Matthew Herbert, also known as Herbert, Doctor Rockit, Radio Boy, Mr. Vertigo, Transformer, and Wishmountain, is one the most versatile and prolific electronic musicians in the world. A very active groundbreaker, classically trained pianist and sampling virtuoso, that produces organic avant-garde, electronic and microhouse, strongly influenced by musique concrète; a form of music that uses acousmatic sound as a compositional resource. He has also produced and remixed artists like: Björk, John Cale, Serge Gainsbourg, Róisín Murphy,Yoko Ono and R.E.M., among others.

A British electropop band formed in 2000, that produces a well-balanced synthpop with some precipitated sonic mentalism, rapture and humor. The warm and deep pop wizards make accessible melodic arrangements and harmonies with a surprisingly polished finish, amplified by some memorable expressive honesty. Hot Chip use to reconfigurate their studio compositions during their exciting live performances, making them unique.

James Dewitt Yancey (stage names: J Dilla and Jay Dee) was a record producer who emerged from the mid-90s hip-hop scene in Detroit, Michigan. In the early 2000s, Yancey’s career as a solo artist had lift-off and he showed a true love for his art by creating a series of sonic jigsaw puzzles originated by exquisite, but somehow raw, soul and jazz loops. The quintessential producer died in 2006 of a rare disorder of his blood-coagulation system, he was only 32 years old.

Let’s be honest, Shawn Corey Carter (or Jay-Z) is a businessman —that happens to be a rapper— and one of the most successful hip-hop artists of all times. He has collaborated with a huge bunch of extremely famous artists and helped others to start or advance in their careers. The rapper from Brooklyn mixes ’70s funk and soul with rhymes about struggles, pressure, success and love with lyrical complexity and small bits of constructed self-analysis. He became a modern classic.

She’s a beautiful, talented, humble and charismatic singer and songwriter with an instantly recognizable voice and a simple but elegant piano playing method, her lovely and irresistible music takes us from jazz, blues and pop to soul, folk and country soundscapes. A true gifted American musician, she was born Geethali Norah Jones Shankar, daughter of Ravi Shankar and Sue Jones and half-sister of Anoushka Shankar, at the age of sixteen, she officially changed her name since she’s not very acquainted to the Shankars.

Formed in Los Angeles, California, by members of the Rebels of Rhythm and Unity Committee, Jurassic 5 was one of the best lineage hip-hop groups, consisting of four MCs and two DJs, which gave us an intelligent and original B-boy-oriented bright sound, that puts some jazz, funk, clever hip-hop rhymes and beats and takes them into new, exciting and creative directions. They sadly broke up in 2007. Some of its members are also part of the wonderful fusion band Ozomatli, also from L.A.

With a strong rock influence in their music and image, the French duo consisting of Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay, create an infectious electro house that mixes and matches pop and noise so bewitchingly that put them in a place difficult to reach for other present-day artists. They just needed one album full of dance-pop hybridism and monster beats to make us dance furiously, an album that easily became one of the best of the last ten years.

The great musician and turntablist from Montréal, Eric San, who works under the name Kid Koala and is also part of the splendid Deltron 3030 project, and is classically trained on the piano, is the sovereign of this decade’s turntablism. By exquisitely scratching, seamlessly cutting-and-pasting a multitude of genres like rock, jazz, funk, hip-hop, an astonishing and fascinating musical confetti is expertly created by the Chinese-Canadian DJ.

Mix some fantastic Latin music with funk-rock and fine electronic dance beats and you will get the unique hybrid sound of Kinky, a style that set a new standard for sonic landscapes, with home-made rhythms, fuzzy guitars, pounding beats, and a doze of catchy brass. Although sometimes lyrically weak, there is no question, musically speaking, about them being one of the greatest bands that the rich industrial city of Monterrey, Mexico, has given to the world.

Combining the best elements of ’60s American pop and ’70s European disco, the Spanish band, La Casa Azul fabricates perfect and precious pop rock, released trough the brilliant indie-pop label Elefant Records. The band consists of five “puppet” members: David, Virginia, Oscar, Clara and Sergio (who appear as the band’s image and whose last names have never been disclosed), but the “puppeteer” behind them is the band leader Guille Milkyway (who writes, produces, makes the arrangements and performs live). Milkyway makes this sugary, yet honest, pop albums with clean and clear production reminiscent of the Japanese Shibuya-kei movement.