Automato

Formed in 1995, the Brooklyn-based hip-hop group Automato brought together Nick Millhiser on drums, Jesse Levine handling vocals, Morgan Wiley on guitar, Andrew Raposo on bass, Alex Frankel at the keyboards, and Ben Fries also on vocals. All six members hail from New York City, with the sole exception of Wiley, who entered the world in Lagos, Nigeria before relocating to Las Vegas during childhood. The outfit pushes past standard hip-hop boundaries by weaving in elements of indie pop, dance punk, and leftfield electronica, resulting in a distinctive and forceful sonic identity. Their wide-ranging tastes, spanning Nas, Can, and the Pixies, drew the six-piece toward producers Tim Goldsworthy and James Murphy, proprietors of the trendsetting DFA label and central figures in launching New York’s dance punk movement during the first years of the 2000s. The self-titled debut album arrived in 2004 and earned widespread acclaim, prompting multiple reviewers to dub the group the “Radiohead of hip-hop” on account of their use of unusual time signatures and intricate rhythmic patterns.