WDerek Bailey was an English avant-garde guitarist and figure in the free improvisation movement. Bailey abandoned conventional performance techniques found in jazz, exploring atonality, noise, and whatever unusual sounds he could produce with the guitar. Much of his work was released on his own label Incus Records. In addition to solo work, Bailey collaborated frequently with other musicians and recorded with collectives such as Spontaneous Music Ensemble and Company.
WHarold Montgomory Budd is an American avant-garde composer and poet. He was born in Los Angeles and raised in the Mojave Desert. He has developed a style of playing piano he terms "soft pedal". He became a respected composer in the minimalist and avant-garde scene of Southern California in the late 1960s, and later became better known for his work with figures such as Brian Eno and Robin Guthrie.
WBernd Friedmann is a German musician and producer who works under a variety of project names in the fields of electronica, dub and jazz.
WStephen Ian Batt, known professionally as Steve Jansen, is an English musician, composer and record producer.
WToshimaru Nakamura is a Japanese musician, active in free improvisation and Japanese onkyo.
WRyuichi Sakamoto is a Japanese composer, singer, songwriter, record producer, activist, and actor who has pursued a diverse range of styles as a solo artist and as a member of Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO). With his bandmates Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi, Sakamoto influenced and pioneered a number of electronic music genres.
WDavid Sylvian is an English singer-songwriter and musician who came to prominence in the late 1970s as frontman and principal songwriter of the band Japan. The band's androgynous look and increasingly electronic sound made them an important influence on the UK's early-1980s New Romantic scene. Following their breakup, Sylvian embarked on a solo career with his debut album Brilliant Trees (1984). His solo work has been described by AllMusic as "far-ranging and esoteric", and has included collaborations with artists such as Ryuichi Sakamoto, Robert Fripp, Holger Czukay, Jon Hassell, Bill Nelson (musician) and Fennesz. While his recordings of the 1980s and 1990s were a mixture of pop, jazz fusion, and avant-garde experimentalism mixed with ambient, his more recent compositions have drawn increasingly on musical minimalism and free improvisation.
WDavid Toop is an English musician, author, and professor of audio culture and improvisation at the London College of Communication. He was a regular contributor to British music magazine The Wire and the British magazine The Face. He was a member of the Flying Lizards.