Finley Quaye

In the mid-1990s Finley Quaye stepped onto the British music landscape, blending pop, trip-hop, soul, and jazz into his well-received 1997 debut Maverick a Strike. His earliest recorded appearance occurred in 1995, when he supplied vocals for the track “Finleys Rainbow” on A Guy Called Gerald’s influential breakbeat set Black Secret Technology. Working in Sheffield alongside Kevin Bacon of the Comsat Angels, Quaye both recorded and co-produced Maverick a Strike. The album achieved widespread critical and commercial acclaim, securing him a BRIT Award for Best Male Solo Artist. Epic later issued two further Quaye albums, Vanguard in 2000 and Much More Than Much Love in 2004; the latter contained the collaborative single “Dice,” recorded with Beth Orton and William Orbit and achieving modest chart success. Eight years elapsed before his next studio album, yet 2008 brought both the EP Pound for Pound and the retrospective compilation The Best of the Epic Years. On the French label Sakifo he released 28th February Road in 2012, followed two years later by the reggae album Royal Rasses, which featured contributions from Norman Grant of the long-standing Jamaican group the Twinkle Brothers. Spring 2016 saw the arrival of the demo collection Demos, with two digital-only live recordings, Live in Geneva and Live in Jerusalem, appearing the following year.