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Jonathan Allen Lethem (born February 19, 1964) is an American novelist, essayist and short story writer. His first novel, Gun, with Occasional Music, a genre work that mixed elements of science fiction and detective fiction, was published in 1994. It was followed by three more science fiction novels. In 1999, Lethem published Motherless Brooklyn, a National Book Critics Circle Award-winning novel that achieved mainstream success. In 2003, he published The Fortress of Solitude, which became a New York Times Best Seller. In 2005, he received a MacArthur Fellowship.

Lethem was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Judith Lethem, a political activist, and Richard Brown Lethem, an avant-garde painter. He was the eldest of three children. He is half-Jewish. His brother Blake became an artist, and his sister Mara became a photographer and writer. The family lived in a commune in the pre-gentrified Brooklyn neighborhood of North Gowanus (now called Boerum Hill). Despite the racial tensions and conflicts, he later described his bohemian childhood as “thrilling” and culturally wide-reaching. He gained an encyclopedic knowledge of the music of Bob Dylan, saw Star Wars twenty-one times during its original theatrical release, and read the complete works of the science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. Lethem later said Dick’s work was “as formative an influence as marijuana or punk rock—as equally responsible for beautifully fucking up my life, for bending it irreversibly along a course I still travel.”

Lykke Li (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈlʏˌkɛ ˈliː]; born Li Lykke Timotej Svensson Zachrisson; 18 March 1986 in Ystad), is a Swedish singer-songwriter. Her music often blends elements of pop, indie rock and electronic; various instruments can also be found in her songs, including violins, synthesizers, tambourines, trumpets, saxophones and cellos. Her debut album, Youth Novels, was released in 2008.

Li Lykke Timotej Zachrisson was born in Ystad, Skåne; her mother is a photographer and her father, a musician, is a member of Dag Vag. The family moved to Stockholm when Zachrisson was a toddler and when she was six moved to a mountaintop in Portugal where they lived for five years. The family also spent time in Lisbon and Morocco, and winters in Nepal and India. She moved to the neighborhood of Bushwick, Brooklyn in New York for three months when she was 19. She returned when she was 21 to record her album.

Lykke had some success with the EP "Little Bit" in 2007. Stereogum named her an artist to watch in October 2007 and described her music as a mix of soul, electro and "powdered-sugar pop".

Ellen Allien, born Ellen Fraatz, is a German electronic musician, music producer and founder of BPitch Control music label. She lives in Berlin, Germany. She sings in both German and English. She has said that one of the main inspirations for her music is the culture of reunified Berlin; her album Stadtkind was dedicated to the city. Her music is best described as a blend of IDM and electro music, which is dance-floor oriented, yet at the same time has noticeable experimental elements.

Ellen was born in Berlin. Her father played guitar and piano. During 1989, she lived in London where she first came into contact with electronic music. When she later returned to Berlin, electronic music had become increasingly popular in Germany. In 1992, she became resident DJ in the Bunker, Tresor and in E-Werk. She started her own show on the Berlin radio station Kiss-FM and created her own record label, calling them both "Braincandy". Due to discrepancies with disk sales, she gave Braincandy up in 1997 and instead, organized parties with the name, "B Pitch". Allien created the label BPitch Control in 1999. The label's releases from Sascha Funke and Tok Tok were particularly successful. Allien released her first album, Stadtkind ("city child"), in 2001, and Berlinette in 2003, After releasing Thrills, Allien created a BPitch sub-label for minimal tech and minimal house, called "Memo Musik", in 2005. Orchestra of Bubbles, in collaboration with Apparat, featurings songs like "Way Out" and "Jet", was released in 2006.