artist: Banco De Gaia country of origin: UK style(s): Global fusion/house, entho-ambient, ambient dub, psychedelia essential releases: Maya (1994, Six Degrees) Last Train To Lhasa (1995, Six Degrees) Big Men Cry (1997, Six Degrees) The Magical Sounds Of Banco de Gaia (1999, Six Degrees) Ten Years (2002, Six Degrees)

Masterminded by one Toby Marks, Banco De Gaia is often aligned with a family of sample-heavy, psychedelic, ethnically-flavoured ambient dub acts that includes Loop Guru and Sounds From The Ground. The basic approach of ambient dub is looping, stretching and echoing a track's component parts ("redubbing" it) over long distances, grounding it with fat basslines and slow, chunky breakbeats and reggae patterns.

But while Marks himself has been a huge influence on ethno-techno-trance and its many exotic variations, his music is not so easy to pigeonhole. Not only skilled with the recording studio and synthesisers, Marks is also a versatile live musician. One senses a rock and roll heart beating in the middle of it all - inspired as much by progressive rockers like Pink Floyd as by the sounds of Jamaica or classic European ambient - and that puts a certain distance between Banco De Gaia and the synthetic panoramas of comparable electronic acts. What's more, it really is madly eclectic music. The grooves of hip hop, the simplicity of acid house and the looseness of jazz have all been crucial elements in Marks' music at some point. His more uptempo excursions are well suited to the dancefloor, as anyone who has witnessed his incendiary live performances could tell you.

While the earliest albums boast some outstanding individual tracks - Maya being the best among them - Banco's fifth album Last Train To Lhasa is the first time Marks completey ties together the disparate elements that were still coalescing on previous releases. It's a brilliant kaleidoscope of global beats and flavours, expertly arranged and surreally stitched together with sound-effects interludes ala Pink Floyd. There has always been an element of political awareness in his music and on Lhasa it's the Chinese occupation if Tibet, which on several tracks lends an extra emotional poignancy not normally found in ethno-flavoured electronica. "China Clouds Not Mountains" literally aches with a sad, beautiful melody played on what sounds like a hammer dulcimer. Still, the album's busy polyrhythms and rich melodies are often joyful, too.

Quite different but equally as good is Big Men Cry, Banco's most tribal album which boasts a looser sound and a darker, more intense exploration of percussive rhythms in its first half. The second half gets into more atmospheric ambient territory, highlighted by the spine-tingling prog epic "Star Station Earth". The Magical Sounds Of Banco De Gaia despite its silly name is an imaginative, quirky and euphoric collection. 10 Years is a double CD compilation that's carefully compiled and highly recommended for newcomers, with an uptempo first disc balanced by a second that's more on the ambient tip.

Banco De Gaia's catalogue nearly disappeared from the face of the earth in the late 1990's after Marks' UK record company went bust. Eventually he was able to buy the rights back to his own music and was later taken on by North American label Six Degrees, which has since re-released most of his back catalogue. You'll also hear some excellent Banco moments on DJ's Sasha & Digweed's seminal DJ mix album Northern Exposure (1996) and the excellent Ambient Dub series of compilations from Waveform Records.

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