Artist Name

Icarus

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Origin
London, England

Genre
Drum & Bass

Style
Electronic

Mood
Hypnotic

Active
1997 to Present...

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Artist Biography
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Icarus are an electronic music duo from London, England, formed in 1997 by cousins Ollie Bown and Sam Britton. Their work blends drum and bass with elements of experimental jazz and rich instrumentation, and has been described by Four Tet's Kieran Hebden as "really beautiful and also quite kind of evil." Hebden featured their track "Benevolent Incubator" on his Late Night Tales compilation, and the pair have remixed artists including Four Tet, Murcof, Lunz, The Creatures, Spartak, and Eclectic Method featuring Chuck D.

Bown and Britton began by reworking breakbeats and avant-garde European composition into jungle-influenced pieces for London independent labels around the turn of the millennium, releasing Kamikaze (1998) and Fijaka (1999) on Hydrogen Dukebox, followed by Squid Ink (2001) on Output. In 2002 they founded the independent label Not Applicable, which grew into a collective project involving other improvising musicians, and through which they released Misfits (2002) and the Soviet Igloo EP the same year. Further albums followed, including I Tweet the Birdy Electric (2004, Leaf), Carnivalesque (2005), Sylt (2007), and All Is for the Best in the Best of All Possible Worlds (2010).

Around this period, Bown and Britton also pursued doctoral studies, during which they developed autonomous software capable of improvising alongside human musicians. In 2008 Bown relocated to Australia, and the band's activity slowed as a result of the distance, though the two continued to collaborate on Icarus material alongside other projects such as Tangents, Fiium Shaarrk, Leverton Fox, and Isambard Khroustaliov. In 2012 they released Fake Fish Distribution, an experimental "album in 1,000 variations" built using parametric software techniques that let listeners generate 1,000 distinct versions of the record by varying elements such as drum patterns, effects, and track order; the project was supported by STEIM in the Netherlands and by Ableton, using Max for Live technology. The same year, Aphex Twin commissioned the duo to build software for his Remote Orchestra project, in which he controlled a 32-piece orchestra in real time via headphones, performed once at London's Barbican Hall. Icarus later returned with Elektronisk Jazzjuice vol.1 (2023) and An Ever-growing Meridional Entertainment Transgression at the Edge of the Multiverse (2024), both on Not Applicable.


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Last Edit by akg550
02nd Aug 2026

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