Matt Bianco, the spy who never existed and the band that did

Matt Bianco sounds like a person, and many assumed it was an alias for front man Mark Reilly. According to the band, though, Matt is a made-up spy, a secret agent. They loved spy TV themes and film scores and were really into the sixties spy movie image. The music, a mix of sophisti-pop, jazz-funk and Latin-flavoured sounds, was formed in 1983 in Britain by Reilly, keyboardist Danny White and bassist Kito Poncioni, all of whom had just left Blue Rondo à la Turk, together with the Polish vocalist Basia Trzetrzelewska.

The group's first single was “Get Out of Your Lazy Bed”, and the debut album Whose Side Are You On? came out through WEA in August 1984. It produced five UK and European hits, including “Half a Minute”, and made the top 3 in Germany and number one in Austria. In the UK it reached the top 40 and earned a gold certification.

In 1985 Trzetrzelewska and White left so that she could pursue an international solo career as Basia. Jenni Evans joined as the new female singer and Mark Fisher became songwriter, producer and keyboard player, which gave the group a more contemporary sound. Their self-titled 1986 album included “Yeh Yeh”, a cover of Georgie Fame's song that reached number 13 in the UK and number 7 in Germany.

Warner Brothers then wanted to bring the band to the United States and hired Emilio Estefan to produce a few songs for the album Indigo. His productions were chosen as singles but made only a moderate impact. The surprise was “Wap Bam Boogie”, an album track from the B-side of the first single that Estefan had nothing to do with, which did well on the dance charts and pushed the joint release with “Don't Blame It on That Girl” to number 11 in the UK. Basia and White rejoined briefly in the mid-2000s, and the band's name still stands for a distinctive European take on jazz-funk.