Finley Quaye emerged on the U.K. music scene in the mid-'90s, delivering a unique amalgam of pop, trip-hop, soul, and jazz with his critically acclaimed 1997 debut,
Maverick a Strike. His first appearance on record came in 1995, providing vocals for "Finleys Rainbow," a track from A Guy Called Gerald's seminal breakbeat album Black Secret Technology. He recorded and co-produced
Maverick a Strike, working in Sheffield with Kevin Bacon from the Comsat Angels. The album earned critical and commercial success worldwide, and also gained him a BRIT Award for Best Male Solo Artist.
Quaye delivered two more LPs for Epic in 2000's
Vanguard and 2004's
Much More Than Much Love, the latter of which featured a collaborative single with
Beth Orton and
William Orbit called "Dice" that became a minor hit. Although it would be another eight years before he delivered a follow-up album, 2008 saw the release of both a new EP, Pound for Pound, and a greatest-hits package,
The Best of the Epic Years. A release on the French label Sakifo titled 28th February Road arrived in 2012, followed two years later by a reggae LP called Royal Rasses, which saw
Quaye working with
Norman Grant of long-tenured Jamaican act
the Twinkle Brothers. An album of demos, appropriately titled Demos, was released in the spring of 2016, followed in 2017 by a pair of digital-only concert recordings, Live in Geneva and Live in Jerusalem. ~ Timothy Monger