HinweiseYonderboi's manyfold influences vary from oldschool French Hip-Hop and nineties Trip-Hop to soundtracks of eastern European cartoons and cinema noir of the sixties. Yonderboi´s music transports his charming Eastern European identity with a special Hungarian flair. When in civvies, this 19-year-old Hungarian talent goes under the name of Laszlo Fogarasi Jr. He lives only 250 kilometers from Budapest, but it takes a good four hours by bus to reach the tiny village of Mernye where he grew up. Despite already showing great interest in music as a child, Yonderboi was not allowed to sing in the school choir. His music teacher called him' cloth-eared' and only let him pretend to sing while mouthing the words, but she encouraged his parents by noting the little boy's good sense of rhythm. At secondary school, he took guitar lessons, but this soon had to takesecond place to the development of his technical skills when Yonderboi received his first cheap, mono computer sound board. He had soon submersed himself in the clicks and bleeps of programming technoid music. He was enchanted less by the style of music but more by the fact that he could create it himself. The first musical influences were discovered in his father's record collection: Osibisa, Rhoda Scott and early disco hits. At the same time, Yonderboi also listened to the Hungarian and Polish jazz greats of the sixties and seventies such as Studio 11, Rudolf Tomsits, Gyorgy Vukan, Syrius and Zbigniew Namislowski. The real roots of his music, however, can be found in the soundtracks of eastern European cartoons. He satisfied his hunger for all kinds of musical information by tuning into the short- and medium-wave radio stations and later to satellite radio. Here, he heard the music which, in his own words, 'he lived by.' His later musical work's tone was coloured by eighties hip hop, such as De La Soul, GangStarr, Stereo MCs and the Beastie Boys, as well as French hip hop, especially MC Solar. As a high-school student, Yonderboi managed to travel two or three times ayear to the capital, with the hope of finding one or two interesting newrecords. But, when he could not find exactly what he wanted, he decided the'do-it-yourself' method was the best. He was barely past his sixteenth birthday when he sent his first demo to "Juice Records" in Budapest. And so his first release was on the 'Future Sound of Budapest'compilation which gained international recognition. The 'Pink Solidism' single, released in Hungary was then featured on many compilations in different countries. After graduation from high school, Yonderboi arrived in Budapest in the summer of 1999 with his friend, keyboarder Balazs Zsager. Yonderboi also managed to simultaneously use the time to work with keyboarder Balazs Zsager on the grooves and instrumentation for the solo record 'Bombajo' -Fantastic (Crossroads Records) by the young popular actor Ivan Kamaras. This became one of the hits of the Christmas '99 season in Hungary. He still manages to remain modest and relaxed about the initial wildly-enthusiastic reactions from the test audience. He doesn't wish to take part in the material scuffles of the electronic music business, nor does he follow the electronic music fanaticism for trying to stay 'one day ahead.' Rather he chooses to stay with the simple melodic music, rooted in emotions, whose strong visual links show a unique and characteristic eastern European identity. -- www.mole.de