REQ

Ian Cassar is an English disc jockey, electronic music producer and graffiti artist who works under the pseudonyms REQ and req-1. In the words of AllMusic's Sean Cooper, REQ began in his native Brighton as "one of the U.K.'s most respected graffiti artists."He began his graffiti work in 1984 "after the Beat Street tour hyped his sense to the basic tenets of hip hop. Although he was a disc jockey for many years without musical training, REQ only began producing music of his own in the mid-1990s when he signed to Skint Records, who issues his earliest releases. As a graffiti artist, he had previously been a member of the largely musical collective Beats International. His debut album, One, was critically acclaimed by such publications as The Wire and production duo Coldcut.In 2015, Fact Magazine ranked the album at number 14 in their list of "The 50 Best Trip-Hop Albums of All Time" and noted "his compositions didn’t pander to the popularity of the growing trip-hop scene, instead dwelling in a noisy, near-ambient back room."His follow-up album, Frequency Jams (1998), was made an "Album Pick" on AllMusic.Describing 2002's Sketchbook, Pitchfork said: "Most music-- even most great music-- consists of slight variations on well-established themes, and it's difficult to find an album that sounds truly new. Sketchbook is such a record."