* En anglais uniquement
Howie B was a popular London-based DJ and nascent studio hand prior to his move into full-time recording and production in the early '90s. Born in Glasgow, Howard Bernstein's association with Bristol club faves like
Soul II Soul and
Massive Attack helped fuel his fusion of soul, hip-hop, house, jazz, and funk, which he first hazarded on early collaborative projects like
Dobie and
Nomad Soul. He launched his own label, Pussyfoot, in 1994, already having released tracks under his own name and Olde Scottish through the noted outbound hip-hop imprints 2Kool and Mo'Wax. He'd also issued a small (but steady) stream of material that moved hip-hop instrumentals one step beyond the experimental, thus joining
Howie B with beat junkies like
DJ Shadow,
U.N.K.L.E,
Portishead, and
Coldcut at the forefront of a U.K. breakbeat renaissance.
Although his genre-spanning work with
Skylab on 1994's #1 brought his talents for organized chaos to a wider audience, it was ultimately his role in the production chair (on albums by
Tricky,
Björk, and eventually
U2) that landed
Howie B. a multi-album recording deal with Polydor Records. This deal yielded LPs including 1996's
Music for Babies, 1997's
Turn the Dark Off, and 1999's
Snatch. He continued fielding production offers in the early 2000s and eventually partnered with
Casino Royale, an eclectic Italian band that -- like
Howie himself -- had worked with
U2 during the previous decade. The group requested his help in producing their comeback album, Reale, and the resulting record hit Italian shores in 2006.
Howie B wished to continue working with the material, however, and secured the band's permission to mold the footage into something new. Reale: Not in the Face arrived in 2008, featuring his own reworked versions of
Casino Royale's master recordings. In 2013 he founded HB Recordings and released his album
Down with the Dawn on the label a year later. ~ Sean Cooper & Andrew Leahey