CHANDLER, KERRI / KIMARA LOVELACE / P'TAAH / ANANDA PROJECT - [V2] 25 YEARS OF PARADISE VOLUME 2

Kerri grew up in the New Jersey area during the days of the infamous Zanzibar club with resident DJ Tony Humpries. Kerri's father was a DJ as well, which gave Kerri a rich background in the origins of the New York Underground Sound (known also as "Garage" music). He made his DJ debut at the Rally Record Club in East Orange, New Jersey at the age of thirteen. Kerri eventually found himself intrigued with the production element in dance music and soon began to create his own grooves on his self-label, Express Records. In 1991, Atlantic Records signed his debut single, "SuperLover/Get It Off." Despite his success, Kerri Chandler has always remained true to the spirit of the underground on tracks such as the "Atmosphere E.P." on Shelter Records and the seminal, "A Basement, Redlight and A Feeling" album on Madhouse. Kerri prays before making a record, and injects his free spirit into his productions. With a solid education in Garage grooves, Kerri takes vocals, rhythms and instruments and with uncanny precision pieces them together, delivering beautiful, monster jams. In the expanses of his breaks the odd counter rhythm will inexplicably appear for a second and then disappear, creating fleshy excitement, not mechanical repetition. His basslines go from heavy and heady to playful and quirky--always deliriously intoxicating. His hooks are loving details like horn hits, washes of synthesizer or catchy choruses that emerge to create songs from a maddening bulldozer of brutal drive. Here the dreamer takes hold, transporting us into a dimension of seemingly endless travel.... Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.

Kimara Lovelace is a Club/Dance, House, and R&B/Soul singer. Some of her best hit songs are "Far Away", "Misery", "Circles" , "When Can Our Love Begin", "Just A Dream" and "You Look Wonderful Tonight." Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.

Atlanta-based Chris Brann is a respected name with his house-music moniker Wamdue Project. His UK #1 hit "King of My Castle," went platinum in territories all over Europe. But Brann's heart lies elsewhere. "House music has never been my main interest, it's more like a bi-product, it's so easily created," says Brann. "I'd rather push the boundaries," he adds. So what makes Brann click? Try his alter egos like P'taah and the Ananda Project. P'taah is Brann's opportunity to move out of the house-music spectrum and experiment with alternative approaches to making club and electronic music. Compressed Light was the debut album from P'taah -moving effortlessly between soundtrack-like downtempo jazz cuts to energetic fusions of percussion and club beats. Following "Compressed Light" was "Decompressed", an album of remixes including the huge broken beat anthem "The Crossing" remix by Opaque (aka Seiji). A third album of P'taah material is in the works. Tentatively titled "Staring At The Sun" it's set for release in Spring 2003, with a single featuring Atjazz remixes out in November 2002. The beauty of P'taah is in Brann's ability to combine organic instruments with cutting edge studio trickery. Percussion and future jazz beats collide to provide the back bone of deceptively minimal tracks. The sound of P'taah is unique but carries a hint of early 70s Herbie Hancock, Sun Ra's spacey soul, blaxploitation soundtracks, ECM Jazz, and new school acts like the Cinematic Orchestra and Jazzanova. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.

Chris Brann is the talent behind this project as well as so many other personal Garage/House projects such as Feral, P'Taah, P'tang, Relight, Santal, Wam Kidz, Wambonix, Wamdue, Wamdue Productions, Wamdue Project and groups; Delilah, Jackass & Mule, Wamdue Kids so far. Although it seems like Chris is having a personality crisis, the truth is, he achieved pretty distinctive works under those aliases. Growing up in Atlanta, Chris discovered house and electronic music by the somewhat long-winded way of getting sent tapes from Europe. He began assembling a home studio but it wasn't until 1994 that he began his music career in earnest and formed Wamdue Kids with DJs Deep C, aka Chris Clarke, and Udoh, aka Chris Udoh. In 1995 they released the classic 'Higher' on the Acacia label, which led to the seminal debut album 'These Branching Moments'. In 1996 Chris' prolific attitude to work came into its own solo album 'Deep Fall', reflecting a diverse direction to that of his productions with Wamdue. Chris started The Ananda project in late 90s and it was a side project in the beginning. Brann never set out to make the Ananda Project the crown jewel of his musical legacy. When the outfit began in 1998 - inspired through a chance meeting with Lancelot and Bryan of King Street Sounds and Nite Grooves labels. So, Ananda Project's amazing first single "Cascades Of Color" with singer/songwriter Gaelle Adisson came. it was massive for house music addicts, "indeed sounded like a sunrise; an illuminating and rejuvenating orchestration of deep, soulful house, punctuated by Brann's understated melodichues and Gaelle Adisson's angelic, honey-coated harmonies." It didn't take long time for Mother(Danny Tenaglia) to find this secret weapon because "Cascades Of Color" was really distinctive from any other house production of its day. John Digweed, Deep Dish and Pete Tong followed him but it was Tenaglia's edit of "Cascades Of Color-Saffron mix" which made it a big smash. "Cascades Of Color" released 8 times (As different remixes on 12"s and a 5" CD) between 1998 and 2004. After tremendous demand from house scene, following Ananda project single "Straight Magic" came in 1999 and after that Ananda Project released 3 more Garage/House records (" Glory Glory", "Release" and "Bahia/Expand your Mind"), for me, none of them was as big as "Cascades Of Color" but in 2001 Nite Grooves released the amazing 12" of "Falling For You" featuring angelic vocals of Terrance Down which eventually became one of my all time favorites especially with the support of dreamy bassline and drums of G-Pal's "Child Of The Sun Remix" of the score. Yet, that was not the time that my appreciation for Chris Brann (and for his all other names) hits the top but it was when I first listen to Delilah's "Be Strong 4 me" relesead by Yoshitoshi (ah! it was such a nice label back in the beginning of 2000s, what the heck happened?). Both original 12" and remixes were fantastic! When I hear the first words of Heather Johnson, I realized Chris Brann raised the standards of Vocal House music and no one's gonna buy those cheesy tracks with meaninglessly screaming female vocals as easily as before. But they did anyway :-) Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.