Ultraista

Self-described “multimedia trio founded on a mutual love of Afrobeat, electronic music, dance music, visual art and tequila,” Ultraísta is a London based band formed in 2011 by Nigel Godrich and Joey Waronker, who were later joined by Laura Bettinson.

In an interview for KCRW they revealed that the project started with three principles:

• To use no guitars
• To make uplifting tracks
• To be rhythmically driven

Most of their lyrics are hard to understand or even comprehend, they’ve told that this is a reference to Ultraísmo, the literary movement that is the source of the band’s name, whose manifesto had as its first rule the “reduction of the lyric element to its primordial element: metaphor.” With more than 1.7 million plays on Spotify, “Smalltalk (Four Tet Remix)” is their most famous song, it was first released as a pre-ordering bonus track on their self-titled debut album and later included on its remix album, Ultraísta Remixes.