About Transglobal Underground
Transglobal Underground is an English electro-world music group, specializing in a fusion of western, Asian and African music styles . Their first four albums featured Natacha Atlas as lead singer, and their single "Temple Head" was used in a Coca-Cola advertising campaign for the 1996 Olympic Games. In 2008 they won the BBC Radio 3 Award for World Music after the release of their seventh official album, Moonshout. Their most recent release is 2020's Walls Have Ears, marking Atlas' return as a guest with the group. Their work has been described as "a collision of tradition and innovation."
Although Transglobal Underground has always had a fluid line-up, the two core members of the group are Tim Whelan and Hamilton Lee . Throughout the group's history, Whelan and Lee have deliberately clouded their identities via multiple pseudonyms and obscure credits - Whelan generally operating under the alias of "Alex Kasiek" and Lee under the alias of "Hamid Mantu" . Whelan has also used his "Alex Kasiek" pseudonym outside TGU work and has sometimes implied that Kasiek is a separate person.
Other musicians who have been long-time TGU members or associates include:
Artists who have made guest appearances on TGU albums include:
Transglobal Underground tracks have been remixed by Dreadzone, Lionrock and Youth and they in turn have remixed tracks for Warsaw Village Band, Banco de Gaia, Fun-Da-Mental, Grotus, Transjoik, Pop Will Eat Itself and Tragic Roundabout.
Musical collaborators since their schooldays, Tim Whelan and Hamilton Lee were previously both founding members of British pop band Furniture and had played with the experimental psychedelic art-punk group The Transmitters. While with Furniture, both musicians had already demonstrated an interest in world music by bringing in more culturally-diverse instrumentation to what was originally a fairly conventional rock band line up . Following the break-up of Furniture, Whelan and Lee worked together as part of the Flavel Bambi Septet .
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