Part Of The Band. Out now
From Being Funny In A Foreign Language
The new album. October 14th

Join our community: https://drop.cobrand.com/d/SpinninRecords/Official

You might know us through some of your favourite tracks in dance music.

Tour tickets available here: https://ffm.bio/tritonal

Formed in 2008 in Austin, TX, by Chad Cisneros and David Reed, Tritonal are one of the most successful US electronic music duos of the past decade, today counting nearly 1B collective streams across their discography, which comprises three artist albums, +200 originals and remixes, and six Top 10 hits on Billboard's electronic charts.

In May 2011, Tritonal released their debut album, ‘Piercing the Quiet,’ one of their first successes. They followed up with the three-part ‘Metamorphic’ EP series (2013-2014), which marked Tritonal’s expansion into new genres and featured their breakout hits, “Now or Never” and “Anchor.”

In Sept. 2016, Tritonal released their second album, ‘Painting With Dreams,’ which has garnered +140M streams on Spotify alone. Their third album, ‘U & Me’ (June 2019), which features collaborations with Sultan + Shepard, platinum singer-songwriter Mozella and multi-platinum artist Rachel Platten, reached the Top 10 on Billboard’s Dance/Electronic Album Sales chart. Tritonal’s 4th and most recent album was released at the beginning of 2021 as an hour long meditation piece. Unique to their existing catalog, Reverence was made in the height of the pandemic from more of a calling than anything else to serve their fans and provide art with a motive of introspection.

Cisneros and Reed are also co-owners of the tastemaker label Enhanced Music, which counts nearly 2,000 releases since its launch in 2008. Dubbed “the label that delivers tune after tune” by Mixmag, Enhanced celebrated its 10-year anniversary in 2018 via the expansive '10 Years of Enhanced' compilation.

In addition to ‘Tritonia,’ their globally streamed weekly radio show, Tritonal have headlined the world’s leading festivals, including EDC Las Vegas, Lollapalooza, and Ultra Music Festival.

Follow our Tritonia Selects playlist on Spotify and check out all the tracks we’ve played in this episode of Tritonia: https://tritonal.fanlink.to/TritoniaSelects

Monocle 24’s weekly tour of the most inspiring people, companies and ideas in global business, whether they are  starting from scratch, reinvigorating the family firm or developing new technology.

Monocle 24 is Monocle’s round-the-clock radio station that launched in October 2011 and is broadcast from our headquarters at Midori House in Marylebone. You can listen live via our player at monocle.com, as well as downloading shows from our site, iTunes or SoundCloud; we also have a handy app. 

The station delivers news and comment, plus magazine shows covering a range of topics including food and drink, urbanism, design, culture, business and print media. Our newsgathering operation includes bureaux in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Zürich, New York and Toronto, as well as dedicated correspondents in over 30 cities from São Paulo to Sydney.


 The story of UB40, and how this group of young friends from Birmingham transcended their working-class origins to become the world’s most successful reggae band is not the stuff of fairytales as might be imagined. The group’s led a charmed life in many respects it’s true, but it’s been a long haul since the days they’d meet up in the bars and clubs around Moseley, and some of them had to scrape by on less than £8 a week unemployment benefit. The choice was simple if you’d left school early. You could either work in one of the local factories, like Robin Campbell did, or scuffle along aimlessly whilst waiting for something else to happen.

By the summer of 1978, something else did happen, and the nucleus of UB40 began rehearsing in a local basement. Robin’s younger brother Ali, Earl Falconer, Brian Travers and James Brown all knew each other from Moseley School of Art, whilst Norman Hassan had been a friend of Ali’s since school. Initially, they thought of themselves as a "jazz-dub-reggae" band, but by the time Robin was persuaded to join and they’d recruited Michael Virtue and Astro – who’d learnt his craft with Birmingham sound-system Duke Alloy – the group had already aligned themselves to left-wing political ideals and forged their own identity, separate from the many punk and Two Tone outfits around at that time. The group had nailed their colours to the mast by naming themselves after an unemployment benefit form. Their political convictions hadn’t been gleaned second hand either, but cemented in place whilst attending marches protesting against the National Front, or rallies organised by Rock Against Racism.

By the time Chrissie Hynde invited them to tour with the Pretenders during the summer of 1980 and their debut single "King b/w Food For Thought" had sailed into the UK Top 5, all the essential elements of UB40 were already in place. Their line-up will remain unchanged for almost thirty years, and they will continue playing a mix of original material and inspired choice of reggae covers in a style that’s instantly accessible with its bright melodies and sweeping horn arrangements – one that’s allied to a formidable rhythm section, capable of holding its own with anything from Jamaica.

UB40’s first album was released the following September, on Graduate Records. Their deal allowed them more creative freedom than if they had signed with a major label. The cover artwork memorably duplicated an unemployment benefit card, with the title "Signing Off" rubber-stamped in red, but it was the music that quickly worked its way into the affections of a young, mainly student crowd with its knowing lyrics, solid reggae rhythms and dubby, instrumental passages, offset by warm horn solos and Jamaican style scatting. There was nothing else like it at the time. As a multi-cultural band from Birmingham, UB40 weren’t drawn into trying to sound "authentic," and there was considerably more depth to their music than that of many punk and 2Tone bands. "I’m a British subject, not proud of it, whilst I carry the burden of shame," they sang on one of the tracks. Accepting the truth of their own situation amidst a sea of other reggae songs proclaiming black heritage gave us a valuable insight into where UB40 were coming from. They were unafraid to stand up and be counted, and British audiences instinctively loved them for it. "Signing Off" duly went to No. 2 in the UK and stayed on the nation’s album charts for 72 weeks.

On September 2nd, 2013, UB40 released their latest album ‘Getting Over The Storm’ on Universal/Virgin Records.

World of Reggae in one village: REGGAEVILLE
REGGAEVILLE.com is a online music magazine

Arul Prathan is following