Steve Raskin is a producer, DJ, and designer whose musical DNA runs back to the Washington DC punk and go-go scenes that raised him. After graduating from Rhode Island School of Design, he built parallel careers designing album covers and touring with indie-punk band Ed Sol, whose brush with the UK rave scene at Liverpool's Cream club redirected him toward electronic music.
His design work led him to Thievery Corporation and its 18th Street Lounge label, where his downtempo project Thunderball took root. Reuniting his high-school and college bandmates plus rave-scene partner John H, he co-founded Fort Knox Five and Fort Knox Recordings around 2003 — a multi-genre, all-original "hyper-real" take on 1970s funk that exploded across Canada's BC breaks scene.
The group became fixtures at Shambhala and Burning Man. After John H's death, Raskin carried the project forward with Jason Qdup, relocated to Whistler in 2017, and continues to run the label and the Funk the World series.