Onra (Arnaud Bernard) is a music producer from Paris, France. Mostly from a Hip-Hop background, his inspirations vary from genres such as Soul, Funk, Jazz, Reggae, Boogie, Modern Soul, RnB, Dub, World, Prog Rock, to name a few. read more…
Onra (Arnaud Bernard) is a music producer from Paris, France. Mostly from a Hip-Hop background, his inspirations vary from genres such as Soul, Funk, Jazz, Reggae, Boogie, Modern Soul, RnB, Dub, World, Prog Rock, to name a few.
He first appeared on the collab-album Tribute in 2006 with French producer and friend, Quetzal, a Hip-Hop tribute to Soul music which was played several times by Gilles Peterson, Benji B and received critical praise on Okayplayer.com.
At the same time, he started collaborating with Byron The Aquarius, an American keyboard player from Alabama. Together they released an album under the name of The Big Payback in 2007, on japanese label Circulations. A project full of different influences such as futuristic hip-hop, nu-soul and broken beat. They also appeared on highly praised compilations such as Beat Dimensions and New Worlds.
In 2006, year of his first trip to Vietnam, the land of his grand-parents, he managed to bring back some Chinese and Vietnamese vinyls out of which he created a hip-hop instrumental album called Chinoiseries. The stand-out track The Anthem has been included on various compilations, and also covered for TV ads.
He has been selected to attend the prestigious Red Bull Music Academy in 2008, and played at the Sonar Festival the next summer.
His project called 1.0.8, made out of Bollywood samples, has got the Internet buzzing over once again in 2009, and had been elected as album of the week by many different shops across Europe.
Onra is back with a new album called Long Distance, which was released May of this year under revered iIrish future-sounds label All City Records.
Touring with his two Akai MPC1000 samplers, recreating his infectious material live, Onra has already the graced stages of Japan, China, New Zealand, Vietnam and all across Europe. He’s ready to bring his full live-set to the U.S. this Fall.
