Bucks Fizz were a British pop group that achieved success in the 1980s, most notably for winning the 1981 Eurovision Song Contest with the song "Making Your Mind Up". The group was formed in January 1981 specifically for the contest and comprised four vocalists: Bobby G, Cheryl Baker, Mike Nolan and Jay Aston. They received attention for the dance routine which accompanied the song, in which the male members of the group ripped the female members' outer skirts off to reveal much shorter mini-skirts beneath. The group went on to have a successful career around the world, but the UK remained their biggest market, where they had three No.1 singles with "Making Your Mind Up" (1981), "The Land of Make Believe" (1981) and "My Camera Never Lies" (1982) and became one of the top-selling groups of the 1980s. They also had UK Top 10 hits with "Now Those Days Are Gone" (1982), "If You Can't Stand the Heat" (1982), "When We Were Young" (1983) and "New Beginning " (1986). Bucks Fizz have sold over 50 million records worldwide.
"It's in His Kiss" is a song written and composed by Rudy Clark. It was first released as a single in 1963 by Merry Clayton that did not chart. The song was made a hit a year later when recorded by Betty Everett, who hit No. 1 on the Cashbox magazine R&B charts with it in 1964. Recorded by dozens of artists and groups around the world in the decades since, the song became an international hit once again when remade by Cher in 1990.
"Doop" is a song by Dutch Eurodance group Doop. It was released on 28 February 1994 as the first single from the debut album Circus Doop (1994). The song achieved success in several countries, including Ireland and the US, where it hit number two on the Billboard Hot Dance Club Play chart. In addition, the song spent three weeks at the top of the charts in the United Kingdom. It consists of a Charleston-based big band number set against a house backing track. Two main versions were issued under the names of two different big bands, with the "Urge 2 Merge radio mix" combining sections of both. In 2005, the song was covered by Looney Tunez vs. Doop.
Daniel Lopatin, best known as Oneohtrix Point Never or OPN, is an American experimental electronic music producer, composer, singer and songwriter. His music has experimented with tropes from various music genres and eras, sample-based song structures, and elaborate MIDI production.
Hippos in Tanks was a record label founded in 2010 by Barron Machat and Travis Woolsey. The label specialized in electronic music. It was named the best label of 2011 by FACT. Following the death of Machat in 2015, The Fader praised the label for "laying the groundwork to an alternative template for the avant-garde." The label is no longer active.
James Ferraro is an American experimental musician, producer, composer and contemporary artist. He has been credited as a pioneer of the 21st century genres hypnagogic pop and vaporwave, with his work exploring themes related to hyperreality and consumer culture. His music has drawn on diverse styles such as 1980s electronic music, easy listening, drone, lo-fi, sound collage, and R&B.
Exo is the first studio album of Chicago-based electronic duo Gatekeeper, consisting of musicians Aaron David Ross and Matthew Arkell. It was released on July 17, 2012, on the label Hippos in Tanks. The EBM, IDM and acid techno album departs from the synth-heavy style of Gatekeeper's past releases, in that most of the melodies are performed by a sampler with a sound palette of high-definition Hollywood film sound effects. Gatekeeper was inspired to follow this HD aesthetic from an experience at World Heritage Sites which made them feel "really spiritual and charged up" to create the first track on the album, "IMAX." Exo was promoted with a visual exploration video game with environments designed by Internet artist Tabor Robak using the game engine Unity. Reviews for Exo from music journalists were favorable in general, holding an aggregate 70 out of 100 on Metacritic as of February 2017.
Laurel Anne Chartow, known professionally as Laurel Halo, is an American electronic musician currently based in Berlin, Germany. She released her debut album Quarantine on Hyperdub in 2012 to critical acclaim; it was named album of the year by The Wire. She followed with studio albums Chance of Rain (2013) and Dust (2017), as well as various EPs and the mini-album Raw Silk Uncut Wood (2018).
Far Side Virtual is a studio album by American electronic musician James Ferraro, released on October 25, 2011 by Hippos in Tanks. Conceived as a series of ringtones, the album marked Ferraro's transition from his previous lo-fi recording approach to a sharply produced, electronic aesthetic that deliberately evokes sources such as elevator music, corporate mood music, easy listening, and early computer sound design. The album has been interpreted as engaging with themes such as hyperreality, disposable consumer culture, 1990s retrofuturism, advertising, and musical kitsch.
Ripcord is the ninth studio album by New Zealand-born Australian country music singer Keith Urban. It was released on 6 May 2016 via Hit Red and Capitol Records Nashville. The album produced the singles "John Cougar, John Deere, John 3:16"; "Break on Me", "Wasted Time", "Blue Ain't Your Color", and "The Fighter". It also features musical artists Nile Rodgers, Pitbull, and Carrie Underwood. Just like his previous album Fuse (2013), Urban co-worked with multiple producers on this one.
Hypnagogic pop is pop or psychedelic music that evokes cultural memory and nostalgia for the popular entertainment of the past. It emerged in the mid to late 2000s as American lo-fi and noise musicians began adopting retro aesthetics remembered from their childhood, such as radio rock, new wave pop, light rock, video game music, synth-pop, and R&B. Recordings circulated on cassette or Internet blogs and were typically marked by the use of outmoded analog equipment and DIY experimentation.
Teen Daze is the stage name for solo Canadian electronic musician Jamison Isaak originally from Abbotsford, British Columbia.
Cold is a mixtape by American electronic musician James Ferraro, recorded in New York City and released in March 2013 on the Hippos in Tanks label. The press release stated that Cold is about "human drama" that is a part of a nihilistic period, as well as "the repetition and consumption of hedonism that cannot represent or replace one night of love." Described by one journalist as a pastiche of contemporary R&B and hip-hop, Cold contains elements of two-step, dubstep, techno and lounge music styles. Reviews of the mixtape were very favorable in general, common praises including its production and the use of Ferraro's own vocals.
NYC, Hell 3:00 AM is a studio album by American electronic musician James Ferraro, released digitally and physically on October 15, 2013 by the label Hippos in Tanks. The album, exploring a combination of R&B and avant-garde music, is Ferraro's first album recorded with studio instrumentation. It began as a conceptual project, "a surreal psychological sculpture of American decay and confusion", for Ferraro to only record at or around midnight, and the material was "realized" instead of planned out.
Skid Row is a studio album by American electronic musician James Ferraro, released on November 13, 2015 by Break World Records. Lyrically, it had previously existed as a series of poems before it turned into a set of lyrics for an album named after the crime-and-poverty-heavy Los Angeles area Skid Row. It is the Los Angeles counterpart to Ferraro's previous studio effort NYC, Hell 3:00 AM (2013). Its sound palette includes elements of funk, news reports, new jack swing, film scores, smooth jazz and 1980s rock and hip-hop. The album garnered generally positive reviews upon its release.
Human Story 3 is a studio album by American electronic musician James Ferraro, self-released on June 14, 2016. Displaying a turn towards the style and aesthetic of modern classical, the album's concept revolves philosophically and structurally on how technology that can be used meaningfully is often used less usefully for commerce and, as a result, how the technology may eventually end up subverting humanness. The record garnered critical acclaim and landed at number seven on Tiny Mix Tapes' year-end list of the best albums of 2016.
Suki Girlz is a mixtape by producer James Ferraro, self-released under the moniker user703918785 on SoundCloud on July 2, 2014. The concept of the trap mixtape is symbolized through both its sound and its marketing; all of the tracks are low-quality and borrow tropes common in music self-released on sites like SoundCloud, and it was released with the name user703918785, which spoofs the spambots of these services, thus making it symbolically disposable. It garnered favorable opinions from music journalists, landing at number one on a list of the best mixtapes of 2014 by Pretty Much Amazing.
Inhale C-4 $$$$$ is a mixtape by American electronic musician James Ferraro under the alias BEBETUNE$, released for free on December 14, 2011. Parodying the tropes of contemporary American hip hop music and its culture, it marks the first time in Ferraro's career that he approached such a style. Reviews of the mixtape were mostly positive, and it appeared in the top 20 of Tiny Mix Tapes' list of the best releases of 2012.
&&&&& is the debut mixtape by Venezuelan electronic producer Arca. It was released on 23 July 2013 through Hippos in Tanks on SoundCloud. Even though 14 tracks are listed, the entire mixtape is in sequence as a single track. A vinyl release of the mixtape with an alternative album cover was released in January 2014 and was limited to 500 copies. On 28 July 2020, Arca announced a re-release of &&&&& through PAN, making the mixtape available on mainstream streaming platforms for the first time on 18 September 2020.
Gaika Tavares, better known simply as Gaika, is a British artist and writer from South London. His debut album, Basic Volume, was released in July 2018 by Warp Records, who describe the sound as "gothic dancehall and industrial electronics".
