Ben Constable
Plays keyboards with his elbows, sings on a few tracks and smacks his laptop.

I am a writer and music producer (or even musician in a looser sense of the word) and I live in Paris.

I was born in Bristol in the UK. When I was fourteen I started to teach myself the piano (I’ve still not finished) and I borrowed people’s guitars and sat around for hours playing and singing. When I was 18 I joined various bands as a singer and a keyboard player. Serious stage fright and lack of enthusiasm for band life provoked my interest in recording. I bought a four track porta-studio and orchestrated layer upon layer of any instrument I could get my hands on. I left England and went to work as an apprentice studio engineer in Toulouse, France and started a recording project called “Some People” with my recording mentor Philippe Daix. This structure of working in a small unit and inviting guests has remained my favourite way of making music.

14 months later (1994) I returned to England and set up a recording studio for club promoter and record label Progress Records in Derby where I engineered for a host of house music projects including Chicago legends Farley Jackmaster Funk and Marshal Jefferson. I also did a lot of sessions and co-productions on reggae dance hall projects with producer Mick Cole. I released a handful of singles on Progress Records under the name The Other Benjamin (a name given to me by a small child called Benjamin who is now 14 and a DJ and Club promoter himself). I also had tracks on a few compilations and one released on Miami Beach-based label Inversus Records.

I moved to London in 1998 to work on my own music and started to write short fiction, but returned to Derby a year later to work with Progress Records stable-mate Rob Webster who had just had chart success with his project “Progress Presents the Boy Wunda”. We were signed to Manifesto records and given inordinate sums of money for various singles which were never released and a score of remixes.

The track “Final” from the current album was included on French Label (run by Laurent Garnier) F-COM’s annual compilation Megasoft Office 2005. The book is nearly finished, ‘One Thing’ is coming out on Other Records and we’re shooting a video for the track ‘Control’ in a couple of weeks. I’ve worked hard and played hard for a year and I’m starting to ask myself what comes next. Any suggestions?

Visit Ben's website: www.flowmusic.co.uk

Jessica Constable
Sings on some tracks, some nice, some nasty. Helped Ben write some songs.

Jessica Constable is my older sister and is a singer. She lives in Brittany in the west of France.

She was also born in Bristol. Her music career started when she was 7. Some one bought her a guitar and she started writing songs. One of the songs she wrote when she was just 7 was heard by singer Julie Tippetts (formerly Julie Discol of ‘Julie Driscol, Brian Orger and the Trinity’ most famous for the 1969 hit “this wheel’s on fire”). Julie recorded Jess’s song ‘now if you remember’ for her album ‘Sunset Glow’ on RCA (1973).

During her late teens Jessica was involved with some small recording projects but only started singing seriously in her early twenties when she formed a duo with pianist Philippe Gelda. A combination of too much work and poor technique forced her to stop singing when she lost her voice completely for 9 months. The retraining she did introduced her to the world of classical singing and working on various theatrical projects provoked in interest in more experimental use of the voice.

Over the next ten years she toured and recorded on several projects from a north African French hip hop crew, to singing experimental jazz and electronic music as well as continuing her duo with Philippe Gelda. While playing in a jazz festival in France she was spotted by New York avant-guard saxophonist Ellery Eskelin, who asked her to tour with his band.

In 2001 she formed the group ‘soulreactive’ with French drummer David Aknin and released the album ‘saltsound’ on Chief Inspector Records in 2002. Soulreactive brought her attention from several musicians and composers. She was invited to be a soloist for Francois Jeuneau’s legendary jazz orchestra ‘Pandemonium’ and Armenian composer Anahit Simonian composed a suit of songs for her to sing with doudk (a traditional Armenian instrument) and symphonic orchestra which she performed a the winter palace in St Petersburg in Musical Olympus festival in 2003. In 2004 she started to tour with electronic music producer Jeff Sharrel and also recorded along with Marc Ribot and Melvin Gibbs on the tenth anniversary album with the Ellery Eskelin trio. She also recorded an album with American experimental keyboard player Andrea Parkins. In 2005 she had a baby and is after warm up gigs with long time collaborator Philippe Gelda she is touring with Ellery Eskilin as a full member of the band (thus now a quartet).

Visit Jessicas website: www.jessicaconstable.net

Michaela Cole
Sings nicely on "I'm Here".

I first met Michaela when she was four and I was working with her father Mick who is a reggae and hop-hop producer. She was already unnervingly accustomed to vocal booths and headphones. When I asked her to sing on the track ‘I’m Here’ I hadn’t seen her for three years and I was surprised to find that she was eleven. I’d made a rough recording of the track with me singing for her to listen to before we recorded. On the day we recorded I told her that I’d changed the words and she looked at me horrified and explained that she’d learned them as I’d given them to her and she’d like them to stay that way and so they did. Michaela goes to school and likes writing poetry and playing the drums.

Gary Reader
Plays sax all over the place.

Gary Reader gets about. I met him in 2003 in a club in Derby where he was playing thesaxophone with a house DJ. He reminded me that we’d actually met a few years previously in a club in Paris and a stately home in Nottingham sometime afterwards. I later found out that our paths had crossed randomly on a couple of other occasions during our youth. After studying at Manchester University Gary took his saxophone and went to London and later found himself playing in clubs on the French Riviera which became his base for the next ten years. He toured Europe with several bands and played on many people’s albums as well as having his own quartet. He has been arrested several times for illegal busking. He has written a novel andteaches English at Loughborough University in the UK. I randomly bumped into him in the street in Paris a couple of months ago. It turn out that he is a member of French rock group called Medi and the Medicine Show who are currently being liberally spread across French radio stations.way and so they did. Michaela goes to school and likes writing poetry and playing the drums.

Mr tOe
All his scratching is making me itch.

Mr tOe reliably informs me that there are four hip-hop crews in Harlow in Essex and they all know each other. His crew ‘Ironbridge’ came second in the British Hip-Hop Awards in 2004 and there’s a funny story related to that which I can’t remember. Studying to be a tree surgeon brought him to Derby where he’s a scatch DJ and runs a DJ agency and teaches tree surgery to unsuspecting young arborologists (I think I may have made that word up). He refers to trees with their latin names with his strong Essex accent which rather than being austere gives the impression of affection as though talking about old friends. Despite his unique enthusiasm for trees and hip-hop, as far as I’m aware hasn’t found a way of combining the two.

Vuyani
Speaks and laughs on "Cities and Memory 1"

Vuyani is from Zimbabwe and came to Derby to study film. He is a consummate music connoisseur and as a DJ he is Derby’s musical conscience. He promoted his own club night called Excursions bringing the best of house and jazz to our small town and he sits on the committee for Derby Jazz. He’s also a psychiatric nurse.