Populous

Populous is the project of multi-instrumentalist/producer Andrea Mangia, a musical nomad whose work, which ranges from shoegaze-tinged pop to sounds from around the globe, is defined by its dreamy atmospheres. Mangia's early albums, such as 2005's Queue for Love, blended hip-hop, soul, and reggae elements into hazy, chilled-out electronic soundscapes, but his horizons broadened as the years passed. On 2008's Drawn in Basic, he combined the influences of My Bloody Valentine and Raymond Scott into spacey electro-pop that predated the boom of like-minded artists in the 2010s. By that time, however, Mangia had already moved on to using his passion for musicology to create boundary breaking and border-crossing albums like 2014's Night Safari. Mangia rang in another decade of music with 2020's W, which championed women's musical artistry in free-flowing ways that played to Populous' strengths.