Nero exploded onto the electronic scene back in 2010 although they’d officially formed as long ago as 2004, they timed their entry perfectly, arriving at right around the time that dubstep was genuinely crossing over into the mainstream consciousness. The best part is that they’re just getting started, and in their prime, they’ll be practically unbeatable. They’ve won a Grammy for a collaboration with Skillex and worked with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra to bring the world “The Dubstep Symphony”, and have built up a reputation as one of the best live acts in electronic music. Their debut album “Welcome Reality”, released in the same year, hit number one with a bullet in the U.K and reached the top ten of the US Dance albums chart and ever since then they’ve been one of the biggest names in EDM. Late 2010 saw the band listed on the BBC’s Sound Of 2011 list, one of the most on-point choices the list has ever made, as it turned out.
Their single “Act Like You Know” started getting some genuine radio play, and their remix of The Streets’ “Blinded By The Light” was played in high profile sets by everyone from Skream to Diplo. By the end of the year was a fully-fledged member of the group, however, it was 2009 that saw them truly gain momentum. Watson guested on a couple of their 2008 releases, most notably their first attempt at straight dubstep “This Way”, released on the Audio Freaks label. By the age of 17 they had decided to create music together, setting up their studio in Stephens’ bedroom, and a year later, the duo met their future bandmate Watson.īy 2004, the band had signed to Formation Records and over the course of the next four years, they released a critically acclaimed series of 12 inches that started out as straight drum ’n’ bass but over time developed into their signature sound of pop-inflected dubstep. Both of them were pretty much musical prodigies, Ray playing classical guitar and Stephens the cello, but both of them composed electronic music on their laptops in their own time. Ray and Stephens met when they were 17 years old, at the specialist music school in Pimlico that they both attended. The trio is composed of producers Daniel Stephens and Joe Ray, who formed the group back in 2004, and singer Alana Watson, who joined them after featuring on some of their early songs in 2008.