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Blockhead grew up in downtown New York City. The son of an artist, surrounded by visual culture, early on he found his passion was for music, for the sonic. A fan of a whole range of sounds, especially hip-hop, Blockhead steadily built a tremendous collection of tapes and later CDs from innumerable artists, a quiet accumulation of knowledge and knowhow.

Blockhead produced nine tracks on Aesop Rock's critically acclaimed album Labor Days. Additionally he produced half the tracks on Aesop's follow up EP, Daylight. He has also worked with other indie giants such as Slug of Atmosphere, Murs, Mike Ladd and SA Smash. In between, he found time to complete a break beat album entitled Blockhead's Broke Beats, with ten hard-hitting instrumental tracks, which was released on Mush Records, the US home of CLOUDDEAD. And just to prove that he ain't about art-rap, Blockhead produced two tracks on the newly crowned Skribble Jam Battle Champ, MacLethal's full-length album.

An idea of the esteem he is held in Stateside can be gleaned from the fact that he has also contributed three tracks (including the first single) for Cage’s new album on Def Jux. The other producers on the project are DJ Shadow, El-P and RJD2.

All this in addition to his debut album on Ninja Tune, “Music By Cavelight,” described as “one of the most fantastically good albums you’re going to hear this year” (Sunday Telegraph) and “a beautfiul record” (Metro), with Blockhead himself tipped as “definitely one to watch” (Touch). The quiet man’s hour has come…

On "The Music Scene", New York hip hop producer Tony Simon aka Blockhead returns with his third and best instrumental album for Ninja Tune.

Blockhead has long made beautiful, emotive music based around the hip hop template, but on “The Music Scene” he elevates his craft to another level. Tony puts it down to the use of Ableton, which means that rather than working from “one basic beat and building off it” (the standard hip hop model), he has begun stringing together multiple beats and weaving them together into increasingly complex, surprising and satisfying pieces of music. As he himself puts it, “I made each song a little more of a musical journey than anything I have ever done before.”

While “The Music Scene” represents a development in Blockhead’s work, he still holds true to his basic beliefs about music and rhythm. When not working on his new album he has been providing production for Aesop Rock, DJ Signify, Joanna Erdos and many more, plus remixes for Yameen and Chin Chin, amonst others. Whereas the music scene is “a bastardized version of something that was already watered down,” Blockhead’s “The Music Scene,” like his career as a whole, is “the opposite of that.” By re-working, chopping and melding samples, by blending them together, Blockhead restores rather than dilutes their purity