Personas

Arushi Jain

Modular synthesist, composer, vocalist

Delhi-trained Hindustani vocalist who studied computer science at Stanford, discovered modular synthesis, quit a tech job and moved to Brooklyn. Releases on Leaving Records blend raga, analog oscillators and live patchi…

Billie Eilish

Singer-songwriter

Homeschooled in Los Angeles by musician-actor parents, she sang in the children’s choir then broke through at 13 with Ocean Eyes. When We All Fall Asleep swept the 2020 Grammys; subsequent albums and the Barbie ballad k…

Björk

Singer, composer, producer, and inventor of tactile instruments

Reykjavík-born Björk Guðmundsdóttir moved from the Sugarcubes to a solo path that treats every record as a handmade universe. She adopted the Reactable tactile table, built Biophilia as an educational app-and-object pro…

Brian Eno

Musician, producer, visual artist, ambient pioneer

Art-school non-musician who joined Roxy Music on VCS3, then left to invent ambient music, produce Bowie and U2, and build video sculptures. He still works with analog processes and tape as core tools.

Bruce Springsteen

Singer-songwriter, analog recording artist

New Jersey boardwalk kid who became The Boss. After Born to Run he retreated to a cassette four-track to capture raw, intimate songs that became Nebraska, proving analog limitation could be artistic strength. He has sol…

Chappell Roan

Singer-songwriter

Missouri-born Kayleigh Amstutz who became Chappell Roan, blending camp, drag and analog-inspired pop on The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, connecting with vinyl collectors worldwide.

Charli XCX

Singer, songwriter, and recording artist

Charlotte Emma Aitchison was born in Cambridge, raised in Essex, and started posting songs as a teenager before playing east London warehouse raves. Hits as a writer (I Love It, Fancy) and her own Boom Clap made her a p…

Charlotte de Witte

DJ, record producer, label owner

Ghent-born, she started DJing at 17 under the alias Raving George to dodge gender bias, won a Studio Brussel contest that put her on Tomorrowland, then dropped the alias and pivoted to dark stripped-back techno. She fou…

DJ Shadow

DJ and record producer

Born Joshua Davis in San Jose on June 29, 1972, he started on four-track in high school, pioneered instrumental hip-hop with completely sampled Endtroducing in 1996, and remains a vinyl archaeologist whose collection oc…

DJ Spinderella

DJ, rapper, and producer

Deidra Muriel Roper grew up in Brooklyn fascinated by her father's record collection and began DJing at 14. At 16 she joined Salt-N-Pepa as Spinderella, helping the group become one of the most successful female hip-hop…

Delia Derbyshire

Electronic music composer

Born in Coventry in 1937, Delia Derbyshire studied mathematics and music at Cambridge before joining the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in 1962. She realized Ron Grainer's Doctor Who theme electronically in 1963 using analog…

Diane Keaton

Actress, collector, author

Los Angeles-born Oscar winner for Annie Hall, Godfather trilogy and dozens of films. Obsessive collector of photographs, film stills and magazine clippings kept in 60 scrapbooks. Published visual books; unique hats-and-…

Dinah Shore

Singer, actress and television host

Tennessee-born Frances Rose Shore overcame childhood polio, became a 1940s chart-topping singer with Buttons and Bows, then a television pioneer whose Chevy Show and signature blown kiss defined an era. She made Palm Sp…

Ela Minus

Singer-songwriter, producer, multi-instrumentalist

Bogotá punk drummer who crossed an ocean, learned to build synthesizers by hand in Brooklyn, and swore off computers. Ela Minus makes protest-pop you can touch.

Elijah Wood

Actor, producer, vinyl DJ

Iowa deli-kid turned child star who became Frodo, then quietly built one of Hollywood’s most respected vinyl collections and a decade-plus all-analog DJ partnership that still packs rooms with crates and no playlists.

Elton John

Singer, composer, pianist

Pinner piano prodigy Reg Dwight became Elton John, the flamboyant hit machine who sold more than 300 million records with lyricist Bernie Taupin. EGOT winner, AIDS-foundation founder, and unrepentant crate-digger who st…

Gillian Gilbert

Musician and keyboardist

Manchester-born guitarist who joined New Order after Joy Division, taught herself analog synths on a Bontempi organ, married drummer Stephen Morris and co-founded The Other Two.

Giorgio Moroder

Composer, producer

South Tyrol hotel-kid who taught himself guitar, chased hits across Europe, then locked himself in a Munich studio with a giant Moog to invent I Feel Love and the electronic pulse that still drives disco, synthwave, and…

Haruki Murakami

Novelist and translator

Kyoto-born jazz-bar owner who started writing at 29 after a baseball epiphany, then built a global literary career while never leaving the analog listening room. His novels are soaked in music memory; he still writes to…

Helena Hauff

DJ and record producer

Hamburg-born analog purist who taped library CDs onto cassettes as a child, became Golden Pudel resident, and built a career on one-take analog techno and electro.

Honey Dijon

DJ, producer, and electronic musician

Honey Redmond, born in Chicago in 1968, grew up in a musical African-American family and started clubbing as a teen before DJing in the 1990s. Mentored in the city's house scene, she moved to New York, built a global ca…

Jack White

Musician, producer, Third Man Records founder

Detroit-born John Gillis apprenticed as an upholsterer, co-founded the White Stripes, then created Third Man as a vertically integrated analog sanctuary. He has spent two decades fighting for vinyl, analog tape and phys…

Janelle Monáe

Singer, songwriter, rapper and actor

Kansas City working-class kid who sold homemade CDs, created android alter-ego Cindi Mayweather, earned ten Grammy nominations and came out as nonbinary while starring in Hidden Figures and Moonlight.

John Carpenter

Filmmaker, composer

Kentucky log-cabin kid who hated violin, moved to USC film school, scored his own low-budget movies on analog synths because it was cheap and fast, then watched those pulsing themes become the DNA of synthwave and Stran…

Jonathan Adler

Potter, interior designer and author

New Jersey kid who discovered pottery at summer camp at age 12, ignored the professor who said he had no talent, and launched a ceramics line at Barneys in 1993. Opened his SoHo store in 1998, designed Parker Palm Sprin…

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith

Composer, performer, and analog modular synthesist

Pacific Northwest composer who abandoned folk songwriting after a neighbor lent her a Buchla 100. She soldered, patched, and built a career around unpredictable analog machines that feel organic, releasing acclaimed rec…

Kat Von D

Tattoo artist, musician and entrepreneur

Mexican-born artist who left school at 16 to tattoo, starred on LA Ink, built a vegan beauty line, and returned to analog music with her own albums while collecting records since her punk-teen years.

Kate Bush

Singer, songwriter, producer

Catherine Bush, Kent-born pianist’s daughter, wrote dozens of songs as a teen. David Gilmour backed her demo; EMI waited; Wuthering Heights made her the first woman to top the UK chart with a self-written song. She amas…

Kathleen Hanna

Musician, activist and analog recording artist

Portland-born riot-grrrl architect who turned a four-track cassette recorder into a revolution. Bikini Kill frontwoman who later built Le Tigre and Julie Ruin from analog scraps, proving bedroom gear could change cultur…

Kavinsky

DJ, record producer and actor

Paris actor who crashed a Testarossa into legend, became the zombie sound of Drive, and defined a generation of analog-neon nostalgia before a sudden 2026 farewell.

Kelly Wearstler

Interior designer, collector

South Carolina antiques-dealer’s daughter who studied design in Boston, moved to Los Angeles, launched studio in 1995. Maximalist Hollywood hotels, celebrity homes, six books, furniture line and 2025 Side Hustle art pla…

Lana Del Rey

Singer-songwriter

Lake Placid-born artist who reinvented herself as Lana Del Rey, blending cinematic nostalgia, analog textures and Hollywood glamour across albums from Born to Die to Did You Know That There's a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd.

Lenny Kravitz

Singer, multi-instrumentalist, producer, designer

Manhattan-Brooklyn kid of TV parents who banged pots at three, sang in the California Boys Choir, taught himself guitar and drums, then spent decades chasing real instruments and analog tape while building a rock-funk c…

Leonardo DiCaprio

Actor

Oscar-winning actor whose real-estate portfolio includes a landmark Palm Springs ranch that helped define Hollywood’s desert playground. The house—glass walls, terrazzo, wood ceilings—embodies the exact mid-century retr…

Lisa Bella Donna

Composer, modular synthesist and clinician

American multi-instrumentalist who started in a jingle studio as a teenager, sold her car for an ARP 2600, and became a prolific Moog ambassador known for instant-composition analog albums and live modular performances.

NINA

Synthwave singer-songwriter and producer

Berlin-born Nina Boldt moved to London, absorbed Depeche Mode and new-wave radio, then built a synthwave career with pastel romantic tracks, festival slots, and a Drive-score-sampling EP that helped soundtrack the genre…

Neil Young

Singer-songwriter, musician, filmmaker

Toronto-born, polio-scarred, Winnipeg-raised, Neil Young detonated folk-rock with Buffalo Springfield, then Crazy Horse and CSNY. Harvest made him a star; analog tape, distorted guitars and the fight against digital com…

Nina Kraviz

DJ, record producer, former dentist

Raised in Irkutsk, she studied dentistry in Moscow while hosting radio and writing for fanzines. Her father’s rock, pop and jazz collection sparked a vinyl obsession that turned her into a global techno selector, produc…

Octo Octa

DJ, producer and analog hardware artist

Chicago-born, New Hampshire-based trans woman who started with a high-school drum machine, came out in 2016, and turned analog gear and vinyl into a spiritual practice. Her sets and records feel like spells you can hold.

Pauline Oliveros

Composer and accordionist

Houston Tejana who founded the San Francisco Tape Music Center, listened inside a cistern, and spent a lifetime teaching the world to hear analog space with accordion and tape.

Peggy Gou

DJ, producer, singer, and fashion designer

Incheon-born Kim Min-ji studied fashion in London, learned to DJ in 2009, then became the first Korean to play Berghain. She launched Gudu Records and KIRIN fashion, scored FIFA and F1 placements, and issued a debut alb…

Questlove

Drummer, DJ, producer, author, vinyl collector

Philadelphia-born, a stranger gave him his first records and player at age five; the collection grew to 200,000 LPs that now require extra houses. He drums for The Roots, DJs, won an Oscar for Summer of Soul, and still…

Ramona Andra Langley

Electronic musician and graphic designer

Portland producer Ramona Andra Langley, born 1992, dropped Floral Shoppe as Macintosh Plus on 9 December 2011 and invented a whole internet genre. More than 40 albums later under Vektroid and other aliases, she still tu…

Suzanne Ciani

Musician, composer, sound designer

Indiana-born classical pianist turned Buchla devotee in 1960s Berkeley. Moved to New York with only clothes and her synth, created Coca-Cola pour sound, Xenon pinball voice and Hollywood’s first solo-female film score.…

Tash Sultana

Multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter, and one-person live act

Melbourne artist who received a guitar at age three, busked after leaving a teenage band, then exploded via a homemade “Jungle” video. They play up to fifteen instruments live, identify as gender-fluid, and run their ow…

Taylor Swift

Singer-songwriter

Pennsylvania Christmas-tree-farm kid who wrote her way from Nashville country to stadium-scale pop. She re-recorded her catalog, turned the Eras Tour into a cultural event, and keeps analog formats alive with vinyl vari…

The Blessed Madonna

DJ, producer and musician

Marea Stamper dropped out after bullying in rural Kentucky, sold underground mixtapes at 16, then ran college radio. Mixmag named her DJ of the Year in 2016—the first woman. She changed her stage name in 2020, released…

The Weeknd

Singer-songwriter, record producer

Scarborough-raised Abel Tesfaye dropped out, slept on floors, posted anonymous mixtapes, then turned dark R&B into stadium-scale 80s synth-pop with Blinding Lights, the most-streamed song in Spotify history, and a trilo…

Thurston Moore

Musician, guitarist, songwriter and author

Born July 25, 1958 in Coral Gables, Florida, Moore moved to New York, co-founded Sonic Youth in 1981 with Kim Gordon, pioneered noise-rock guitar tunings, ran Ecstatic Peace! label and authored cassette-culture books. S…

Trina Turk

Fashion designer

Taught to sew by her mother at age 11, Trina Turk studied apparel design and launched her print-and-color-driven fashion line in 1995 with husband Jonathan Skow. Inspired by vintage clothing and California modernism, sh…

Wendy Carlos

Musician and composer

Rhode Island science-fair prodigy who turned Bach into platinum on a custom Moog, scored Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange and The Shining, and quietly became one of electronic music’s first openly trans stars.

Yaeji

DJ, singer and producer

Kathy Yaeji Lee moved between Queens, Atlanta and Seoul before studying graphic design and East Asian studies. College radio and Pittsburgh after-hours parties turned her into a DJ; 2017 EPs made her a festival regular.…