Witness the space-age master of techno soul as he touches down in Auckland for one night only...

You may not know the name but chances are you've heard his music. In 1998 Aril Brikha reacquainted the world with deep techno soul, his release Groove La Chord crossing generic boundaries and ending up in the crates of house and techno DJs alike. Is it techno? Is it house? Is it deep house? It's everything and nothing. Groove La Chord is simply timeless. No one was more surprised about the success of Groove La Chord than Brikha himself , after all, he'd originally presented it on his demo as a potential B-side. Two years after he recorded Groove La Chord, Brikha heard it in a club for the first time - Derrick May pulled it out in Chicago. Aril then realised it was a good track. The renegade always walks alone. As a cultural exile in Sweden, Aril Brikha has never been one to conform. Born of mixed Iranian/Iraqi blood, his family moved to Sweden when Aril was three.

Brikha demonstrated his musicality early - with his parents nurturing his talent. At seven, Aril was given a keyboard and his father, a pianist, taught him to play. Before long, Aril was picking up notes by ear. In his early teens he developed an interest in electronic music acts - such as Depeche Mode and Jean Michel Jarre. Brikha obtained an Atari sequencer and, after initially emulating the music of others, he began composing his own at 16. Friends who heard his material told him it was 'Detroit techno'. Brikha had no idea what that was - and so they played him records by Robert Hood and Berlin's Basic Channel. "I'm just growing up in a real small city in Sweden, it's four or five hours from Stockholm, and you don't get into techno music or certain labels, it just happens - and that's what happened there, I guess."

Swedish techno is known for it's hard loop based formula, so when Brikha started making his cerebral, intricate melodic techno-soul awash with emotion it went over the heads of his local scene. Looking further afield, Brikha posted a demo to Transmat records. Derrick May got in touch and the result was his first stateside release, the Art Of Vengeance Ep, featuring Groove La Chord. The album Deeparture In Time followed and has catapulted Brikha to the fore of the deep techno movement, seeing him play his formidable brand of live techno funk dripping with emotion at the Detroit Electronic Music Festival and at London's cooler-than-thou Fabric. Witness the space-age master of techno soul as he touches down in Auckland for one night only at Fu, 24th April.