Artificial Bliss Recordings Ltd.

Indie

Down-tempo, Electronica, Experimental

Born in Hatfield in Hertfordshire in the winter of 1980, Simon Curry AKA Chokai first starting producing music at 8 years of age, experimenting with sounds across all genre's using a now classic Casio SK-1 keyboard.

Having grown up with a wide variety of sounds from Elvis Presley to LL Cool J, Simon's large appreciation for all genre's of music was founded. Around 1995, Simon began to listen to more electronic-based music and found great pleasure in listening to the likes of the Chemical Brothers, Orbital, the Orb, Utah Saints, Fluke, Aphex Twin and many more which went on to inspire him to produce electronic tunes of his own.

In 1996 Simon formed "cabal", an experimental sound project created using tape loops and old electronic keyboards, which in turn evolved into "Callisto", then "Maximality". After much more experimentation in all types of music-making media, Simon formed "Chokai" in 1997 after getting hold of an Amiga 1200 computer loaded with the classic tracker program "Octamed". A string of insane lo-fi drum n bass tracks which turned out better than expected, Simon decided to take Chokai to the next level and start assembling a serious home studio. Many loans later Simon had the necessary equipment to finally produce an album to a high standard, and with the help of his brother Chris, the both produced the first ever Chokai album "Traveler" in 2000, a seeking album with many electronic genre's designed to weed out the best style Chokai had to offer. The album was a good success, after being sold online through the Chokai web site, and the now Duo of Chokai got there heads down to produce the Demo that would eventually lead to Chokai getting signed. A second album followed in 2002 titled "Traveler South: The origin" which delved deeper into the more obscure genre's while keeping the occasional commercial floor-filler.

After much pushing and Demo sending, Chokai were finally signed to the now legendary 3Bass Label in 2003 off the back of the third album titled "Tori Umi", a classic Chokai album containing some of their best work yet.

In 2005 Chokai departed company with 3Bass and after a year of traveling, relaxing and focusing on home life. Chokai returned once again as just Simon, and the Fourth album titled "Iko" (named after Simons Wife and inspired by his travels to Japan) was completed and released through a brand new record label formed by Simon, Chris and Carl Mitchell of the Junction eleven project called Artificial Bliss Recordings at the beginning of 2006.

Now still producing and working on remixes, Chokai is still experimenting and has developed its own unique style that has proved to be more popular than ever expected, and plans for the future include many more tunes to come.

Simon C

chemical brothers, daft punk, chicane, les rhythmes Digitales,Curtis Mayfield,Boards of Canada

chemical brothers, daft punk, chicane, les rhythmes Digitales, Boards of Canada