cmProducer Masterclass IVY LAB

Ivy Lab dissect a track on video and explain their unique philosophy on music production

The more we slice and dice electronic music into genres and sub-genres, the harder it gets to describe a ‘sound’. These days, music is free to venture down newly-built motorways, ancient side roads and obscure dirt-tracks, constantly cross-referencing and reinventing itself at will.

What’s wrong with that? Not much, really. The more the merrier and all that. But it does cause a few problems when you’re interviewing Ivy Lab. In the days leading up to Computer Music’s visit to their East London studio, we found ourselves struggling to keep count of the names/labels that they’ve been allocated. Electronic hip hop, future beats, drum ‘n’ bass, halftime drum ‘n’ bass, UK beat, halftime hip hop, liquid jungle, space beats, interplanetary hip hop, thoughtful bass music, cosmic beats… we stopped counting at around the 20-25 mark.

Gove Kidao – one half of Ivy Lab and director of their label, 20/20 LDN – can’t help but smile when we tell him about the pigeonhole dilemma.

“There was a time when it seemed as if we were collecting them like medals. There is still that need to give music a name, but we’re getting to a point where some of those names aren’t particularly useful. What do they mean?”