Vincent Rateau grew up in Paris where he enjoyed his first musical approach with classical music, playing violin for a period of 12 years. He started developing his individual style, when he moved from France to Germany and started guitar and vocals.

In a reggae-dub band he has been experimenting with off-beat roots music, mixing languages (English, French, German and Esperanto) and music genres (dub, reggae, irish folk and world music). After 4 years of university, he graduated in linguistics and science of medias, then, finally music got the better of it. By his artist's name "Ras Tilo", he started producing his own music. Travels throughout the world definitely added to its original style. You can easily recognize the French and German touch, but also an Irish soul, which he caught working for a recording studio in Galway. La Réunion Island, The Seychelles Islands, Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Greece, Great Britain are just a few to name among many others that add to the unique flavour in his work.

Considering himself neither French nor German, his multi-cultural background can be seen and heard in his music: bringing musicians together, mixing instruments and music genres, remixing, re-remixing and trying to show the beauty of our world's (musical) diversity and the unity in it.

Nowadays he is running his own mobile recording studio under GNU/Linux (www.sonejo.net), releasing the produced music mostly under the Creative Commons Licence. Furthermore he is playing and producing music in different side-projects.

Ras Tilo and Friends - Creative Commons

Ras Tilo and Friends - Creative Commons (vocals removed)