Brighter Days Family is the London collective redefining what it means to create together

Brighter Days Family is many things: label, artist collective, party… More than anything, it’s a close-knit group of friends reimagining new approaches to creativity that prioritise support and opportunity-building.

It’s hard to describe Brighter Days Family, because trying to define them kind of misses the point. “We don’t really know what Brighter Days is. Like, just don’t worry, innit,” laughs one of its creators, IZCO. “If we’d let people put us in a box, it would diminish things and certain people wouldn’t fit that mould.”

What you can do is list some of the things the expansive team have been so far: a live band, a DJ collective, a team of producers, rappers and singers, a party, a label, a brand, a friendship group. More than anything, the most accurate description for Brighter Days might simply be a vessel – a method of dream fulfilment. It is whatever it needs to be to get their people where they want to go. And regardless of what form it takes, over the past five years they’ve been rapidly amassing thousands of die-hard fans who keep reappearing wherever they play. They see the same faces so often that they’re convinced people have found love through the community building around them.

I’m huddled in a Hackney studio with six of the members. In a cosy room, producers and DJs IZCO, Samtheman and Jkarri sit on chairs by a set of huge decks, working on a bouncy, jazzy track led by soca drums, aiming to capture the afterglow of Carnival. A sunset lamp shines behind them. Singer Camille Munn sits next to me on the sofa. Rapper and producer Reek0, along with musical director and artist Kwaku, join too. IZCO calls up rapper Dochi, who speaks over FaceTime, camera turned away.  

“Everyone in this room right now is a really important part of all the projects we’re working on,” IZCO says, glancing around at his friends. But there are many more Brighter Days members. So many that IZCO suggests he compile them for Crack to print as a list. They include singer P Wavey, “one of the deepest artists”, who just released his first solo record, Sing Song; live band member C-sé, “a jazz wizard”; and non-musician Cuppa – “our granddad, but he’s our age” – whose encyclopaedic knowledge of rare records helps shape their references. There’s also Mercury Prize-nominated Nia Archives. “That’s sistren,” IZCO says. They’ll be playing her Warehouse Project takeover in November. “That’s the goal with Brighter Days as well, innit. Hopefully, more people can go do mad tings in their own life, and naturally, that will only bring us up.” 

In a way, each member is as elastic as the concept: many of them also play instruments, or have secondary, tertiary, even quaternary roles, with almost all able to produce, sing, rap or DJ on top of their main focus – or are in the process of learning one or the other. They’re all eager to push each other outside their comfort zones. “We look at our community and ask, what strengths have we got to make this opportunity happen?” IZCO says.

Not that they’ll just jump at anything. “We say no to most things,” he clarifies. “Because Brighter Days is mad special to us, innit. You can’t pollute it. Not if it doesn’t feel like something that we’ve been manifesting or working towards.” Kwaku, who joined last year, understands his role as musical director as learning everyone’s visions and making sure they’re taking the right steps to get there. Many came true this year, in a busy summer that saw them play We Out Here and Jazz Cafe Festival, and release their first album as a collective, Audio Sunrise. “We put our foot on the gas,” IZCO says, with a chuckle. On this late August afternoon, they’re getting ready to return to NT’s Loft for the Friday night residency they’ll play throughout September – the rooftop party where they played their first-ever shows.

“You get to know people naturally, and then you figure out what their dreams are. And when their dreams are aligning with Brighter Days, that’s when the spark happens,” IZCO says. His goal has always been to help fulfil the dreams of those around him – getting more people into music and producing their first records. “I like to do people’s first splash in the ocean, innit. The breakthrough moment.”

Otherwise, his highlights are every time he’s been able to repay a favour, like booking Darren Price for their shows – a DJ who gave him and Reek0 the recording studio production app, Logic Pro. “When I chat to his kids, they’re telling me he spent a whole week in the studio gassed, making dubs for the event,” IZCO grins. “That’s been a goal of Brighter Days: to really give back.”

The group was first created by Sam and IZCO at music college, with Jkarri and Dochi joining next. In the early days, they spent about 18 months of near-consecutive days at IZCO’s house, creating “a million” scraps of songs in prolific bursts of energy, much of which has been developed, years later, for Audio Sunrise. Sam named it Brighter Days “because we need it”. “It’s not just some hippy ting… us man’s choosing to do the brightness ‘cos we need the brightness, innit.”