs towards Martray's makeshift bedroom recording studio, taking what began as a solo experimentation in dizzying new directions.

"The songs evolved through the recording process," explains Martray, "they were so layered that when I went to play them live, so much had to be sampled. That's when I realized this wasn't a solo project. It's music for a small orchestra."

With that in mind, Martray brought his fellow housemates-a motley crew of instrument-swapping misfits-into the fold one by one. This included drummer Roman Salcic, a Croatian transplant reared on American rock music; jack of all trades Tristan Palazzolo; math-thrash guitarist Adam Katz; bassist/percussionist Russell Brodie; and classical-pianist-turned-synth-slinger John Vogel. Over the course of one daunting year, the group developed Grandchildren's 10-song album into a live set that's as seamless and widescreen as the recordings.

"It looks spontaneous to people," explains Katz, "but everything's carefully choreographed on our end."

A lot of that stems from a two-month North American tour in 2009, one that was plagued by chicken pox, blizzards, border patrols, and van break-ins. This not only brought them closer together; it gave Grandchildren the chance to perfect the ebb and flow of their live set.

"And now that everything's down to a science," says Martray, "the live performance is an art in and of itself. As full and layered as the sound has become, it rests on the backbone of those early bedroom recordings. Kind of like with a car, where you keep replacing parts until the whole thing is new. By the end you can't even remember what came from where. The process hides within the sound."

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Ninjasonik is a Brooklyn-based musical collaboration created by Reverend McFly, Telli "Bathroomsexxx" Gramz and DJ Teenwolf. In 2007, they began to record original songs and put out a mixtape titled "Ninjasonik: The Mix #1" which featured demos of their recordings mixed together with a handful of eclectic artists. In August of 2007, they performed their first show and since then have performed along side a long list of amazing artists, such as Japanther, The Death Set, Spank Rock, Dan Deacon, The Cool Kids, Team Robespierre, Matt & Kim, Ponytail, Fiasco, and many more. In summer 2008 they released their first EP on Chief Records and also performed at a handful of Rock The Bells dates opening for acts like Afrika Bambataa, DJ Blaqstarr, Murs, and B.O.B.

Musically speaking, Ninjasonik walks a fine line between rap/dance music and all out punk rock. It is not unusual to find them performing alongside rock/punk bands and usually their shows turn into a sweaty mess of people moshing to their bizarre mix of sound. They regularly cover acts like Bad Brains and Minor Threat and have also remixed acts like The Death Set and Team Robespierre.

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