The Clonious

Viennese guitarist, sampler, and producer Paul Movahedi was involved with a variety of post-rock, jazz, and funk-influenced projects before he attended the Red Bull Academy in Toronto in 2007, a preeminent annual event for cutting-edge musicians and artists. He began to get more heavily into producing, and in 2009, a song of his, "Valediction," made it onto the compilation Circulations and Jay Scarlett Present New Worlds. He soon got the attention of Los-Angeles-based left coast soul and electronica label Ubiquity, who signed Movahedi and released the spacy funk 12" EP, Adroit Adventures, in June 2009, under the name the Clonious, a moniker chosen because Movahedi thought it reflected his love for sampling and late-'50s to early-'60s jazz well. Finding support in the British DJ scene (both Radio 1's Mary Anne Hobbs and BBC Radio's Benji B offered early praise) as well as within the left-field Los Angeles scene, the Clonious set about putting together his debut full-length. Combining the traits of artists like Flying Lotus, Madlib, Samiyam, Jazzanova, Prefuse 73, and Georgia Anne Muldrow along with Movahedi's own particular Austrian take on music, Between the Dots was released on Ubiquity in October, 2009, when the producer was just 23 years old.