Todd Edwards


Todd Edwards is an American house and garage record producer, DJ and singer from Bloomfield, New Jersey. He currently resides in Los Angeles.
Edwards' music has been recognized as a major influence on the nascent UK garage genre in the United Kingdom in the mid-1990s. He became known for his intensive sampling and remixing technique that involves "cross-hatching brief snatches of vocals into a melodic-percussive honeycomb of blissful hiccups", as described by critic Simon Reynolds. Used both on his solo albums and on his remixes for other artists, this complex vocal sampling technique in some cases renders the original track almost unrecognizable.
With remixes numbering in the hundreds, some of the artists Edwards has remixed include Wildchild, St. Germain, Benjamin Diamond, Justice, Klaxons and Dimitri from Paris. Edwards co-produced and performed vocals on the Daft Punk song "Face to Face" from the album Discovery. Edwards worked again with Daft Punk, co-writing, co-producing and contributing vocals to the song "Fragments of Time" from their 2013 album Random Access Memories, for which he won a Grammy.

History

Todd Edwards began his musical career around 1992. He employs vocal reconstruction techniques to his songs, creating a unique vocal collage set to a four-on-the-floor beat. Marc "MK" Kinchen, who is primarily responsible for pioneering this technique, is one of Edwards's influences.
Edwards became a committed Christian in the 1990s after having negative experiences with religion in his youth. This is evident by recurring hidden messages found in his compositions, which often contain religious phrases.

Beginnings

In his early records, Todd Edwards was influenced by house music and grew into the UK garage and 2-step garage scene. Inspired by Todd Terry, MK, and experiences from his own trials and errors, Todd Edwards developed a unique sound of vocal sampling in place of musical instrument sampling on his tracks. In 1995, there was some talk developing about Edwards. His manager was approached by St. Germain, who asked Edwards to do a remix of his song, "Alabama Blues". Although Edwards has produced and remixed some great remixes in this time, he didn't begin to DJ until the early 2000s. He went out gradually landing more gigs in the UK, hoping to land a bigger one than the next. For an American native, Edwards quickly gained underground popularity in Europe.

2001–present

Edwards co-produced and performed vocals on the Daft Punk song "Face to Face" from the album Discovery. The song reached No. 1 on the Billboard Club chart in 2004. In 2006, Edwards sang on each track of the LP Odyssey, using multiple aliases on the album. In 2012, Edwards released the EP I Want You Back made in collaboration with French producer Surkin. In April 2013, Edwards revealed that he had contributed to Daft Punk's album Random Access Memories; he expressed that it was difficult keeping his involvement a secret. He provided vocals for and co-wrote the song "Fragments of Time", as well as providing additional production. At the 2014 Grammy Awards, Random Access Memories won awards for Best Dance/Electronica Album as well as Album of the Year; Edward's contributions to "Fragments of Time" thus earned him his first Grammy.
Red Bull Music Academy teamed up with director Ralf Schmerberg to produce What Difference Does It Make: A Film About Making Music for its fifteenth anniversary. The film features Edwards sharing his thoughts and beliefs on the music industry. Edwards continues to produce and remix tracks today, with planned tours for the future. One of his projects is a vocal album featuring his own singing and co-produced by engineer Peter Franco. Edwards noted that Thomas Bangalter of Daft Punk convinced him to pursue such a project, and may oversee it.

Discography

Albums