Americana/Folk Rock/Grassroots
40 Watt Bulb
Ben Wilinski
Dave Owens
Davis?
Ian Hilmer
James Apollo
Steven Green
Moedell
Alex Clark

HipHop
Toriano Sanzone

Rock/Altnerative/Pop/Punk
Filthy Divine
Moaning Lisa
The Bottlehouse
The Common Place
The Gaskets

Jazz/Blues/Avant-garde
1Fish2Fish
Chill 7
City Mouse
Fat Rudy
Lonnie Knight
Skinny Lou Kingston
Solution
Test Type Trio

Comedy
Andrew and Aaron

Comps
Fat City Music Samper
Punk Comp ‘Cheaper than Doing it Yourself’
Tornado Relief CD

Toriano Sanzone

(sadly no longer producing and performing, but actively doing his other favorite thing...

BEST R&B ARTIST - Mpls. City Pages

Toriano Sanzone

Sure, the hallucinatory hip hop of Red Lights and Poetry-founder Toriano Sanzone resembles R&B (a.k.a. contemporary black pop) about as much as Basehead, Tricky, or the Black Album does. But, like that company, Sanzone deserves a special designation outside of rap, even if the new Beautiful Darkness 44:44 (GG Entertainment) contains little singing. One reason is that Sanzone and his Mankato-based producer Luke Harper offer local black pop something rare here: a new sound. With one studio for every hundred vocalists in town, most crooners and MCs consider recording an opportunity to prove oneself on sure turf rather than do something dangerous. As a result, only self-contained production units such as Mint Condition, Vanguard, the Sensational Joint Chiefs, and, well, Prince, have even attempted to push the funk forward. If Sanzone gets the attention he deserves outside the poetry locker room, his sense of behind-the-beat rhyming, his Kid A backdrops of eerie orchestral grooving, and his endless lyrical angst implosions might become--hold that chuckle--party music.

-best of the Twin Cities 2001, City Pages

The hero behind the “redlights and poetry” parties at the underground warehouse in Northeast Minneapolis, Toriano Sanzone is breaking out from the underground with his debut release, Beautiful Darkness 44:44. With producer Luke Fader Harper at the controls and behind the beats, Sanzone and crew strike a nerve with their tightly-produced brand of poetry-driven hip-trip-hop. Recorded at Two Fish studios, a renovated church in Mankato, the album has an intense and eerie feeling that evokes an incomparable vibe.

-the Pulse, Mpls.

-out of print-
Toriano Sanzone
Beautiful Darkness