DESCRIPTION:
Few artists nowadays can claim true originality in the music they make; artists who have their own unique sound. You can easily spot a DJ Premier break, an M.I.A. chant, or a Timbaland beat, because these are the artists who have etched out their own niche in the musical forum. These people push the envelope with their production, keeping things fresh, exciting and interesting for us lowly listeners. Steve Spacek is one of these people.

Steve White forged his music career in the early 90's with the dance act Stex, which also featured Johnny Marr of The Smiths. He went on to found the band Spacek in the mid-90s, and quickly found underground success. Their first release, "Eve", gained favour with many respected people in the industry, resulting in them signing to Mos Def's GoodTree imprint and Island Records in the UK. The late J Dilla offerered up remix duties on a package that included contributions from the Roots' Black Thought, Frank n Dank and Mos Def himself. Their debut album, "Curvatia", was critically acclaimed, and displayed the group's complex and challenging sensibilities, establishing them as a promising new talent in the British alternative music scene. "Vintage Hi-Tech" followed in 2003, drawing high praise from critics who called it "a downtempo musical masterpiece that draws no comparison", and they were heralded by Style magazine as "the Radiohead of soul".

"Black Pocket The Album" is instrumental soul at its best, an exploration into grooves and the spaces within. Over the series, Black Pocket has shown the diversity that's possible within the soul genre, and this album pulls all those possibilities together. Every track on here shows a producer who is totally in control of his sonic surroundings: a myriad of splices and lush quirks which -- like a jigsaw -- resolve themselves to reveal the beauty of the whole. "Black Pocket" is an album which blows away all the usual clichés found in the music behind soul and brings to you a future full of potential and promise.

Steve Spacek, the acclaimed voice behind the ground-breaking genre-pushing group Spacek (who were championed by everyone from Entertainment Weekly to Mos Def), made a name for himself at the turn of the century with the song "Eve' (covered by Dwele). The song set off a worldwide buzz on Steve as a singer and his group's futuristic sound. Imagine a robot performer in the future, in love with hip hop beatology and skillful enough to twist it into new shapes, programmed with an infused knowledge of the biographies of Marvin Gaye, Donny Hathaway and Leroy Hutson as source material for lyric writing and you might have an idea of the Spacek sound -- Robotic, futuristic, hip-hop based soul. Steve Spacek has also worked with Mark Pritchard on his recent Harmonic 313 album, or their joint 12″ on Warp this year under the alias Africa Hi Tech. His back catalogue, includes labels like Giles Petersons Brownswood, BBE, and more recently he had a Blackpocket release on Fat City which had a Martyn Remix.