Biography All Music Guide
All Music Guide:
The Latin-infused sounds of multi-instrumentalist Shawn Lee helped him to become the flagship artist for the Wall of Sound imprint We Love You. Lee relocated twice in pursuit of his music career, first from his hometown of Wichita, KS to Los Angeles, where he polished his skills and worked with Jeff Buckley, and then, in 1995, to London, where he eventually joined Wall of Sound to issue a series of singles and his debut album, Monkey Boy, in 2000. The next full-length didn't come until four years later, after Lee had signed to Ubiquity, which released the first of his Studio Sessions series, Music and Rhythm. The series continued with Moods and Grooves in 2005 and Strings and Things in 2006. The music was created to be used in film and television soundtracks, including Desperate Housewives and Malcolm in the Middle. Also in 2006, Soul Visa, which had originally come out in Japan in 2004, was issued in the U.S. In 2007 Voices and Choices, which included a track from labelmate Nino Moschella, hit shelves, followed later by A Very Ping Pong Christmas: Funky Treats, the musician's take on seasonal favorites. The year 2008 saw the release of the musically globetrotting Miles of Styles along with Clutch of the Tiger, his collaboration with producer Clutchy Hopkins. A second Hopkins collaboration, Fascinating Fingers, appeared in 2009 just before Soul in the Hole, a collaboration between Lee and a number of vocalists, including Darondo, Nicole Willis, Paul Butler, Karime Kendra, and Orgone's Fanny Franklin.
In 2010, Lee was equally prolific. First up was Into the Wind, a collaboration that married internationally renowned harpist Bei Bei's traditional styles of Chinese classical music to his own blunted slippery funk and hip-hop. He followed this with a second collection of psychedelic funk and Northern soul explorations on Sing a Song in July. This album included collaborations with vocalists Franklin, Robert Bradley, the Superimpositions, Miles Bonny, and others. Just before 2010 closed, Ubiquity released Lee's Hooked Up Classics, a collection of a dozen famous classical themes that were given the Ping Pong Orchestra treatment, inspired by Louis Clark's (of ELO fame) Hooked on Classics album series that was so popular in the early '80s. Being prolific, Lee kicked off early 2011 with the album World of Funk, featuring the Ping Pong Orchestra. As implied by its title, Lee (with his beats, multiple instruments, and samples) took on the music of the world. World of Funk finds him playing everything from sitar to ektar, balaphone, tanpura, kalimba, steel drum, guitarron, Moroccan castanets, cithare, vibraphone, xylophone, bulbul tarang, charango, bouzouki, talking drum, and udu. In addition, he enlisted help from Brazilian vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Curumin, NOMO's Elliot Bergman, and British/Egyptian singer Natacha Atlas, among others.
