IKON

Rewind 3 years and everything is going right for the band. Their single “The Dove” is being championed by daytime radio DJ’s , festival shows are booked and they are being mentioned in the same sentences as Air & Royksopp – so what happened next … ?
“ Basically we weren’t really ready to go out and slog it round the live circuit” says Elliot Ireland from the band “The people we worked with on the first album were friends of ours that lived in Ibiza, Berlin and other even further flung parts of the world – it was really stressful getting everyone together and rehearsed for gigs and it just meant too much time out of the studio – in the end we did a few major gigs like The Big Chill and a Radio 1 showcase but turned down the rest to concentrate on studio projects. Myself and Alex are also in Skeewiff and we had an album of that material to finish for release.”
Last year Elliot, production partner Alex Rizzo and Jalapeno label boss Trevor Mac started working on material for a new IKON album and in the end it all came together quite quickly – working with friends who were a bit closer to home the end result is an album that sounds like it was recorded with a plan in mind and a consistent sound.
“There’s a lot of Rhodes on the album” says Alex – “it’s such a warm sound and works in so many different ways. We love experimenting with different instruments but if there was a sound to the album it always comes back to those beautiful warm Rhodes keys”.
The album kicks off with “no reason to stay” one of two tracks vocalled by seasoned soul singer Dee Ellington. “We had a good time in the studio with Dee – she’s a lot of fun to be around and has a really distinctive sound to her vocals” says Trevor “We also worked on two tracks with Ian Britt whose album we released a couple of years ago and there is a definite element of that folk singer-songwriter sensibility to the album. Dirty Girl is more about us shaping him to the IKON sound and Out of Our hands is him bending us back the other way. They seem to work really well together on the same album. The album finishes on a really stripped back acoustic track sung by Kirsty Hawkshaw – it’s great that Kirsty is on this album as her vocal was one of the highlights of the first one”
The first single released from the album is also called Signs and was sung by Jayn Hanna from indie band The Steals. It immediately got picked up for Radio 1 by Pete Tong who described IKON as “one of the best chill out bands around” as well as gaining support from respected indie station XFM and a host of DJ’s. It included mixes from Torpedo boyz and few others.
It was followed in June by the single “Breaking” with mixes provided by Dr Rubberfunk and All Good Funk Alliance. “There’s a family of producers out there who work well with the Jalapeno sound “says label boss Trevor Mac “It’s a little bit retro-funk and it ain’t that trendy but it always rocks” No minimal electro-glitch mixes here then.
The album is a real mixture of songs and soundscapes. “We do a lot of music for film and I think that shows in tracks like Kill Tremolo” says Elliot. It’s all about creating a mood while keeping everything moving forward. Kill Tremolo started life as an instrumental but was missing something so I got in touch with a friend called Swati who sings with Nitin Sawhney and she added a vocal that is really subtle but brings out what’s special in the track.
And what else has been taking up your time over the last couple of years? “Well just studio work really” smiles Alex “We’re workaholics. We recently did an IKON mix for the Sugababes which was an interesting challenge but turned out really well and we did a Skeewiff mix of Amy Winehouse which we’ve had loads of good feedback on. We’ve got a new Skeewiff album in the pipeline that needs finishing and BMG recently gave us carte blanche to remix whatever we want from their back catalogue. There’s loads of amazing sixties records that are keeping us in the studio till all hours.”
And are we likely to see IKON live? “Well there will be a couple of festival gigs to support the album and Trevor and Elliot handle IKON DJ gigs but for now it’s back to the mixing desk. Sorry! ”