The Invaders – Spacing Out/ Latin Lips

Rough n’ wild funk jam loaded with insane psychedelic effects – all the way from sunny Bermuda!

When the island of Bermuda is mentioned you think of the affluent north Caribbean paradise with its tourism, pink sandy beaches – and the mysterious Bermuda Triangle. But the only mystery we’re concerned with here is not the loss of ships and planes to extraneous forces, but how such incredible music as that recorded by The Invaders ever got to be recorded in such an exotic location?



Psychedelic funk is not the first thing that springs to mind when the subject of Caribbean music comes up. With the nearest land mass to Bermuda being North Carolina, perhaps it was the raw funk of Carleen & the Groovers or The Soul Drifters that found its way over the airwaves to infuse itself on the minds of the local musicians? Either way, back in the early ‘70s producer Eddy Demello heard what he remembers as “the hottest group on the hotel circuit. They were way ahead of their time”. He told me he wanted to “try something different and give them a chance”, and so he got the band together and recorded a couple of 45s and a long player. The band obliged and put down ten songs in total, all of them hard and heavy funk pieces and drenched in a loud, psychedelic reverb. The guys were very happy with the result – Demello pressed 3000 copies of the LP, and apart from some which were shipped to a small distributor in Paramus in the US, they were all destined for sale only in Bermuda. However, despite initial sales being bright, few people were interested in buying vinyl records, and so Eddy had to get rid of them, selling them on the street and at church bazaars. He even left some in a box on his doorstep with a “FREE” notice to anybody who wanted one!



So with LP sales all at sea, the album was eventually all washed up like lost driftwood on the beach. However, always on the lookout for salvaging lost gems, we at Jazzman spotted the SOS and launched a rescue party – let’s all welcome back The Invaders!