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Machinedrum is easily the most well-known alias attributed to American electronic musician Travis Stewart, who has also released material as Syndrone, tstewart, Neon Black, and Aden. Initially credited as Machine Drum (two words), he was one of the primary exponents of glitch-hop during the early 2000s, with acclaimed albums such as 2001's Now You Know and 2004's Bidnezz finding common ground between hip-hop rhythms and the tightly programmed experimental electronic sounds of IDM labels such as Skam, Warp, and Rephlex. His sound mutated as the decades progressed, with releases such as 2009's Want to 1 2? incorporating more club-friendly styles such as house, boogie, and dubstep. 2011's Room(s) marked a shift toward a vibrant hybrid of juke and U.K. bass styles, and 2013's Vapor City fused footwork and jungle. Stewart has kept busy with collaborative projects such as Sepalcure (with Praveen Sharma) and JETS (with Jimmy Edgar), in addition to production work for the likes of Dawn Richard, Azealia Banks, and Jesse Boykins III, while his own albums, including 2020's A View of U, featured guests including Freddie Gibbs and Tigran Hamasyan. He continued exploring drum'n'bass and garage on EPs like 2023's 4#TRAX, and 2024's 3FOR82, another guest-heavy full-length.

Although Stewart's first album, a set of drill'n'bass meanderings titled Triskaideka, was released under the name Syndrone in early 2000, the first track he released as Machine Drum was a hazy, skittering mélange that owed more to hip-hop and ambient than to early Squarepusher. Indeed, the bursting "Izey Rael" proved to be the template for Machine Drum's early output. In 2001, the brilliant Now You Know was released to underground acclaim and firmly established the 19-year-old producer as one of IDM and left-field hip-hop's brightest hopes. The album was released by Merck, a Miami-based glitch-hop label that was highly prolific during the first half of the 2000s. It was followed by Urban Biology and remix album Half the Battle (both 2002), Bidnezz (2004), and another remix collection, double-CD Mergerz & Acquisitionz (2006). Also in 2006, Machine Drum shared a split-EP with Drop the Lime, released by Tigerbeat6's dancehall/jungle imprint Shockout, and he released an LP of DJ battle tools titled Cached on the Inside.

Stewart took a break for a few years while he finished up his college studies, after which he moved to New York City. With Merck defunct, having ceased operation in 2007, Stewart (who had shortened his moniker to Machinedrum) started up a label and production company called Normrex, which released his full-length Want to 1 2? before falling apart. Following this album, Stewart's sound became more frenetic and incorporated a number of styles, particularly Chicago's emerging juke/footwork scene and various permutations of the U.K. bass music continuum. He hit another creative stride during the 2010s, signing with Planet Mu for Room(s), and Hotflush for the self-titled debut by Sepalcure. Both were among the most acclaimed dance albums of 2011.

In 2012, Stewart formed a duo with Jimmy Edgar called JETS. He also collaborated with Om Unit on a side project called Dream Continuum which explored the sweet spot between jungle and juke. Planet Mu released their Reworkz EP in 2012. Machinedrum continued this hybrid with the conceptual full-length Vapor City, his first release for Ninja Tune, in 2013. He produced material for rapper Azealia Banks and R&B singer Jesse Boykins III, and began splitting time between New York and Berlin. In 2014, after he produced the majority of Boykins' Love Apparatus, he released Vapor City Archives. Two years later, Hotflush released Sepalcure's second album Folding Time, and Ninja Tune released Machinedrum's most pop-leaning effort up to the point, Human Energy. Additional singles followed, including 2017's "1 2 B Needed" (with Roses Gabor) and 2018's "Hype Up," and JETS released their debut album, Zoospa, in 2019, with guests including Dawn Richard, Mykki Blanco, and Tkay Maidza.

Berry Patch, a collaboration with producer Holly (Miguel Oliveira), appeared on Noisia's Vision Recordings in 2020, accompanied by remix EP Berry Patch: Blended. Machinedrum returned to Ninja Tune with the full-length A View of U, a mixture of hip-hop and drum'n'bass with guests including Freddie Gibbs, Father, Sub Focus, and Chrome Sparks. 2021 EP Psyconia featured guests Angelica Bess, Deniro Farrar, Chrome Sparks, and Jorge Elbrecht. After returning to the tstewart alias with the downtempo album Elysian in 2022, Machinedrum released a second EP with Holly, River of Heaven, in 2023. 4#TRAX, a blend of drum'n'bass and garage, included guests Kučka, Liz, and Rei Brown. 3FOR82, named after Stewart's date of birth, appeared in 2024. Continuing his fusion of drum'n'bass, hip-hop, R&B, and garage, the album featured appearances by Tinashe, Mick Jenkins, Duckwrth, Aja Monet, and others. ~ Mark Pytlik & Paul Simpson

Jimmy Edgar's music is like the aural equivalent of those mid-'80s "sexy robot" airbrushed pop art posters by Hajime Sorayama -- the sound of a sleek digital future when machines have the same erotic desires as human beings. A postmodern polymath who also built a successful career as a graphic artist, photographer, and fashion designer, Edgar started out releasing abstract minimal techno before signing with Warp and establishing his signature blend of glitch-hop, electro-funk, futuristic R&B, and raw sexuality on releases like 2006's Color Strip. Subsequent releases under his own name continued in this vein, including 2010 full-length XXX, while numerous records under pseudonyms explored various styles of electro, techno, and house. Much of the material issued through his Ultramajic label focused on club material, while his collaboration with Travis Stewart (Machinedrum), JETS, pursued a vivid fusion of trap, R&B, and neon electronics on releases like 2019's Zoospa. Subsequent solo albums Cheetah Bend (2021) and Liquids Heaven (2022) similarly explored a fusion of hip-hop, R&B, and deconstructed club music.

Jimmy Edgar was born on August 10, 1983, in Detroit and manifested a love for music at an early age, learning to play saxophone and drums, gigging in local bands, and experimenting with making electronic music. His elder brother was a music promoter, and at the tender age of 15 he found himself DJing alongside techno legends Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson, and Derrick May. His first track was released by the respected German label Poker Flat in 2002, when he was just 19 years old.

The same year, after hearing just that one track, the Florida label Merck signed him and put out his debut album, My Mines I, which was attributed to his "dual alter ego," Kristuit Salu vs. Morris Nightingale. The next year, the Dutch label audio.nl released his second album, %20, this time under the alias Michaux. These two works, which were fairly experimental and can be classified with the glitch or clicks + cuts genre that was prevalent at the time, received favorable reviews and attracted the attention of powerhouse electronica label Warp, which signed him to a worldwide deal. His debut release for the label, in 2004, was the four-track Access Rhythm EP, which had more of a hip-hop sound and featured, in a nod to his former alter ego, the "Morris Nightingale Theme." Later the same year, he followed up with the Bounce Make Model mini-album, which first crystallized the erotic electro-funk sound for which he would become well known.

Edgar spent the next two years working on his debut Warp full-length. The result was Color Strip, a breathtakingly original album on which Edgar attempted to "capture the essence of Detroit." Inspired by sex and drugs, made using a selection of software custom-built by Edgar himself, and recorded to analog tape, it had a sleazy urban feel that combined techno, electro, R&B, glitch, and hip-hop influences and was an immediate success, invoking a slew of critical acclaim.

In the four-year gap following the release of Color Strip, Edgar released low-key records under several aliases including Black Affair, Her Bad Habit, and X District, and was rumored to be part of the mysterious electro outfits Plus Device and Creepy Autograph. In 2008, he moved from Detroit to New York City, which had an influence on the music he was to start making next. When his follow-up album, XXX, was allegedly rejected by Warp, he signed with the German label K7, which released it in July 2010. While in a similar vein to Color Strip, it had a somewhat more straightforward and "live" sound, with Edgar playing bass guitar on a number of tracks and collaborating with guest vocalists such as Azealia Banks, before her career took off.

Edgar continued issuing singles on labels like Nonplus and Semantica before releasing his full-length Majenta on U.K. bass label Hotflush in 2012. He founded the duo JETS (sometimes spelled J-E-T-S) with former Merck labelmate Travis Stewart (Machinedrum) that year, debuting with a self-titled EP on Leisure System. Edgar and Derrick May each compiled a disc of the double-CD We Love... Detroit, which was released in early 2013. That year, while based in Berlin, Edgar and designer Pilar Zeta formed the Ultramajic label, which launched with Edgar's Hot Inside EP. This was followed by a split EP from Aden (Travis Stewart) and Creepy Autograph, and Edgar's Mercurio EP. Saline, including a collaboration with the late DJ Rashad, appeared in 2014.

Edgar's first mix CD, Fabriclive 79, came out in 2015. Several more EPs and singles were released throughout the remainder of the decade, including a 2015 collaboration with Truncate, 2016's Dreamz Come True, and 2018's "Burn So Deep" with Dawn Richard. The singer also appeared on JETS' 2019 full-length Zoospa, which additionally featured Tkay Maidza, Mykki Blanco, and regular collaborator Rochelle Jordan. In 2020, Edgar released single collaborations with Hudson Mohawke ("BENT"), SOPHIE ("METAL"), and Danny Brown ("GET UP"), and produced Atlanta rapper B La B's mixtape Who I Be. All of these guests appeared on his 2021 full-length Cheetah Bend, which additionally featured Matt Ox and Millie Go Lightly. 2022's Liquids Heaven similarly fused trap, electro, and hyperpop with guests including Trinidad James, ZelooperZ, and 645AR. ~ John D. Buchanan & Paul Simpson

Mykki Blanco first emerged in 2010 as a character in a video art project, but the persona grew to encompass a vibrant talent that knew no bounds. In addition to poetry, performance art, social commentary, and activism, Blanco is also known for rapping and creating fun, audacious music that pulls inspiration from Yoko Ono, Bikini Kill, and mainstream pop alike. Frequent EPs, singles, and mixtapes throughout the first half of the 2010s have led to the increasingly personal studio full-length albums Mykki (2016), Broken Hearts and Beauty Sleep (2021), and Stay Close to Music (2022).

Blanco, who identifies as transfeminine, grew up bouncing between San Mateo, California and Raleigh, North Carolina before moving to New York City at the age of 16. After a stint at the Art Institute of Chicago, they moved back to N.Y.C. and began to write, publishing a book of poems, From the Silence of Duchamp to the Noise of Boys, in 2011. Looking to bring some art to the mainstream, Blanco began to perform crushing industrial rock under the name No Fear, and glamorous riot grrrl rap under the name Mykki Blanco.

In 2012, Mykki made a grand entrance with the Mykki Blanco & the Mutant Angels EP, featuring cuts like "Join My Militia (Nas Gave Me a Perm)" and "Gay Dog." Dubbed "Hip-Hop's New Queen" by Elle magazine's blog, Blanco joined Death Grips on tour, opening for the avant-hip-hop group on its late 2012 tour of America. The mixtape Cosmic Angel: The Illuminati Prince/ss arrived at the end of the year, while the EP Betty Rubble: The Initiation followed in 2013.

In January 2015, Blanco formed the DOGFOOD Music Group label in partnership with !K7. Their initial release was Mykki Blanco Presents C-Ore, a compilation issued in September 2015. Blanco next issued a Woodkid-produced single, "High School Never Ends," in May 2016, which preceded their September 2016 debut album, Mykki. After signing to Transgressive Records, Blanco began working on their sophomore album. Broken Hearts and Beauty Sleep arrived in 2021, featuring production by FaltyDL and appearances from Blood Orange, Big Freedia, and Kari Faux. Continuing to work with FaltyDL, Blanco quickly returned the next year with Stay Close to Music, a set with an eye-popping roster of collaborators including Michael Stipe, Saul Williams, ANOHNI, and Kelsey Lu. ~ David Jeffries