Kicking the week off with this wicked interview with Icarus. The duo from Bristol have had releases on Anjunadeep, FFRR, Armarda Music and who have had heavyweight support on their releases from the likes of Annie Mac, Pete Tong, Solomun to name a few.
Their recent recent release ‘Last Night Felt Like The Future’ featuring Lenn on their label Fly Boy Records is out now, to purchase CLICK HERE
Hi boys, how you doing?
Firstly, how long have you been producing and what got you into dance music?
We’re great, and thanks for having us for the interview!
I (Tom) first got into dance music when I was about 12. I remember a mate in my school form brought in some ‘Clubbers Guide to Ibiza’ CDs once, and I got pretty hooked on house & trance from there. When I hit 17, I started getting into clubs and discovered Drum and Bass, which became a bit of an obsession for a few years! Being brothers, and both being into music in our teens (and playing in bands together), we’d always be sharing music, so we both ended up liking a lot of the same stuff.
We both went on to study music at degree level, and our course had a music production module included in it. That was the catalyst to start producing our own music and we’ve been producing for about 16 years now, which is a bit mad to say out loud.
You also run a record label Fly Boy Records, can you tell us what’s coming up on that?
We started Fly Boy at the same time as we started Icarus and our 40th release was actually ‘Last Night Felt Like The Future’, which is a special moment for us. It feels good to put your own music out on your own label and have total control over every aspect of the release.
We’ve also got some new music coming up from fellow Bristolian, Bacavi, which is sounding amazing! And another new artist called Tom Liar, he’s young and super talented – definitely one to keep an eye on.
Do you have any exciting music that is coming out in the next coming months?
Well we’ve just dropped our latest single ‘Last Night Felt Like The Future’ featuring an amazing up and coming singer & artist from Bristol called Lenn, so we’re pretty excited about that! We ended up having a bit of a hiatus from releasing much original Icarus music over the last couple of years but we’ve been writing so much this year, so the short answer is ‘yes’ – there’s a lot in the pipeline from here! CLICK HERE TO LISTEN
How would you describe your sound to someone who hasn’t heard your music before?
Annie Mac once referred to us as ‘The Kings of Emotive Dance Music’ which is a) very flattering and b) a pretty nice way of trying to explain our sound (something we struggled with in the past). Of course, over time our sounds morphs a bit, and will continue to do so. Right now, we’re loving getting a bit more ‘club focussed’ with it, but our core sound remains throughout all our records, we think.
Where are you based?
Bristol. Best City in the world mate!
What other DJs from around the world have been supporting your music?
We’re pretty lucky to have garnered a lot of support over the years from both new comers and also legends in electronic music. We’ve had support from the likes of Pete Tong, Solomun, Sister Bliss, Fisher, Arielle Free, Rufus Du Sol and loads more!
Who are your top 5 artists who have influenced you to get where you are today and why?
That’s pretty tough but if we’re focussing mainly on electronic acts then the likes of Groove Armada, Basement Jaxx, Chemical Brothers, Chase and Status and Faithless are very much up there. They’ve all left legacies in dance music. The ultimate goal for us is to write important music that ends up standing the test of time, and all of those acts have done that.
If you could work with anyone in the world, who would it be and why?
Rick Ruben would be pretty amazing, and writing music in Shangri-La would be a bit of a pinch yourself moment. It’s kind of the holy grail for a lot of musicians and it would just be cool to sit with him and pick his brain, to be honest! There’s obviously so many others we’d love to work with too but may as well pick a legend.
What does your music production setup consist of?
We use Apple Mac computers, and mainly Ableton to produce our music. We have a whole host of 3rd party plug ins and a few hardware bits like a Moog Voyager, Prophet 08, MS20 re-issue, Roland JV1080 etc. We’ve also got our guitars but we don’t strap the axes on as much as we used to!
What is your most used plugin that you use on every track?
We’d probably say the Fabfilter Pro-Q 3. We use it in every production, right now. The analyser on it is so easy to use and the dynamic function is great.
Away from dance music, what is your go to music to listen to?
We can get into pretty much anything, to be honest. Our tastes are very varied and we rarely go to the same sort of thing over and over. We’ll listen to downtempo, rock, pop, rap, ambient, anything really! As long as it’s got a vibe, we’re in.
September 12, 2022