Born in the 70s in the North of France, Tyler Smith aka Black Smith Craft discovered acid house at the end of the 80’s. Seduced & consumed by electronic music he fell in love (like many of us did) with the German melodic trance style of labels such as Eye-Q, Platipus & Superstition. By the late 90s he’d started dj’ing and by the turn of the new millenium his tastes had developed into a more underground techno sound influenced by English, German and especially American (Detroit) sounds.  His radio career kicked off in earnest with Tyler appearing regularly on “Tuesday Session” show broadcast on Campus FM (Villeneuve d’Ascq/France) which was run by Dimitri Pike (Mirage/Matrix/Subject Detroit).

Around this time he started producing his own music and the Alphaground website was born. By 2004 Tyler was a regular on many key dance stations in France and Holland and in 2006 (with Erell Ranson & Pedro Cali) he launched the “Interstate 94” show for Livesets.com dedicated to the sound of Detroit, which was quickly followed by the B-side show which showcased the darker, offbeat & industrial sounds. Tyler’s now managing different shows playing Detroit and Birmingham tunes on Livesets, Emergence FM (Limoges/France) and Techno.fm (Montréal/Québec) radios.

2006 saw Tyler’s debut vinyl release – a collaboration with Bionic on German label Audiocrash which was quickly followed by several digital releases. Over the years Tyler’s sound has become darker & more industrial sounding which in turn has led to the birth of our favourite of his many projects  - Black Smith Craft – and with music released already and more on the way for labels including Grovskopa’s mighty Pohjola, Leeds’ finest Limetree and Rednox’s superb free netlabel Ante-Rasa the future is looking bright.

http://www.detatched.co.uk/bookings/black-smith-craft

http://www.myspace.com/alphaground

http://soundcloud.com/tyler-smith/

Kuniaki Takenaga also known as Velarda
Techno, Electro, Industrial DJ & producer born in Sapporo, Hokkaid?, Japan (1977).
Kuniaki Takenaga’s music career began in 1997 influenced by The Prodigy, Ken Ishii, Fumiya Tanaka and the djs’ at the famous Juliana’s Tokyo club.
Takenaga sent his first demo to Takaaki Itoh’s WOLS label from which 2 tracks ended up being included in a 2003 compilation put out by Sheep Records (Germany) SH032-Various-East-Meets-West. In 2004, 2 tracks were included in SH038-Various-World-Herding-Championships-Part-1 and 2005 in SH040-Various-World-Herding-Championships-Part-2.
He was also released on UK’s Damon Vallero’s Electracom label ECOM21-various- Components III EP (Oct 2004). His track ‘Centrals’ on the Components III EP receives praise by several respected DJs including Grovskopa (Sweden), Tuomas Rantanen (Finland) who has a track on the same EP, and Yourhighness (Maracas, Sweden) and of course Vallero (also included on the ep) whose label had released the EP. Others who recognised his unique talent included Hokkaido by Yasushi, Hiroki Esashika (Intec), Genn, Hiroaki Ilzuka (Symbolism, Soleil), and SUDO (Elektrigger), etc.
A year later, in 2005, his own 4 tracks vinyl entitled Phantasmagoria (12”) MK010 was released on UK’s Manuke [Pure Plastic] label. In 2006, his track Phalunx is included in Asian Dynasty’s release [AD-Digital001]- Various Artists – Perfect Strangers “Hard Techno” http://www.asiandynasty.net/releases/196
Early 2008, net label Antiritmo/OffAudio [Spain] release “Granphantasm Red” [Offaudio0049] followed by the sequel “Granphantasm Blue EP” [Antiritmo#029] in May, acclaimed with presenting us his last work called Granphantasm Blue EP. This EP is composed by 4 amazing techno tracks full of energy and power focused to the dance floor… Cowbells and continuously filtered acid bleeps: Apocalyptic club music for ship hangars, via EarLabs and Tokafi. In July 2008 the track Granphazilva is included in DJ L’Embrouille’s compilation 2708 [Loopzilla, Germany - lz065} and in September 2008, the track Dis088 on various – I Love OffAudio 3/3 [Offaudio0052].
While releases of his work are happening on other labels, Takenaga was working on founding his own label and ‘becoming’ Velarda’.
Velarda refers to a click/minimal and Progressive House project Takenaga began in early 2008. The principle idea is to take other DJs’ works (Japanese and international) and reinventing them. This brought him to Broken Haze (aka Keisuke Ito) who had released his first album entitled “Raid System”. Some of Japan’s best TECHNO DJ’s – including Takenaga — deconstructed his work and started the process of making remixes from his work. In December 2008, Asian Dynasty released ADDL 017, Broken Haze’s Raid System Ver.AD which includes Counter Attack (Kuniaki Takenaga Velarda Remix). All the tracks were remade to give the song’s feel a more TECHNO feel but that could be expanded to hard techno, ambient, digital hardcore, minimal, electro house, etc. Further Velarda releases are expected via Offaudio www.offaudio.com.
In 2008, he founded his music label Dispired Recordings and the rest is history.

http://dispired-industrials.syncl.jp/

http://www.myspace.com/dispiredindustrials

http://soundcloud.com/dispired-industrials