Tim Whelan (Transglobal Underground). Don't forget to subscribe.

This is my conversation with Tim Whelan. It took place in September 2024 from his home in Paris.
Transglobal Underground (sometimes written as Trans-Global Underground) is an English electro-world music group, specializing in a fusion of western, Asian and African music styles (sometimes labelled world fusion and ethno techno). Their first four albums featured Natacha Atlas as lead singer, and their single "Temple Head" was used in a Coca-Cola advertising campaign for the 1996 Olympic Games. In 2008 they won the BBC Radio 3 Award for World Music after the release of their seventh official album, Moonshout. Their most recent release is 2020's Walls Have Ears, marking Atlas's return as a guest with the group. Their work has been described as "a collision of tradition and innovation."
Although Transglobal Underground has always had a fluid line-up, the two core members of the group are Tim Whelan (keyboards, guitar, flute, melodica, programming, vocals) and Hamilton Lee (percussion, drums, keyboards, programming).Throughout the group's history, Whelan and Lee have deliberately clouded their identities via multiple pseudonyms and obscure credits - Whelan generally operating under the alias of "Alex Kasiek" and Lee under the alias of "Hamid Mantu" (also "Hamid Man Tu"). Whelan has also used his "Alex Kasiek" pseudonym outside TGU work (sometimes combining it with his real name, as he did for his guest appearance on the 2002 Project Dark album Gramophone De Luxe) and has sometimes implied that Kasiek is a separate person.