Essential | en

Brooklyn Funk Essentials is an acid-jazz, funk, and hip hop collective featuring musicians and poets from different cultures. The band was conceived in 1993 by producer Arthur Baker and bassist and musical director Lati Kronlund. Lati Kronlund played the bass, and other members included Hanifah Walidah (aka Sha-key), Joi Cardwell, Papa Dee and Stephanie McKay (vocals), Everton Sylvester and David Allen (dub poetry), Josh Roseman (trombone), Bob Brockmann (trumpet), Paul Shapiro (sax & flute), Yancy Drew and Tony Allen (drums), E.J. Rodriguez and Danny Sadownic (percussion), Desmond Foster and Masa Shimizu (guitar), ATN Stadwijk and Yuka Honda (keys), Bill Ware...

The Quintessentials was founded in 1998 in Honolulu, Hawaii, by Les Hernandez, formerly of The Catalogs and Crawling Chaos. They released their first full-length album, "The Horror Never Ends...", in 2001, followed by their second, "Pentagonal Revisionism", in 2004. In 2005 The Quintessentials released their third full-length album, "Legends from the Grave," then released "Sarah Alice is DEAD!" in 2011. The album covers for both "Pentagonal Revisionism" and "Legends from the Grave" were featured in the History Channel documentary, "Hell: the Devil's Domain". The Quintessentials have appeared on numerous compilations from Hawaiian Express Records, "The Horror of it All, Volumes...

Essential Machine is RJ and Karen Dietrich.​ In 2007, they moved from Florida to the Pittsburgh, PA area, and the change of locale inspired the duo to start making music together professionally (they'd been harmonizing, literally and metaphorically, since they married in 2001). In the living room of a tiny apartment, Essential Machine wrote and recorded their first EP, Find the Harmony. It was released in June 2009, and they had more fun than should be allowed by law while touring the south in support of the record. ​RJ Dietrich spent his childhood in the woods of Florida studying classical...

Essential Bop was formed in the spring of 1978 by a disparate bunch of musicians, mostly refugees from assorted Bristol bands like The Cortinas (Mike Fewings, guitar), The Biros (Steve Bush, singing) and, er, Dragon Sandwich (Simon Tyler, keyboards). Dave Robinson (who was responsible for starting the band) was a bluesman who had played bass with the likes of 'Champion' Jack Dupree and Joe Cocker. Nick Tufnell had never played drums before, but really wanted to so, like, why not The band also featured 'visualist' Seng-gye, whose job it was to create bizarre and arty stage happenings The band debuted...