In terms of future sounding, experimental drum & bass labels, you can be sure the likes of VISION, MODUS and Neksus Sound are achieving some of the highest grades in class. But are two Northamptonshire based friends about to throw an element into the beaker and completely blow the laboratory up?
Well it just so happens that techy professors Kenny Dean aka Kendot and Andy Tiller aka Spectra T hypothesised this over a Brackley shop counter one day. After hosting a successful event and with a drought of drum & bass events in the surrounding areas being a constant variable, In The Lab Recordings was born.
Since it’s creation, the inferential statistics show that In The Lab are really not messing around. Reaching the second round in the best newcomer label in the Drum&BassArena awards for two years running is testament to this. The ITL population are linked in more ways than just the music, their loyal supporters and fierce acolytes such as [BORDERS], Default Noise, Trinity and Aduken to name a few can be seen supporting the brand on social media platforms and behind the decks.
Some of those decks have been at Rampage Open Air, Neuroheadz, Liquicity and Leeds festivals respectively, as their first festival circuit this summer produced the flames of infinite Bunsen burners on the highest setting. Add a flurry of Worried About Henry shows that’ve gotten bigger and bigger, In The Lab Recordings have become somewhat of an explosive element on the drum & bass periodic table.
We recently put ITL under the 1 More Thing microscope where Kenny and Andy’s yin and yang relationship pops bigger than a chemical reaction. We discussed the origins of the label, we find out more about their ethos of scouting the endless talent the scene offers, and we hear teasers of what could be an even bigger year for the boys as they’ve just announced they’ll be at 15 Years of Rampage at Sportpaleis, Antwerp.
From bars in Brackley to bombing it in Belgium, go and get your safety goggles, grab your lab coats and prepare yourselves to learn all about In The Lab Recordings below…
How was In The Lab born?
Kenny: Andy and I have known each other for a long time. We met through mutual friends in college and realised that we both like drum & bass. We got talking about it, and he came into the shop where I was working one night. There was a beer festival on, and we had a laugh over the counter about how cool it would be if we ran a drum & bass event there one day. Fast forward a year or two and I actually taught Andy how to DJ, but there were no gigs in our area. In the Northampton, Oxford and Luton areas there was absolutely no D&B on at that time, so we ran our own night which went really well. This would have been mid 2019. We wanted to follow it up and we wanted a brand name for it, so In The Lab Recordings came about. Then in the lockdown we couldn’t run events so we filled the gap by doing guest mixes.
Andy: I heard one of Junger’s releases on NEXT:GEN called Payday. It was some Basstripper-esque, techy jump up and I was just like “this is a banger!”. So I messaged Junger, took a punt and asked him if he had any music like that floating about and if he would be prepared for us to release it, even though we didn’t really know what we were doing, we’d give it a go. It just so happened that he had a track that was of a similar style and he said we were more than welcome to release it. It was a banger. It popped off and that’s when we realised we could probably do this.
Love it guys! Can you explain what In The Lab is to yourselves?
Andy: Realistically, it’s been something to let us pour our time and energy into but also an escape for us from the usual day to day grind at first. Now the day to day grind is for the label but it’s really just been amazing to have something like this to focus on, to build that platform and community so I guess it means the world to us to be honest.
Kenny: For me personally, I’ve always been deeply and intrinsically into music but never tried my hand at it. As a kid I always had my headphones on, spent all of my time listening to music but had never thought about downloading production software, I never picked up a guitar, never picked up drumsticks. I started DJing, realised this was my thing, and then the label was a natural progression from that – the sharing of music.
I really get where you’re coming from! So how are you finding the dark art of running a label?
Kenny: When we first started, we were flying by the seat of our pants. We had support from some people that we look up to, TJ Campbell in particular was especially helpful in the early days. But at the time everyone was keeping their cards close to their chest. Nobody who was running a small startup label was wanting to share exactly what they were doing. So it was very much figuring out how to do things, thinking about marketing tools, how do we even get music out in the first place? These days, things go a lot smoother – we’ve got a routine that we follow and so far it’s going well.
Andy: We’re quite lucky that it’s us two that started the label up together due to the pure fact that I utterly thrive on social media, social interactions, I love networking and speaking to people, I love attention and Kenny is quite the opposite. Where he absolutely thrives is numbers and analytics and that sort of stuff.
Kenny: I work in IT for my day job, I see new software every day, that’s part of my work. So all of the admin for the label is literally just an extension of what I do daily.
Andy: Which I would not have a clue about.
Kenny: Andy is literally a social butterfly and is an absolute G when it comes to meeting people and coming away with a connection. So Andy lines up the connections and the networking for me to then process in the administrative side of the label. We work quite well together in that sense, there’s never really a time where we’re fighting over a bit of work. There’s always going to be one of us who is better for a certain project than the other.
Andy: Since day one we’ve never allocated jobs as such, we’ve just picked up our natural roles in what needs to be done.
There’s definitely a yin and yang relationship there! Now you’ve got some amazing artists on board along with some loyal acolytes, can you tell us about them?
Andy: So I guess we could start with the likes of Trinity and Aduken, they are some of the first people who really actively started to support In The Lab and help us gain momentum. Moving on from that, Aduken ended up releasing on the label and becoming one of our regular DJs. Trinity started DJing in the last couple of years and we wanted to sort of give back, now she’s absolutely killing it and it’s great that they’re a part of the team. On the artist side, there’s honestly too many to even go through but we’re so proud of our roster and the talent we’ve been able to find. A really good example of it would be with [BORDERS], being able to scout him for his debut release and he’s now releasing on MODUS, it’s just exactly what we wanted from this label.
Kenny: If you look through our catalogue, especially from the early days, the amount of followers or releases that an artist has didn’t and to this day not bother us. What matters to us is, does the track fit the label? There’s so many artists, even recently who haven’t had any releases before, but if the track fits the project – it’s coming out on In The Lab Recordings.
I bloody love that. So let’s talk about your summer, some absolutely amazing things happened right?
Kenny: So 2023 was our first ever festival circuit. Rampage Open Air was our first ever festival set as a label, our first time ever performing at a festival, so quite the initial entry. From there we went on to Neuroheadz Fesitval, I played Liquicity Fesitval, and closing out with Leeds Festival.
Wow. A stellar debut festival season, nice one! So following a brilliant summer, is that momentum rolling nicely into club season?
Kenny: Yeah we had a Bristol weekender recently, we played at Motion for Rampage and then Basement 45 the next day. Shout out to the Bass Camp team for getting us involved for that one, that was fantastic.
Andy: Definitely some of our favourite ever shows we’ve played back to back, and both of them with Vici who flew over from France to come and perform with us which was a surreal moment in itself. Being able to bring over one of our international artists for a weekend of shows was just wicked.
Kenny: Speaking of momentum into the club season, we’ve been really lucky that Worried About Henry have been supporting us so strongly. I think it’s five or six times now, and then last week we got the email through from them saying “Hey, do you want to open at Marshall Arena this weekend in Milton Keynes?” They gave us two hours to play with so I opened and Andy took over, it was just amazing, never played an arena that size before.
Amazing! That’s quite close to home for you guys as well in Milton Keynes right?
Andy: We can’t speak about Milton Keynes without giving a shout out to OTD who are I guess not only our local rival brand, but our closest brand. They’re just around the corner and they’ve absolutely been smashing it. They’ve had an incredible year as well hosting events at Unit Nine, they’ve been constantly supporting us and giving us bookings.
So there’s been some real highlights for you over this last year then, has there been any other special moments?
Kenny: I think for me the biggest one while running the label, I’m not going to mention names but I was backstage at an event last year, it was the weekend of 20 Years Of Critical at Printworks, I was quite tipsy talking to a really big artist and it came up that I run a label, and mentioned our name. He said “oh! I know you guys! You guys do the techy stuff right?” and my jaw just hit the floor. That was a massive standout moment for me, just that recognition that big artists know what you’re doing.
Andy: One hundred percent agree. I think I actually said in conversation with someone recently that for the first time, it’s starting to feel like we’re not just newcomers to the scene now and that we’re taking our place within it.
Kenny: It was also last years nomination for the Drum&BassArena awards. We didn’t actually realise that was coming, we never pushed that in round one so for us to be on the shortlist in round two, it was just real organic votes.
That’s real testament to what you guys are like. When you look in from the outside, you, your roster and community are all supporting each other. Have you faced any challenges along the way?
Kenny: The biggest challenge for me in particular is just juggling it all. Back when we first started, we would spend weeks, if not months on a track. We used to be quite involved in the process from start to finish, getting it over the line, designing the artwork and putting it all out. But now that we’re putting out so much music, we’ve got twenty to thirty people sometimes waiting for feedback or an answer. It’s so hard to give that same level of attention to everybody. How do you pick who gets the attention and who doesn’t? They all deserve it.
Andy: Coming to understand how the industry actually works. We both went into this completely blind, none of us had studied business, music or events management. The whole journey has been a learning process but I think that’s part of the fun of it because it almost makes it feel a bit better when you get something right.
Yeah chuck yourself in the deep end and learn how to swim! What are your thoughts on the drum & bass scene in general at the moment?
Kenny: I’m quite liking where the scene is at the moment. People who know me privately know I’m a big fan of liquid and minimal. The current dancefloor scene is stripping back the dancefloor sound and putting such a minimal take on it. It sounds great on rigs, great in the club and it gets people moving. We’re big lovers of 4×4, if you go through our releases we’ve been putting out 4×4 for a long time and it’s great to see that sound getting all the publicity it deserves, with Dimension and Sub Focus being the obvious examples that are pushing it from the top. The techy sound that we’re sort of known for, that too is becoming popular in lots of different sub genres. The scene seems to be moving towards that which is great because that’s exactly what we do.
Andy: Captain Bass, Simula and Annix, the way these guys are taking jump up influences and just making this pure experimental sounds, bending the rules, honestly I don’t it’s ever been as exciting as this for me. Sota and Primate in recent tracks bringing in gabber kick drums, all of these other genres are influencing onto drum & bass right now, it makes it really exciting for me because I love all genres of music.
It’s definitely an exciting time for the scene! Guys this has been brilliant! Anything exciting coming up for you?
Andy: Without giving away too much, I think it’s safe to say in 2024 we’re going to be playing our biggest shows yet. We’ll be heading back around Europe, maybe some new places that we haven’t played yet. We’ll be doing some shows involving more artists from our roster which is something we’ve always wanted to do. We’re also going to be continuing our Matter and Antimatter VA’s which are our signature VA series. We’ll be releasing more paid material which is going to be some of our best output yet. We’re also working on a website which will have a merch store and perhaps some sample packs and potentially an In The Lab dub pack. We’re looking to put on our biggest event to date where we’ll be working with some really big brands, so it’s looking to be quite fun.
