Bob Sinclar may have had a little help from his friends - fellow Frenchman Thomas Bangalter of Daft Punk fame, to be more precise - when it came to penning his first hit, the truly dominating club anthem 'Gym Tonic', nearly a decade ago. But in the past year he's been proving to all and sundry that he's able to do even better on his own.
On the back of his singles 'Love Generation' (which sold 120,000 in its first fortnight alone) and 'World Hold On', immediately capturing the public's imagination with their mixture of mellow vocals and choruses so hooky you could catch criminals with them, his fourth artist album 'Western Dream' has become one of house music's best-sellers of recent years.

Bob - real name Chris Lefriant - has spent the last 12 months touring the world in support of the album, including a gig at Hugh Hefner's Playboy mansion in Los Angeles.
His set of tracks by artists as diverse as Grace Jones and underplayed '70s disco names like First Choice, Gino Soccio and the Michael Zagger Band, was captured for posterity and released by his UK label Defected recently.

But Sinclar's talents extend well beyond the house genre, and as you might expect from someone who drafted in one of Bob Marley's Wailers (Gary Pine) to sing 'Love Generation', he's also plugged into the rich African and Latin music scenes in Paris, putting together compilations and producing acts such as Salome De Bahia and Tom & Joy.