Banco De Gaia // Transglobal Underground // Lewes Con Club
Sat 11 Jan 2025
7:30 PM - 12:00 AM
Lewes Con Club, BN7 1XS
photos by Simon Partington
Easy Skankin presents
Banco De Gaia (DJ Set & Light Show)
Transglobal Underground (Soundsystem Show)
Saturday 11th January 2025
Lewes Con Club
Doors 7.30pm - 12am
Banco de Gaia has been performing and releasing for over 25 years now, along the way becoming one of the music industry’s most maverick innovators.His legacy is as glittering as it is diverse, ranging from Hollywood film sound credits to the critically acclaimed ‘Last Train to Lhasa’, first released in 1995 to a rapturous reception. His live act still packs out venues and festivals all over the world, with audio-visual performances renowned for their explosive, cutting edge quality: from sampling wizardry fused with haunting vocals and poignant acoustics to genre-hopping musical instrumentals, all accompanied by socially engaged visuals.
Behind Banco de Gaia is artist Toby Marks. Starting out as a drummer in a metal band, he began using sampling kit to cut his own tunes after falling in love with electronica during the 1980s acid house era. By the early 90s, after winning respect for a clutch of credits on the Ambient Dub compilations, he was signed to Planet Dog Records and released ‘Maya’, in 1994, and then ‘Last Train to Lhasa’, in 1995.
Long known for their scorching live shows, Transglobal Underground are back in full form after emerging into a new post-Covid, post-Brexit world and have been blowing audiences away around the UK in 2022 and 2023.
They’ll be playing the Lewes Con Club with a special one off soundsystem sized trio.
Transglobal Underground came into being during the electronic dance scene of the early 90s. Pioneers in the mixing of club culture with world music, their first single ‘Temple Head’ went Top 30 and their debut album, ‘Dream of 100 Nations’ top 20.
They became best known for their live shows which made them festival favourites and have seen them touring worldwide ever since. Along the way they picked up a BBC World Music award for their seventh album ‘Moonshout” been a DJ collective, a techno soundsystem, a Middle Eastern hit production team, a backing group for an Albanian brass fanfare, a seminar, a medicine show and several things that no one involved would admit to if they could even remember them…
The current lineup is based around original members Hamid Mantu and Tim Whelan and features the UKs best known sitarist Sheema Mukherjee (also of Cornershop, Imagined Village, TUUP, a major figure on the UK storytelling scene, and Rav Neiyyar (Bollywood Band). All appeared on the collective’s most recent release ‘Walls Have Ears,’ along with other regular members of the TGU family, notably original vocalist Natacha Atlas, who still performs with the band on occasion.
