Icarus spread their wings
At a certain stage in their career, Icarus made the bold move of taking their tracks to the stage, performing them with a combination of electric and electronic instrumentation, using Ableton Live as a central hub. The pair actually started out playing in bands before they got into production, so it wasn’t entirely new to them. At the time of writing they were about to embark on a US tour with Rüfüs Du Sol – an odyssey that they were clearly relishing the prospect of. We asked them how they first got their live act together… Ian: “We’d been DJing for years and decided it was now or never. It was gonna cost us a s**tload of money, and we had no money, but we’d always wanted to do it, and we had to start somewhere.
“It’s a weird one, because we’ve been so used to DJing at club nights, where we’re on a line-up with five other artists, and you never get a sense of who’s come to that club night just to see you. So that was a real eyeopener and a test for us, to see how many people responded to that and actually purchased a ticket just to come and see us. And although it was nerve-wracking, it went better than we could have hoped, and felt like the start of something much bigger.” Tom: “Pretty much every press piece we’ve done over the years, we’ve always mentioned it. ‘Yeah, we play instruments, we’re from a live music background’, which we are – when we were kids we played guitar and bass in bands. We did that until uni, and that’s where we started the production thing and fell in love with DJing. The band thing didn’t make sense to us anymore then, but it was always part of Icarus. It was the time – we had to make sure it was worthwhile. And seeing those people buy tickets was surprising and amazing. People actually came to see us!” Ian: “We’ve DJed to, like, 10,000 people, and it’s an amazing feeling, but it’s not the same as playing to 250 people who are there just to see you, and know all your tunes. Now it’s about growing it and making it better.”
: Can you talk us through what goes into your stage rigs? Ian: “My setup is basically Ableton running the set and backing parts, and then I’m playing synth parts on keyboards, and triggering stuff on pads and controllers. And a guitar on stage. That’s pretty much it.” Tom: “Then I run a MIDI keyboard as well. I’ve got a laptop with Logic – I can just flick through different sounds on each track. Then I’ve got a bass as well, with the amp on stage, so I’ll play bass on a few tracks; and I’ve got a Roland SPD-SX [pad-based sampler] which we load some samples into for hitting in certain tunes. We’ve said we should use that for writing, because it takes you out of the computer. You put sounds on it and you start to arrange things differently when you’re hitting it – we’ve never written by hitting things. Ha ha!” Ian: “With Ableton, we basically wanted to run the set with us playing live as much as possible, whereas traditionally, when Ableton users take it live, they’re fucking up stems on stage and reworking parts…” Tom: “Like a live remix.” Ian: “And that was never really our ambition, so we had to figure out how it would work.”
: You have screens onstage for visuals, too. Tell us about that. Tom: “Yeah, we’ve also got timecode running as well, so we’ve got visuals for each track. On our first tour, we had three LED screens on stage – one behind each of us and one in the middle. That’s another element that we want to grow.” Ian: “Matching visuals with music is fun. What colours do you want? And what feel? Our ambition is to create a full-on show.” Tom: “It’s a balance. Obviously you want people to appreciate that you’re playing, but it does add a completely different layer of excitement and interest.” Ian: “We’re growing it now. As we speak, the guys next door are building stuff for us, refining our kit and how we can make it look better, and travel with it abroad.”
“We basically wanted to run the set with us playing live as much as possible”