North London outfit Ivy Lab were brought together out of a shared enthusiasm for experimentations on the fringes of the UK bass music scene.
The years that followed saw them go from strength to strength, earning a place in Mixmag’s Top 10 DJs of 2015 and propagating a new generation of hip-hop inspired abstractions housed within the framework of their 20/20 LDN project.
Originally starting life as a trio, the duo of Sabre (Gove Kidao) and Stray (J. Fogel) now find themselves at the apex of the Halftime/Future Beats movement – a motley assortment of actors from across the bass music landscape applying their sonic-heritage to experiments with hip-hop and drum machine electronica.The thunderous “Cake” is the first track to be featured from their debut artist album Death Don’t Always Taste Good – out May 11.
Unveiled today, the visual feature is a powerful dance video directed by Alex Allaux and choreographed by Justin Conte. LVDF, who have designed for FKA Twigs, worked costume and makeup for the trio of dancers who take center stage in the video.
For the upcoming album, Ivy Lab head into the horizon not only with an anchored presence at the cutting edge of the bass-music landscape, but also a secured reputation as pioneering label bosses and event promoters in ownership of one of the UK’s most exciting contemporary music brands. Released via their label 20/20 LDN, the label founded in 2015, was unveiled with the pseudo-mixtape/compilation LP ‘Ivy Lab presents 20/20 Volume.1’. Little over a year (and only 5 releases deep) the label was awarded the title of ’Best Breakthrough Label 2016’ in the DJ Mag Best of British Awards 2016.
As bass music figureheads, Ivy Lab has been embraced by festivals as varied as Glastonbury, EDC Vegas, SXSW, Sonar (Barcelona + HK), CTM Berlin, Dour, ADE, Woo Hah!, Shambhala, Lightning In A Bottle, Lowlands, Origin NYE, Exit and Outlook. Continuing that same journey in 2018, Ivy Lab will also be hitting the road in anticipation for Death Don’t Always Taste Good with a North American tour kicking off April 5th in LA, and hitting additional stops in Denver, Atlanta, NYC, and more. May 18-20 they’ll be back in the States for a performance at EDC Las Vegas. See a full list of dates below:
For the album artwork, Ivy Lab have collaborated with Portland-based / Anchorage-Raised painter and illustrator Megan Dixon, who they met at the 2016 Basscoast Festival in Canada, to create a series of three posters to accompany the LP and two singles.
“The destiny of so many records is to be framed and hung on a wall as art – so we’ve embraced that usage and created something truly special by employing a specialist fine-art printing company to create the posters (pictured above).The challenge we’ve faced is that Megan’s art is a coloured acrylic landscape with a geometric overlay layer applied in metallic oil paints. The richness, depth of texture, and contrast between metallic and matte paint is lost when photographed and printed. Our solution? Have our designer painstakingly trace all the metallic geometry and mask it out so that it can excluded from the printing process, and then print the image on metallic card stock. In the negative space where the ink does not exist, the metallic card stock shows through providing the contrasting texture that makes the original paintings so textural.” – Ivy Lab
Album Tracklisting:
01. Fortune Teller
02. Ugly Bubble
03. Jet Lag
04. Astral Pirate Theme
05. Cake
06. Vanity Fair
07. A & E
08. Death Don’t Always Taste Good
09. Snack Time
10. Calculate
11. Ozbo
12. Cadillac
