De Vries began his music career playing keyboards for the English eighties pop-soul band The Blow Monkeys (with whom he has an ongoing creative relationship to this day), then spending the late eighties as one of the UK's most in-demand session keyboard-players/programmers and up-and-coming producers, working with artists such as Annie Lennox, The Sugarcubes, David Bowie, D Mob, Coldcut, Cathy Den