

Top/ The cover of The Magical Sounds of Banco de Gaia (Six Degrees, 1999) evokes the black obelisk-shaped object on the cover and inside sleeve of Presence, the seventh studio album by English rock band Led Zeppelin, created by Hipgnosis. Flashbacks of the Monolith in Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey also come to mind. Banco de Gaia is an electronic music band from England, formed by Toby Marks (born 1964, South London) in 1991. The music of Banco de Gaia is best categorized as ambient dub, but Marks works to cross genres, often using Arabic and Middle Eastern samples against a bass heavy reggae, rock, or trance rhythm to produce deeply textured tracks that progress layer upon layer. Bottom/ Leftism (Hard Hands/Columbia) is the debut album by electronica musicians Leftfield, released in 1995. It was shortlisted for the 1995 Mercury Music Prize but lost-out to "Dummy" by Portishead. Leftfield were a duo of electronica artists and record producers, Paul Daley (formerly of the Brand New Heavies) and Neil Barnes, formed in 1989 in London, England. The pair were pioneers in the fields of intelligent dance music and progressive house, being among the first to fuse house music with dub and reggae. They furthermore were among the first electronic musicians to incorporate live guest vocalists, along with The Chemical Brothers and Underworld. Ultimately the duo have been influential on the electronic genre as a whole, with The Crystal Method's Scott Kirkland referring to them in 2005 as "The best electronic band, period!".