London, United Kingdom (1994 – 2002)

Smoke City was a London, UK band whose music blended modern styles like acid jazz and trip hop with Brazilian styles like samba and bossa nova. Vocalist Nina Miranda formed Smoke City around 1994 with former schoolmate Mark Brown and guitarist Chris Franck, formerly of the Brighton-based Brazilian percussion group Batu.

Smoke City are best known for their single Underwater Love, which was a major hit in 1996. The music video is notable for predating the film The Matrix in its use of bullet time motion.

In 1997 the band released their first album, Flying Away, which included several hits like Underwater Love and Mr. Gorgeous (and Miss Curvaceous).

While Flying Away was hard to classify because it had everything from light trip-hop to gentle guitar ballads, Smoke City’s next album, Heroes of Nature (released in 2001), was considered too odd even by fans, combining even more styles and incorporating dance beats in some of the tracks. An extended version of Heroes of Nature had three more tracks than the original, one of them being a cover of John Lennon’s famous song Imagine.

The group disbanded in 2002.