The Invisible - 'Protection' (Radio Edit)

Ninja Tune is pleased to announce the signing of Mercury-nominated band The Invisible.

The band's upcoming sophomore album 'Rispah' will be released 11 June 2012. The band embark on a UK tour next week, all dates (including a show at London's Shacklewell Arms) here.

Dave Okumu, Tom Herbert (bass & synthesizer) and Leo Taylor (drums) have been working together as The Invisible for the last six years, though their musical collaborations stretch back much further. After a year out on the road playing in Matthew Herbert’s band, Herbert said he wanted to produce and release Dave’s solo record via his label, Accidental. But Dave instead decided to recruit his longtime friends for a genuine collaboration, The Invisible’s name arriving after the three began writing.

The result was their eponymous debut, which was nominated for the 2009 Mercury Music Prize, as well as critics’ choice as iTunes album of the year. Unafraid to challenge themselves compositionally, The Invisible's boundless approach to arrangement flows effortlessly between the texturally rich and the rhythm heavy, the ethereal and the visceral, taking in unique and subtle electronic dancefloor rhythms as well as deviations into experimental rock. It's a mixture that's won peer level praise from the likes of Radiohead's Ed O'Brien, Foals, Hot Chip, Wild Beasts, Anna Calvi and Everything Everything.

Their new album, Rispah, is, in the words of Okumu, "a love letter to grief." Mid-way through recording a follow-up to their debut, Okumu’s mother passed away and the band’s plans and aesthetic were thrown into turmoil. As Okumu remembers it, "I couldn't engage with music for a long period. The moment it returned to me was at my mum's funeral, which lasted several days. One evening, during the wake, my grandmother Zilpa, my mother's mum, arrived at our home accompanied by a group of women singing traditional spirituals. They approached my mother's body and sang over it, dancing around her coffin. It was the most beautiful sound I've ever heard. They transformed the atmosphere with sound and the spirit they brought to it. They were celebrating life and death, grief and hope, all things. This act was allowing everyone present to express themselves. It served as the most potent reminder of everything I believe about music. It's there for everybody, it's inclusive and transformative. I'm so glad these voices are stitched through our record."