Maktub

Originating in 1996, Maktub began as an informal side endeavor among four Seattle club musicians whose name, drawn from Arabic, translates to “it is written.” Vocalist and synthesizer player Reggie Watts joined forces with drummer Davis Martin, keyboardist Alex Veley, and bassist Kevin Goldman, each drawn from separate corners of the city’s expanding soul scene, to craft a groove-driven, introspective strain of R&B. Anchored by Watts’s refined baritone, the group issued its first album, Subtle Ways, in 1999; the record swiftly claimed the top spot on local station KCMU and earned the Northwest Music awards’ Best Northwest R&B Album of 1999 honor. Beyond its regional following, Maktub gained broad online visibility, propelling Subtle Ways to number one on MP3.com’s soul and urban charts while, through digital channels alone, reaching number two on London’s Soul-24-7 radio countdown despite never issuing a UK release. Buoyed by this momentum, the band recruited freely from Seattle’s talent pool, bringing in guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Thaddeus Turner in 2000 and installing smooth R&B veteran Darrius Willrich in place of Veley. Willrich departed two years afterward, at which point keyboardist Daniel Spils joined just before the arrival of the stylistically wide-ranging Khronos.