It was a mutual love for drum & bass that brought this duo together. Based in North Wales, they have been producing together for the past three years – receiving plays from BBC Introducing, as well as being featured on BBC Radio 1Xtra’s playlist.
Now having set up their own record label, ION Records, they aim to put out regular releases of their own music, with lots planned for 2015. We spoke to Danny from Invaders Of Nine about their most recent release, their future plans, and a free track giveaway of ‘Apocalypse’!
You both started producing together in 2011. What have been the biggest turning points for you over the past three years?
Getting our first plays on BBC Radio 1 gave us a great boost to push even harder and then we got Track Of The Week and went on the Radio 1Xtra playlist which opened up a few doors for us.
I’ve seen a few photos of you playing out – one on the decks; the other with a guitar. Do live instruments feature regularly in your music?
Yeah I have been DJing for about 10 years now so you will always find me on the decks and Mark has been in various bands over the years playing bass guitar. We have recorded some live bits for some tracks in the past but now we have a bigger studio we will definitely be incorporating it some more in our forthcoming releases.
It appears you’re well connected in the scene; you’ve been featured on BBC Radio, played alongside some of the biggest names in the genre, and last year you received feedback from a titan of the music industry, Warner Bros Records. Talk us through how these opportunities came about…
The best thing we did was uploading our music to the BBC Introducing uploader but before that I did a lot of research so we could keep control of everything we did from setting up our record label to doing our own artwork and website and promoting our music. This has taken a lot of time and effort but now we are in a position where everything is set up and we can now just get in the studio and enjoy creating new music which we now have loads ready to launch in the New Year. When doing all this research and just constantly being online I came across a competition to win feedback from the biggest labels in the world so we entered and we got the most votes for our track. The feedback we got from the labels was another great boost for us to work even harder and step things up another level.
You both have your own record label, ION. I get the impression that the concept of the label has been around for a while, but it’s taken a while to get going – maybe due to time spent concentrating on Invaders Of Nine music. Is that an accurate judgement?
Yes we started the label pretty much straight away and we did rush into our first few releases without doing much research into the whole structure of running a label so we took some time out and just concentrated on our music more and then re-launched things end of 2013.
How have you found running your own record label? Has there been anyone to guide you through the process?
It has been a great learning curve with some added stress but nothing comes easy in life and I just love music so anything associated with it I always have to delve deep to find out how everything works.
Your latest release has been out for a short while now – ‘Deep Waters / Eyes On Me/ Apocalypse’. How were the ideas for each track conceived?
Well we had the ideas for ‘Eyes On Me’ and ‘Apocalypse’ down last year and just put them aside while we learned some new technique’s. ‘Deep Waters’ was more of a fun track and we decided to send the idea to Jasmine Knight who we had worked with on a track last year and within a week she fired back some vocals and then ‘Deep Waters’ was born. We wanted this EP to showcase our love for all styles of Drum & Bass and the feedback so far for the 3 tracks has been great and it’s always good to keep things fresh and work on music for all different moods and we feel this release shows that.
Like the kind souls you are, the release is accompanied by a free download of ‘Apocalypse’. Where can people get hold of it?
You can download ‘Apocalypse’ for free from our new Soundcloud page here https://soundcloud.com/invadersofninemusic/invaders-of-nine-apocalypse
That release now means you’ve had four releases out on the label over the past year. Will you be continuing to regularly release? If so, are there any other artists you plan to feature on the ION label?
Well we did a lot of research getting everything set up and are now ready to roll so we can just enjoy making music again and we have done so alongside some great singer/songwriters which will be released next year so you will now see a regular stream of music coming from us in 2015.