1. The Residents

Undisputed all-time world champions of anonymity, California-based band The Residents’ career spans 30 years, yet their identities remain secret and their faces have never been caught on camera. Instead, they always appear in public in disguise and only indirectly answer questions through their Cryptic Corporation management company.  Their anonymity was most hardcore early in their career, when they formulated their famous ‘Theory of Obscurity’, but while their creative output – music being just one aspect of the band – has veered wildly over the years to echo in the likes of Negativland and The Simpsons alike, The Residents’ self-confessed ‘anti-Beatles’ stance has never wavered.

2. ‘Mad’ Mike

Techno’s love of facelessness really began in the early 90s with Underground Resistance, who militantly eschewed publicity photos along with the rest of the hated music industry machine. But while Jeff Mills, Robert Hood and the rest of the UR crew past or present have since become better acquainted with snappers and hacks alike, ‘Mad’ Mike Banks has remained unseen, a hidden kingpin in Detroit techno never caught maskless, rarely interviewed and even oblique about owning up to his own productions. Instead, Banks has let the music do the talking and techno just wouldn’t have been the same without him.

3. Moodymann

What is it about Detroit, eh?  Kenny Dixon Jnr has an afro and curses a lot. And that’s pretty much the sum total of our knowledge of this most unique of house music producers. Any photos that do exist are grainy at best and interviews are a no-no, the closest he’s come to date being a few rambling sentences on his fittingly-titled debut LP, ‘Silent Introduction’, where he – at least, we think it was him – ranted against cheap imitations of Black music. Not that that means he’s averse to dropping a Rolling Stones track into a DJ set now and again.

4. Drexciya

Much-feted Detroit duo James Stinson and Gerald Donald went one better than the rest of the faceless techno contingent by inventing their own fantasy world of slaves-turned-fishmen and underwater civilisations to fill the void created by a lack of photos or interviews. Stinson, also known as The Other People Place and Transllusion, died last year, ironically just as he seemed to be hitting new levels of creativity and had finally begun talking to the press. Donald has stayed out of sight, however, and continues to pursue his penchant for all things German, werking (sic) under the pseudonyms of Dopplereffekt, and, occasionally, Heinrich Mueller – the name of the former head of Hitler’s secret police. Blimey.

5. Basic Channel

In Europe, they don’t come any more shy and retiring than Mark Ernestus and Moritz von Oswald, the hidden duo behind labels like Basic Channel, Maurizio, Chain Reaction and Rhythm & Sound, and who once performed live at Lost from behind a screen. They’ve single-handedly launched whole new areas of techno, but they won’t do photos or even be quoted when they do occasionally talk to a journalist. With little in the way of facts to go on, rumours abound amongst fans, covering everything from supposed crazy recording techniques down to why they’re said to favour Carhartt clothing. Because it’s from near Detroit, apparently.

6. Daft Punk

Only one press photo that comes anywhere near showing Thomas Bangalter and Guy Manual de Homem-Christo’s faces clearly ever existed, and that was taken almost a decade back. And after one cover shoot in 1996 (with none other than our good selves), the pair have employed a seemingly endless variety of masks to disguise themselves, from the dog fizzogs they sported in the ‘Da Funk’ video to the robot heads that accompanied the ‘Discovery’ album. In 1997, Bangalter said: “We are very happy that the concept in itself is becoming famous. You don’t always have to compromise yourself to be successful.” A few years later they went and made a Gap advert. Go figure.

7. I-F

It stands for Inter-Ferenc, but he’s known to all and sundry as Ferenc, the shadowy hardcore electro and disco junkie from The Hague who founded Clone and Viewlexx. He may have pretty much single-handedly sparked a revival of interest in both genres through tracks like the notorious ‘Space Invaders are Smoking Grass’ and his hard-to-find ‘Mixed Up in the Hague’ mixes, but he doesn’t like to talk about it very often, nor does he seem to much like having his picture taken. On those rare occasions he does speak, rants against the evils of major labels are not uncommon.

8. Client

Electronic bands continue to flirt with anonymity, and electro-pop duo Client are but the latest example. The two women in the band will only be known as Client:A and Client:B (possibly an effort to divert attention from a musical past that’s rumoured to include the name Dubstar) and prefer being photographed from the waist down rather than from the shoulders up. Instead, they like the camera to linger on their matching austere, Kraftwerkian office-drone outfits. Speaking of whom...

9. Kraftwerk

An odd choice, you might think, given that Kraftwerk’s mugs appear on several of their album covers and photos are plentiful. But ask yourself – if you saw Ralf, Florian, Karl or Wolfgang walking down the street, would you recognise them? Are you sure? As Kraftwerk’s career progressed it became harder and harder to tell them apart. Early on they simply all wore the same shirt, tie and severe side parting; later, as the royalties began to pile up, they were able to literally replace themselves on stage with dummies and robots. Rise of the machines indeed.

10. Chris Morris

Included here by virtue of his ‘Bushwhacked’ record on Warp, radio and TV satirist Chris Morris rarely speaks to the media, avoids celebrity shindigs and refuses to be photographed out of character. Ironically, the amount of controversy his infamous, brilliant ‘Brass Eye’ drugs and paedophilia specials generated led to his face being widely plastered across the frantically knee-jerking tabloids. No doubt irked by his refusal to play their game, The Mirror even said that ‘Morris hates being photographed because of the strawberry-coloured birthmark on the left-hand side of his face’. To which Morris would no doubt respond with a pithy ‘shit off’.

‍