Kevin Mellors

Born: October 4 1973

At a young age Kevin had always went in the more creative direction rather than the straight path cut out for most children in his environment. Having a mother that was a teacher who believed in art and creative expression for education didn’t hurt either? By the age 16 he had travelled around the world with his family to experience many different cultural influences. This shaped him into having a broader outlook on music.
Kevin father was an accomplished drummer and there was always a drum set present in the house as long as he remembers.  Along with being a self taught drummer, Kevin was also schooled privately in Piano and Violin. “Looking back now about Violin not being the coolest of instruments for a 13-14 year old kid, I now realize that it was beneficial in many aspects of learning both 6 string and bass guitar.”

From about 16 years old until his late20’s, Kevin played drums in several bands locally in the Toronto area such as 2 Line Filler, Hockey Teeth, Drop Forge, the 8lb test and the Butterfly Plague. While in the studio recording for some of these bands, Kevin was intrigued with the technology, creativity and process of engineering/producing a recording.  “My interest in recording came at the time when Digital computer based recording was getting to the point that it was affordable. The computers were finally fast enough to handle these sessions without having to use any external DSP’s. I basically taught myself the technology, theory and editing of digital recording through trial and error.” After having a handle on recording digital audio, Kevin decided to take the recording engineering program at the Harris Institute for the Arts. This would end up focussing his career path in that direction.

Being a connoisseur of music of all types and styles, Kevin would never want to be labelled as a producer of one specific genre.  Coming from a drumming/Percussion background and playing in various projects over the years, it was a natural progression when Kevin started to play around with electronic music it kept pushing towards Drum and Bass. He had messed around with other styles like house, trip hop and hip hop over the years, but DnB always had the energy and attitude of his first love… Punk/Hardcore music.  “There are so many variations of Drum and Bass that are appealing to me. It lets me explore Jazzy grooves, Dub, Reggae grooves, Dark pounding industrial beats and sounds. The beauty to me is that all of these styles can be incorporated into one Track”.

Ian Dery

Born: April 15 1973

Toronto native Ian Dery has long had a fascination with music and sound. When he was a child, he would often listen to his English mothers 60's British invasion records, 70's classic soul and disco as well. While a student in elementary school, one of his teachers brought in a synthesizer. It seemed like the coolest thing he had ever seen.  His world changed when he heard early hip hop classics such as "The Message" by Melle Mel and the Furious Five and "Hard Times" by influential hip hop pioneers Run-Dmc. From then on he was hooked to electronic music and listened to everything from Kraftwork, Gary Numan, Joy Division/New Order and Depeche Mode. It was in his early teen years that he was introduced to the world of house music. During the summer of 1987 he spent six weeks in London England where he discovered the London underground scene and record shops. While looking through his cousins house music records he discovered a double album of sound effects. That album proved to him, while making skits on cassette using sound effects, that it was theatre of the mind. Upon his return to Toronto he was a fixture at friends houses who had turntables and mixers. In highschool he met Kevin Mellor's, a few years later he would mess around with live instruments in Kevin's basement. In 1995 he went to London again to visit with family, at the time the jungle scene was in full swing. It definitely made an impact and changed his musical direction. Shortly after returning from London, he was reading an article in Details magazine and it had a review on beat machines and samplers. It was in that article that he read about the "MC 303 Roland". Without having any idea on how to use this technology, he bought one anyway two weeks later. Not having much success with getting the sounds out of the 303 he wanted, he ran into Kevin at a local pub. Not having seen Kevin in a few years he was delighted to hear that Kevin had become equally engrossed in the drum and bass sound. It was during that time at the pub, Ian told Kevin about his difficulties with the 303. The next day the 303 was at Kevin's house where he had it figured out in about half an hour. While the 303 plays a non-existent role in the music production now, it certainly brought these two together. In the years since, with Kevin's superior engineering skills and Ian's keen ear, the pair have made all sorts of music. Some of the people they have worked with over the years have been local hip hop acts such as Citizen Kane, Assassani,  and Brass Munk.  The future is bright and the music keeps them inspired.