Neotropic

Riz Maslen ranks among the foremost women composers shaping post-techno experimental electronics. Working as Neotropic and Small Fish with Spine, she fuses ambient, dub, and electro elements with fragments of house, hip-hop, and drum'n'bass. Although her discography remains smaller than those of NTone associates such as Coldcut and London Funk Allstars, steady productivity and a refusal to settle on one style have placed her near their level. In the mid-'90s she signed to NTone as Neotropic and to R&S as Small Fish with Spine, at a time when her only prior releases were a single compilation track and a four-track EP; since then she has stocked her life with notable recent examples of downbeat breakbeat and experimental ambient/dub.

Her entry into the upper tier of the European experimental dance world came, counterintuitively, only after she relocated to New York, where the Apple-affiliated dance label Oxygen Music Works issued the Stickleback EP. Following two tracks on an NTone compilation, she returned to London in 1995 and delivered the Tumble Weed EP; the next year the label released both the single "Laundrophone" and the album 15 Levels of Magnification. Belgium-based R&S soon followed with the self-titled Small Fish with Spine EP. Further recognition arrived through her work with Future Sound of London, a collaboration that included an appearance on the U.K. television program Top of the Pops as well as contributions to several of their recordings. Her second Ninja Tune album, Mr. Brubaker's Strawberry Alarm Clock, appeared in 1999. La Prochaine Fois arrived in spring 2001, and in 2004 she moved to the underground rap imprint Mush for White Rabbits.