Invicta Audio: Five Years at the Heart of Drum & Bass
Cameron Holbrook
Five years in, Invicta Audio remains driven by the same instinct it was founded on: if a track connects and the artist behind it feels right, the label commits fully. What began as a tight-knit operation between co-founders Anton, Will, and Dan has grown into an artist-first drum & bass imprint with a clear identity, supported by marketing assistant Holly and a trusted roster of resident artists including Anaïs, Deanie Rankin, J Bookey, Johnnie Darko, Latte, Scuffed, and T-Lex.
Over the past 12–18 months, Invicta Audio has continued to evolve both creatively and strategically while staying rooted in its core values. On the label side, this has taken shape through a carefully curated release schedule, with each campaign built collaboratively around the artist’s vision and delivered through bespoke rollout plans. Artist-first thinking remains central to every decision, regardless of sub-genre or profile.
In events, the label has leaned into larger-scale showcases under its own banner, with sold-out editions of MoonFest in Bristol and Area 51 in Leeds, both increasing capacity while maintaining diverse, high-quality line-ups. Alongside this, Invicta has supported a run of artist-led headline shows where the brand intentionally steps back, allowing the focus to remain fully on the artist and the experience. Seeing these shows sell out has been a major milestone for a small, independent team operating in an increasingly competitive landscape.
This playlist marks Invicta Audio’s fifth anniversary by looking back across every chapter of its journey. For each year of operation, three tracks have been selected from the catalogue: one chosen by Will, one by Anton, and one joint honourable mention. Together, they trace the evolution of Invicta’s sound and celebrate the releases that define its past, present, and future.
"Bring It" is a tune which did the rounds at the time of release, making its way into the course of many artists’ sets who were breaking through. It was the type of sound and track that was trending at the time, bringing a lot of people to the label in showing them the type of tunes that we put out that can be played in sets. Froidy was an artist we worked closely with in these times, an excellent producer who cemented his place as a strong DNB producer in the scene. He’s now moving onto producing all sorts in the 140bpm realm so keep an eye out for that!
Rise’s remix of "Hold Up" was one of the first tracks on the label which had real hype. A clip went viral of it being played by one of our residents, T-Lex, at Lakota Gardens and the ID requests rolled in. The original was by Gonda, one of our first ever residents, in our first ever release, a 19-track free download album on SoundCloud called ‘The Launch LP’. This rendition from Rise significantly helped progress the label from our original root of building a following to progressing on DSPs. An early version of a fake drop was used in this with plucks which just itch that part of the brain.
This was J Bookey’s first hit single with us, a track which helped set him on his way of becoming a more established producer. Life is a very catchy track: simplicity executed very well. Soon after releasing this with us, he became a resident and has gone on to have an extremely popular string of imprints with our audience. His latest release with us features later on in this article…
"Views" was the first minimal track we put out which brought a lot of attention from people in sub-genres other than jump up. We felt as though it helped bring people away from the idea that we were just a jump up label. Jump up is, of course, a big part of our identity but we feel as though we want to put out any tracks regardless of the sub-genre. I distinctly remember being on stage with Turno at one of our events and he played this track and, even at the time, it really felt like a timestamp in our journey. A VIP of this may be coming out in 2026…
Splashing back onto the live show scene after lockdown, this was a dub which was played in multiple raves that went off every time. It really encapsulated the euphoria of being back in venues off the back of such a long time out of them. Scuffed was a resident at the time and Aleya went on to become our first resident singer! It’s still a fan favourite to this day!
This was a very special release for us as Phibes were two of our favourite artists just as fans of DNB and we’d set them out on our list of targets from very early days. They were some of the very first established / big name artists who saw what we were doing and gave us a chance. They were great to work with, doing a lot of promo on their side and getting crazy numbers on their socials to help the track out. We managed to get our first ever #1 in the Beatport Drum and Bass chart with this - one we’ll never forget.
"Rambo" continued our run of tracks which did well in the Beatport Drum and Bass chart, climbing all the way to #6! It was one of our first jump up tracks to really blow up, currently sat on well over 1 million streams across all platforms. It was getting played in so many sets at the time of release and even got an unexpected play from Chase & Status at Rise Festival whilst we were in the crowd. I remember us chatting about it and realising that we didn’t manage to get in touch with them to send them the tune so it must’ve meant that Chase & Status had bought our music!
This is a proper anthem in the catalogue and, to this day, arguably the catchiest hook across all of our releases. It brought together two huge talents who were breaking through at the time, Anaïs on production and Johnnie Darko laying down the vocals. Anaïs has been part of Invicta since the very start of our journey, having been a friend long before its inception. Johnnie was someone we’d had our eye on for a while as someone with great potential and, with this as his first DNB track, he definitely didn’t disappoint. We made him a resident soon after this. Both of these artists have repeat features in this list, people who have been at the core of what we’ve done over the last few years. It was our first ever music video, something we put a lot of time and effort into, marking the track with a visual.
This track first came onto our radar as Anaïs showed us the instrumental and we instantly knew it was going to be a hit. Sudley was someone we’d also had on our radar, a popular figure around the local DNB scene and he became a resident around this time, too. After we’d agreed to sign the instrumental, the next step was to figure out who the best vocalist was to work on this. After working with Flowdan on a series of shows, we posed the idea to him and his team and they were keen for it! It came out as our first ever track in the 140bpm area and it came off - it gained a lot of editorial support, a UKF premiere, loads of traction and it reached #3 on Beatport!
M is someone who we’ve looked up to for ages and loved seeing them when they play live at our events. The idea for them to do a remix of this and completely switch up the lane of the original track was received so well by our crowd, blowing up with a video from BÖG! Huge respect to M for wanting to work with us and creating such an amazing track. It had a huge variety of support and, again, helped show the versatility of the label, reaching #8 in the Beatport Drum and Bass chart!
"Bazooka" is another absolute anthem on the label. Tuggawar is an artist with a massively impressive career, someone who we’re so happy to have worked with and have as part of our catalogue. While he’s very well-known for his dancehall music, this release shows his DNB capabilities, having been a part of pirate radio stations with the likes of Eksman and Shabba D, going back as early as the noughties. His notorious, eccentric videos have made for a strong presence on socials which helped push this track out to a wide audience. It also got a lot of traction after Dom Whiting played it in his Bristol ride at the time and reloaded it after mass request from the fellow cyclists! He took Jappa’s instrumental to a whole new level, making something amazing become something historic. Jappa has gone on to release another two singles with us, a firm fan-favourite!
Another anthem in the catalogue, "Boom Seleccy" came about when we were living with Johnnie. He showed us in the kitchen and it was a no-brainer; he’d once again come up with a hook that caught on so easily. We’ve worked with G-Class a lot before on other tracks and events in Leeds and RJD is a close friend of the brand. A series of visuals and promotional performance posts put the track on so many people’s radars and it became the song of the summer. 'It was getting played out at places like Boomtown main stage and the Temple at Glastonbury; very apt features to show the calibre.
Latte is a long-standing resident and friend of the label. He’s a proper fan-favourite with an ever-increasing diehard following for his signature jump up sound and production flair. He’s put out a fair few tracks with us, with "Everybody Skank" the most recent and notorious. This reached #3 in the Beatport Drum and Bass chart and had a release party in which he had 400 people turn up just for him.
"Bossman" is arguably our biggest tune to date. The track started out a couple of years pre-release as we’d built up relationships with both artists with them performing at our live shows. Turno showed us some instrumentals and we’d been big fans of this one since we first heard it when he made it for a tour in New Zealand, with it simply known as ‘NZ Intro’ to the DNB community. We then went to the studio with P Money and, within an hour, he’d written and recorded the full track. We did a show up at Beaverworks in Leeds where we premiered the track under a ‘Bossman’ set, we did a pop up in an off licence store in Stokes Croft, Bristol and it went absolutely viral. It resulted in Coca-Cola reaching out to us to use it as the soundtrack for their local heroes advert campaign. It ended up reaching #3 in the Beatport Drum and Bass chart and becoming an absolute staple.
AC13 has been a long-time friend of the brand and we’d always spoken about getting something together at some point. We finally found the right track to work on with him as he collaborated with our resident J Bookey to create "This Is Acid." After numerous massive plays of the tune at the likes of Rampage in Belgium, it had some serious hype behind it. It had another boom with some viral reels and had a promo campaign which absolutely flew. It ended up reaching #3 in the Beatport Drum and Bass chart and is one of our biggest jump up tunes for a while yet. It’s the most recent track in this list and feels like a nice place to cap this list off. We don’t see ourselves as a strictly jump up label; we release whatever we enjoy. Having said that, it is a big part of who we are and "This Is Acid" is the latest example of that side of the label.
