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Artist
Audio Active and Laraaji
12+ albums
about
Tokyo-based Audio Active, led by shinehead Masa, got together through a mutual appreciation of reggae. These guys, however, got further than playing Bob Marley covers. That they were drawn towards dub and roots reggae, and later sometimes fusing it with hard techno beats and screaming guitars. United by a shared love of dub, vocalist Masa and keyboardist / programmer 2DD (pronounced "nee dee dee"), who got their start in a 10-piece ska band called Vital Connection, formed Audio Active with drummer Shigemoto Nanao and bassist Takeshi Akimoto in 1991, naming themselves after an album by Barbadian reggae star Dennis Bovell. Guitarist Kasai joined later after the departure of Akimoto from the collective. Members of Audio Active also perform in the group Dry & Heavy. Laraaji is an American musician. Born Edward Larry Gordon in 1943 in Philadelphia, he studied violin, piano, trombone and voice in his early years in New Jersey. He attended Howard University, a historically black university in Washington, D.C. on a scholarship to study composition and piano. After studying at Howard, he spent time in New York pursuing a career as a stand-up comedian and actor. In the early seventies he began to study Eastern mysticism and believed he'd found a new path for his music and his life. It was also at this time he bought his first zither from a local pawn shop. Converting it to an electronic instrument, he began to experiment using the instrument like a piano. By 1978, he developed enoug
