The Ting Tings - Album #5

[George]

The GRAMMY-nominated duo best known for their hits "Shut Up & Let Me Go" and "That's Not My Name" returns with their fourth album The Black Light on October 26, 2018:



1. Estranged
2. Basement
3. A & E
4. Blacklight
5. Earthquake
6. Fine & Dandy
7. Word for This
8. Good Grief

[llires]

This has been out there for quite a while, I am really liking it thus far.
I can say that I definitely enjoy this more than their debut. However, their debut album has higher peaks in songs like "That's not my name" and "Be the one." But that's just me.

Here's an interesting article explaining the situation with "Kunst."

The Ting Tings and that difficult second album

The Ting Tings recorded songs their label loved – so they ripped them up and started again. Are they tempting fate?

Katie White and Jules de Martino, the Ting Tings, photographed in Salford. Photograph: Suki Dhanda for the Observer

Muster what positive thoughts you can about the music industry, pool all good feeling, then draw a mental picture of a record label boss. You've still conjured a crook, I bet, if you're working from the same fund of stereotype and hearsay as me: the sleazeball with swindler's eyes, all hairy wrists and cross-Atlantic accent. These aren't, traditionally, figures of sympathy.
Buy it from amazon.co.uk

Well after an afternoon with the Ting Tings I want to find every record executive I can, and offer hugs. I want to tour the high-rises of Columbia and Sony BMG handing out blankets. Any A&R type or marketing whiz who has worked with Katie White and Jules de Martino, staunchly contrarian members of this two-piece Salford band, deserves at least a gentle squeeze of the shoulder. Because since scoring a giant hit for their label four years ago – the scrappy dance-rock anthem "That's Not My Name" as omnipresent a feature of 2008 as deathly financial bulletins, as Obama – the Ting Tings have been nothing but trouble.

There was the £100,000 video for "That's Not My Name" that the band didn't like and had scrapped. ("We looked vacant," says White.) There were the demo recordings they "lost" so that the label couldn't use them as bonus tracks on the first album, 2008's We Started Nothing. ("We're control freaks," says De Martino.) More recently they fought to have a piece of emailed-in fan art, imagining them both as putrid corpses, on the cover of a second album, Sounds from Nowheresville, out next month. Last year they slapped a freshly made video for the album's lead-off single, Hang It Up, on to YouTube months before its formal release. "That whole Vevo thing," says White, referring to the online streaming service most bands use to strategically premiere their vids, "is a pain in the arse."

Fairly delighted with themselves – it being a rare thing to have buggered around a label as much as they have without serious consequence – White and De Martino tell me all this between swigs of coffee and punctuating chuckles in a cafe in Salford. She is 29, he is 42, both have hair bleached a matching shock-blond, and they interrupt each other with the familiarity of friends who have spent the last four years almost permanently in each other's company – gigging, city hopping, endlessly writing their delayed second album. The first went to No 1 in May 2008, and it has taken until now for the band to finish a follow-up; enough time for another Obama election to loom, another recession. Where have the Ting Tings been?

De Martino sets the scene. It was autumn 2010, "the two of us in Berlin, in the basement of an old jazz club we've hired. We've been there for nine months making the album."

Right.

"All these compliments from the label about how wonderful the record is. About how big this or that track is going to be on the radio."

Sure.

"And at that point it was a real simple decision…"

Release it.

"Delete it."

Delete it?

"Get rid of it so it doesn't exist. Erase the tracks."

And about now the unexpected sympathy for the team at their label kicks in. De Martino goes on: "Loads of them had flown over from the UK. We played them 10, 11 tracks. But they just came too early."

"Because we were living in Berlin," says White, "we'd got into dance music, and techno, and we did a few dance-type songs. And they [the label guys] were literally going: 'Waa! Dance is huge on the radio at the minute! This is gonna fit right in!' "

"We'd never had anyone tell us how big this or that track was going to be," says De Martino, "because when we were making the first album we were here in Salford, drunk and partying. All of a sudden everyone's there with notepads going: this is fucking huge! And we're like, what do you mean huge? We haven't talked about that."

The Ting Tings were spooked. "And now we're having a massive panic attack about this record we're half way through."

"There was a moment," says White, "when we were like, right, after 10 seconds we're gonna delete these songs. Proper delete them."

And then?

"Two weeks went by," he says. "Everything quiet. They're letting us get on with our work, thinking [rubbing his hands together] it won't be long now, we'll soon get our hands on this record. Finally we get a call: how's it going? We're like: it's not ready. They're like: just send over those demos you played. And we're like: we haven't got them any more.

"I remember," he says, "the silence on the phone."

"So we packed our things and went to Spain," says White.

Their perversity makes a bit more sense when you understand how these two started out.

They met in the 1990s, when White was a teenager and De Martino an art graduate, both of them dissatisfied musicians on the fringes of pop. She'd grown up in the north west, him in London, and in roundabout ways they'd found themselves in failing bands. De Martino was playing guitar with an act called Tomkat, "a boy-band-does-Madness sort of thing", as he once described it, and White was leading a girl troupe called TKO. He'd toured in support of Mel C and her career apogee had been a spot on the bill at an Atomic Kitten gig in St Helens. The pair first got friendly when they were booked into next-door studio rooms in London.

"One day we were discussing Portishead and we decided that outside of trying to make our shit bands work we could secretly try to be Portishead." They enlisted a third member, hip-hop DJ Simon Templeman, and moved into an arts space in Salford called the Islington Mill, an obsolete and barely renovated cotton factory, where they turned an old outhouse into a studio. (The cafe we're sitting in is in the same building, slowly spruced up over the years.) As a trio they named themselves, for reasons lost to everybody, Dear Eskiimo. They got a record deal with Mercury.

If the dud-lives of Tomkat and TKO hadn't made them wary of the pop game, their short time as Dear Eskiimo did. Excited about an early creative pow-wow with the label, White spent a fortnight making a scrapbook of her favourite artwork to stimulate discussion: at the meeting she was asked, instead, something along the lines of whether she'd have a no-tit policy when the inevitable lads' mag shoot came around. Musically, De Martino has said, Dear Eskiimo struggled to recreate their studio sound when they played live. In a 2005 interview he spoke of ominous label uncertainty about how the band should be marketed: by 2006 Mercury had dropped them, no music released.

White and De Martino used what was left of their advance to keep up a residency at Islington Mill, White taking work at a clothes shop in Manchester to supplement it. "We tried to keep [Dear Eskiimo] going and it didn't work," she says. "But the second we destroyed that band, we felt weirdly invigorated." They decided to try again as a duo, and borrowed a name from a Chinese girl who worked at White's shop.

They look back on their emerging efforts as the Ting Tings as "making the best of not a lot". White became an enthusiastic if not very talented guitar player, master of four chords. De Martino moved himself to drums, and songwriting duties were shared. Their big hit, "That's Not My Name", was conceived around the still-stinging disappointment of being dropped. "The song's about feeling so useless and invisible that nobody remembers your name," White once said. "It was a screw you."

A screw you, but a catchy one. Moreish hooks have always been an unashamed part of the Ting Tings equation – the yo-yoing synth in "That's Not My Name", the metronomic bass in "Shut Up and Let Me Go" – on both White basically chatting out lyrics over the top. ("I'm not a great singer, to be honest. I shout most of my songs.") They put on gigs in their converted outhouse, and at one of those, in spring 2007, Sony executive Rob Stringer showed up; before long they were back under the umbrella of a big corporation, signed to Sony subsidiary Columbia. A first single, "Great DJ", edged into the UK top 40 in early 2008 but did better in the US. Then in the summer "That's Not My Name" went to No 1 in the UK at roughly the same time that Apple picked up "Shut Up And Let Me Go" for use in an iPod advert, exposure enough to send the track platinum on its release in America.

This pair, finally, a success! And given their efforts to get there you'd expect White and De Martino to relish it. "The success," says White, carefully choosing her words, "was a bit shit when you actually got it." They went on an exacting tour of gigs and festivals; there were day-long press sessions. Supporting the singer Pink for a fortnight on an American arena tour, De Martino got frustrated – the audience had programmes, he tells me, witheringly – and started improvising drum'n'bass versions of their songs, mid show, without telling White. It caused a row, and somewhere on the road they ended up in a hotel room threatening to stave each other's heads in with a plasticky Vodafone award they'd just won.

"We always said we'd know when to stop touring," says De Martino, "but the truth is you never know. Not until you're so exhausted you're calling your manager a fucking bastard and accusing him of trying to kill you."

It ended, abruptly, at the end of 2009, with White's hospitalisation. Always somewhat prone to medical catastrophe (her social-media dispatches full of declarations like "Feeling better!!! The Tamiflu kicked in I think") she took too many antibiotics before a show in Ohio, collapsed, and was flown home. "Absolutely exhausted," says De Martino. "We just really went for it," says White.

After a period of recovery it was time to get going on the second record. God knows what the label thought when they decided to decamp to a cellar in Berlin to write it, but there was probably a feeling that this wasn't going to be a straight-on-the-shelves-at-Tesco deal when the band toyed with calling the emerging album Kunst. Not long after that came the ill-fated visit to hear the demos, and White and De Martino's decision to torch what work they'd done. "In a way," she says, "it might have been an unconscious way of sabotaging things. To make things feel a bit real again."

De Martino explains. "We can only ever write anything when we're down. Who wants to hear an album from an artist that's happy? Because the content line tends to be: I'm sitting on a beach, how's life for you? And right now a lot of people's answer is likely to be: well not very good actually, we won't buy your record."

Eventually, sheepishly, they went to see Rob Stringer, the Sony boss who'd first signed them. The Berlin deletions had to be explained, and De Martino describes the meeting as "make or break. If that had gone badly we'd have had to get off the label." Stringer, recalls White, told them that having had a few hits already "should free us, not hinder us. He said, I don't care if we earn a penny!"

"And once we had that endorsement…" says De Martino.

Once they had that endorsement they went shopping for a samurai sword to use as a prop in a self-shot music video they made on De Martino's iPhone in a dusty skateboarding bowl in Alicante, Spain. They wrote enjoyable new-album tracks like "Guggenheim", first schemed up by White, they say, when she was pissed in the back of a taxi in Ibiza. The result is the intriguing mix of Sounds from Nowheresville; capricious switches between ups and downs, chart-friendly pop and clubbier stuff – four tracks from the abortive Berlin sessions having been revived after all.

Are there definite hits on there, in the mould of "That's Not My Name"? I'm not so sure. The band claim not to care. "It would have been so easy," says White, "to quickly bash out any old shit off the back of the first album. Get it on the radio, have a cheap nasty hit. And we didn't want to do that."

"If we're gonna wreck it," she'd said earlier, of the career, "we'd rather wreck it ourselves."

They've got complementary hair, and she's been wearing his green anorak all afternoon against the cold. Earlier he gave a gentlemanly whinny of dissent when she described herself, offhand, as "not hot". Is it so crass to wonder if they're a couple? We've spent a lively if occasionally repetitive hour slagging off, at their behest, corporation pop. I reckon I've earned the right to nudge us towards gossip.

They grin, and roll their eyes, and go all floppy and weary: they've been asked about their relationship since the beginning and they've always said no, never a couple. But I want to know: if not, why not?

White: "Well we spend all our time together anyway." De Martino: "Well not all our time." White: "Well pretty much." A pause, for shifty laughter, then De Martino says: "It's like asking why don't I fall in love with Bundie my drum technician. I'm with him all the time." Another pause. "We're driven. Too much, maybe."

"It's become almost like an obsession, our band," says White.

De Martino: "It's not like we're screaming-for-help workaholics. We just never stop. And I think trying to get some sort of normal relationship in all that… it just doesn't work, you know?"

White: "Maybe after we get a few more albums out of our system, we might, like… I don't mean screw each other. I'm talking [about relationships] generally. I don't know. Somebody asked us the other day what our hobbies are. None! We do this 24 hours a day. Maybe that's quite telling."

She doesn't elaborate, and when I return to the subject a second time she says: "I don't like going into personal things. There are bands who really manipulate that. I'd rather sell less records and keep a little bit to myself."

It's a persistent theme, the "sell less records" oblation. They'd rather sell fewer records than appear on a certain billboard, a certain advert. They'd "rather write songs that nobody's gonna hear than write dance tracks that would fit on the radio after [house DJ] David Guetta" – and White "would rather puke on my feet" than that. They'd rather wreck this themselves.

"It's a fine balance, our band," she says. "What makes it work, what makes it not shit. We feel like we could look really cheap quite easily. The second you let other people get involved there's a risk of looking like knobs."

Maybe they're tempting fate. Maybe they've been away too long, the new album will struggle, and the Ting Tings will go the same way as Dear Eskiimo, Tomkat and TKO. Maybe they'll look like nobs. Anyway I admire their gall – to so often moot the idea of collapsing a good thing out of sheer bloody stubbornness.

Hands up: there are inconsistencies in their anti-corporation stance. The record label arranged our interview, for a start, and there's a nice press lady from Sony HQ waiting nearby to make sure the Observer's photoshoot runs smoothly. The Ting Tings' music has been licensed, in the past, for use in Hollyoaks, and an American ad for Fanta ("Grab a taste of Friday!"), and the film He's Just Not That Into You. Still there's something endearing about all these self-set rules they work by; protocols hard-wired, I reckon, by the experience of being dropped, and being sounded out for nudie photoshoots, and being turned lightly bonkers by an adult life too deep in this exasperating thing, the music industry. When De Martino recalls the farrago in Berlin ("The label learned quickly, leave us to get on with it, because when we get pressured…") he sounds like a hostage-taker, a jumpy one who's just placated the encircling police for another hour by sending out an ear.

"We make our own videos, our own records, choose what brands we want to be involved with. It's not difficult," he says. "And the label fear that. Because, obviously, what's their role? You sit there in a meeting and see their egos. It needs to be about them, I did this and I did that."

"There are artists who buy into it who can really look you in the eye afterwards and feel like artists," says White. She shrugs. "It's just different people, different personalities. Who's right and who's wrong? If they're travelling the world and singing somebody else's song, but they're making 20,000 people cry as they're singing it… And, you know, we're playing to 2,000 and the crowd are punking out. Who's to say who's right and who's wrong?"

They leave me to think on that.

[SHOOTER]

We Started Nothing has sold 355k to date per HITS.

[George]

Ting Tings Inspired By The Spice Girls, Might Record Country Album
By Zachary Swickey



Cheerleader pop duo the Ting Tings first stole our hearts with their 2008 debut We Started Nothing but it took them four long years – including the scrapping of an album of radio-friendly material in 2010 – to present to us their follow-up, Sounds from Nowheresville, in February.

In an interview with Spinner, frontwoman Katie White explained the effect the band's success has had on her.

"To be honest, I stopped Googling our band when – I think it was on YouTube a year ago – people were having a discussion about how abnormally long my arms were and I was thinking 'I'm gonna get arm issues!' so I stopped," White said.

While the Ting Tings’ debut was well-received by critics and fans alike, the group decided to take a different approach on their sophomore effort.

"We realized we wanted to make an album like a playlist. We felt like it would reflect the way that culture is at the moment, where you're almost greedy,” White continued. “If somebody says to me, 'Oh, check out this new band,' and there's no YouTube video, I feel cheated."

The band had initial plans to release their follow-up in 2010, but decided the material they had recorded sounded too much like generic pop and opted to trash the majority of the tracks – a process they had already gone through with their debut.

"We scrapped a few, which seems to be a big deal to people. We did that on the first album but no one knew or cared. That's how we work. We're kind of quite brutal,” said White.

Considering the nostalgia factor at last weekend’s Coachella, it comes as no surprise that '90s girl bands were a major influence on Sounds from Nowheresville.

"We would literally sit and be like, 'I really liked the Spice Girls and TLC when I was like 15, they were my favorite '90s girl bands. Should we attempt it? Should we do this?' And it was that kind of, 'Should we? No, we probably shouldn't, but we're going to anyway,' feeling that's quite interesting as a writer,” explained White.

It wasn’t too hard for the pop duo to write an album inspired by girl groups from the '90s, but they have a zanier idea that might require more creative effort.

"We half want to do some kind of country album. Just literally sit there and go, 'right, we've got four weeks, let's just write songs and put it out.' We find it fascinating. We hear it constantly on the radio, our driver's just listening to country music. It's amazing 'cause it's so alien to us,” revealed White.

[Agent Yoncé]

Downloaded the album. Loving it so far!

[George]

NEW SINGLE:

[SHOOTER]

Had no idea SON was that big of a bomb but I'm unsurprised they're no longer on a major after it. WC is a nice enough track but doesn't sound immediate enough to resonate and help them regain the audience they lost either. Shame.

[Juan Carlos]

Their new album is called Super Critical and it's out on October 20 in the UK.

Artwork:



Tracklisting:

1. "Super Critical"
2. "Daughter"
3. "Do it Again"
4. "Wrong Club"
5. "Wabi Sabi"
6. "Only Love"
7. "Communication"
8. "Green Poison"
9. "Failure"

"Super Critical", "Wrong Club" and "Only Love" are available as instant grats if the album is pre-ordered.

[newpower]

I like Green Poison

[George]

[Nick]

Was checking it out on Spotify last night. I liked a few tracks.

[George]

Review: The Ting Tings At The Troubadour, Jan 26.
27th January 2015 by Kieran MacIntyre



The lights go dark in the Troubadour, the crowd intermixed with twenty-somethings and middle age hipsters start screaming, Katie White and her partner in crime Julian “Jules” De Martino took to the stage, and completely blew the whole crowd away with their high-octane performance.



After an exemplary opening set from synth wielding fellow duo Kaneholler, The Ting Tings came on stage and gave a fun hour long set to the sold out crowd that was near irreproachable. The British duo first came to prominence in 2008 with their album “We Started Nothing” and it’s lead single “That’s Not My Name” and have been rocking out all around the world since.



I had the pleasure of seeing them at Coachella 2009 in the Sahara tent, back when the Sahara tent was just an “electronic music and more” tent stage, not the leviathan EDM hangar in it’s place now. With De Martino constantly switching between percussion duties, guitar and sampler fiddling and White’s incredible stage presences that recalls Kim Gordon on crack, The Ting Tings put on one hell of a show that completely astounded me and won this guy over, that same sentiment remains after last night.



Katie was unstoppable the whole set, a beautiful white flash with a chrome baseball cap atop long natty blonde hair ran up and down the stage going from playing guitar, a mean banging of the all-powerful cowbell, starkly beating the shit out of a eponymously labeled bass drum and fiddling with a tiny synthesizer in their thumping encore.



People label them as a electro-pop group but Katie’s vocal stylings remind me of a young Debbie Harry’s proto-rapping coalesced with some serious punk veracity. She jumped all around, threw her instruments off like shitty clothes and kicked her mic stand down multiple times(the poor sound guy), she kicks ass and takes no prisoners, just the way a singer should be.



De Martino, backed with a DJ who (I guess) will go nameless, gave Katie’s sonic equivalent to a fist fight a perfectly concise bed of multi-instrumentation and backing vocals.



This set was incendiary and could have gone into corybantic obscurity, alas it never did cause these guys have excellent method to their jubilant madness. Powering through their set playing such hits as the anthemic “Shut Up and Let Me Go”, the funk monster “Hang It Up” and their big arena filler “That’s Not My Name.” A personal favorite from the set was their Discoteque friendly burner “Only Love” from last year’s “Super Critical” album.



The Ting Tings have proven to me again how crucial their live set is to my perception of their music, which is fun and enjoyable by itself, but combine that with their live set and you’ll be on board just like I am.

Went to this show last night and looooooved it! Finally happy to have heard songs from their 2nd & 3rd albums live (cool new arrangements!) since I haven't seen them since a radio lounge show during the "We Started Nothing" era.

[George]

New album The Black Light coming soon:

[George]

“Blacklight” Lyric Video:

[SHOOTER]

Not impressed. Need to hear more.

[George]

Music Video Premiere:

[George]

2nd single "Estranged" has premiered.

Interview: The Ting Tings on their ten-year career and new album release

October 11, 2018 
Declan Bowring

With the Salford duo’s fourth album due out on October 26th, Counteract caught up with The Ting Tings to chat about switching creative gears, their ten-year career and upcoming record, The Black Light.

It’s 2018. The Ting Tings have been bending genres, ripping up rule books and diligently crafting away for a decade now. ‘That’s Not My Name’ and ‘Shut Up And Let Me Go’ from We Starting Nothing filled dance floors in 2008, whilst Sounds Of Nowheresville and Super Critical, not as well-received, delivered pop infused with rock, reggae, disco and heartbreak. It’s a new era for the band, as the run up their fourth album, The Black Light, begins, kickstarted by lead single ‘Blacklight’; a completely different sound to what most would expect.

Counteract talked to Jules and Katie in depth to find out about the new album.

“It’s a ‘bare and harsh’ album to play in the car, at night, whilst it’s raining” explained Katie. The pair detail how they ditched their big studio setup to make the album, opting to record most of it on an iPhone with a small guitar. Writing the majority of it in Spain, they felt their demos were “too nostalgic” – taking form as indie tracks influenced by their heroes, The Smiths and The Cure. That was not the sound they were going for. It was when they gathered inspiration in Downtown LA that the transformative work began. Integrity is central to the record’s creation: “We feel [The Black Light] is honest and compelling,” a feat achieved by “pulling everything out of it that didn’t matter” over a four year period – which justifies the extended bridge between albums. They set up a loft space, kitted out with a small Ableton set up and worked with their friend Jon Foster. His software knowledge combined with their love of working with him meant “he naturally became co-producer.”

The Black Light is a labour of love with an abundance of cabin fever. It almost echoed the sentiments of the creation of their second album, when the duo infamously scrapped most of it during its production to start again. This time, re-recording the whole thing meant they made an album that’s “independently [them], having managed to get over the finish line without it being diluted.” It took time, but the Ting Tings waded through the “experimental shit” that they made, finding the stuff that “gets good”.

At eight tracks long, the record is tight, concise and complete with Mancunian guitar rhythms, lyrical analogies, hard beats, synths and bass. “Living our lives is part of the process, we are always writing and creating,” says Katie. It feels as though they may have sat up at night, recording their deepest darkest worries, which is articulately reflected in the record’s messages:

‘Estranged’
“This one’s about the confusion of being estranged from someone without the big argument. Those types of things are usually important for clarity and closure. When somebody doesn’t give you that, it is very confusing.”

‘Basement’
“It’s our creative world/space where for the past 10 years we have spent a huge amount of our lives.”

‘A & E’
“It’s about being in a destructive relationship and the mixed feelings of being loved and damaged by the same person. The inner turmoils that it creates.”

‘Blacklight’
“It’s about a UV black light showing up all the flaws in yourself or someone else.”

‘Earthquake’
“The addictive quality about relations that are built on drama.”

‘Fine & Dandy’
“It’s about our dead loved ones.”

‘Word For This’
“Sometimes winning isn’t everything. In this consumer driven world of perfection it feels quite good to fuck your life up sometimes. Maybe it’s boredom.”

‘Good Grief’
“I’m a northerner. I like moaning. It’a sign of affection.”

Currently rehearsing their future live shows and producing a video for the lead single, The Ting Tings “want minimal instruments on-stage.” With the key focus on their lyrics and delivery, they aim to only have “everything [they] need, but the bare minimum. We want to play hard. We will plan a tour as soon as we are ready,” they state.

Will Birmingham get to see The Ting Tings in our city after a seven year gap? “Yes” is the frank answer. Shy in person, Katie loves to shout their songs when performing, whilst Jules hides behind his glasses. A decade of performing, along with making “strange decisions, good and bad”, has made them very comfortable in our own skin. “This is how we work.”

Looking back on their ten-year career – with Jules admitting ‘Be The One’ came on just before this interview, and lovingly remarked at how simplistic it was – they are happier now than ever. Self-confessed control freaks, they lament the state of the older music industry. “It often takes something good and turns it into nonsense, with very few getting to keep their originality.” This is where streaming proves fruitful. Though they are avid supporters of classic vinyl, the duo believe that newer musical consumption platforms allow musicians to “upload their music without advice,” blending in fittingly with their love of DIY, liberated creativity.

The palpable starkness of the record’s atmosphere is abrupt and blatant, not just in the songs, but in all aspects. Minimalism is exactly what they aimed to achieve, and the bare bones of everything is to be exposed; ‘a blacklight exposes everything’. It appears as though they want listeners to connect with their efforts, eschewing pomp and grandeur in place of something more gritty, sincere and real. Their fans, they hope, will be inspired by their new music – or at least by their “approach and creative freedom” – as a veiled reminder of how they flipped the musicians’ rule book on its head. “We are a strange band, we feel like we always sit awkwardly in the music business, too alternative for pop; too pop for alternative.”

Long-time fans will be surprised, and new ones will be captivated.

The Black Light is out October 26th, via The Ting Tings’ label, Finca Records.

[George]

Live Q&A tonight:

October 26, 2018
INTERVIEW: The Ting Tings

I have been spending time with The Ting Tings…

who have been telling me about their new (fourth) album, The Black Light, and its themes. Katie White and Jules de Martino discuss how the record differs from their previous work and how Spain and L.A. played a part in the recording process.

The guys talk about plans going forward and reveal albums that mean a lot to them; whether there is a rising act we need to get behind and whether they have any goals to tick off before the end of this year – they end the interview by selecting some awesome music.

__________

Hi, guys. How are you? How has your week been?

Jules de Martino: Busy. Putting out our own records is no joke!

For those new to your music; can you introduce yourselves, please?

Katie White: I’m Katie White…

Jules: I’m Jules de Martino; we are The Ting Tings

The Black Light is your new album. What are the main themes/stories that inspired the record?

Jules: We felt that years of living and touring built up a large trailer-full of baggage (as with all our lives) that gave us anxiety and concern. Most of that emotion made its way onto the record, musically and lyrically. It’s very much about shining a light on those bits we brush under the carpet of forget to address.

Do you each have a favourite song from the album?

Katie: Earthquake.

Jules: Blacklight/Estranged.

What was it like recording The Black Light in Spain and L.A.? Why did you choose those destinations?!

Katie: We always pack down; ship off to a new place to make new music. It’s just part of our fabric. We decided, very early on, that we would never make two records sound alike and, by shutting shop and starting again, we feel like a new band each time.

Jules: On The Black Light, we ended up in Southern Spain in a valley like lost souls suffering from extreme nerves and exhaustion in bliss mountain air and pure silence. Kinda freaked us out as we thawed. It almost chose us but, as the writing and jamming became something honest and worthy, we repacked and set for L.A. to cement the record. We had passed through L.A. many times - especially through the arts district - and vowed to make a record there; so it made sense that once the songs were penned to head there to get this record down.

Many people are familiar with your sound and biggest hits. How do you think your style has changed since the start?

Jules: Immensely. So many reasons for the evolution. As artists, we always want to discover and explore. Life’s short and we need to cram in as much as we can while we’re here.

Katie: We’re an Indie band that crossed over to the ‘other side’ but our hearts remain in the creation of music and art that means something to the creator.

What do you hope to achieve by the end of 2018?

Katie: In a way, we’ve already achieved some of our goals: to complete album-four with material we adore is huge. When we’re this happy about our efforts, we start thinking about touring and performing it live.

Jules: I’d like to master drone flying…

Do you already have plans for 2019?

Katie: Erm. We’re starting to think about places we haven’t seen or performed. It’s an interesting list: Tasmania, Mongolia; India, Iceland; Greenland, the North Pole…

Jules: Wanna go back to Ibiza and party. We spent time there on album-three and didn’t get to do everything we set out to do - so, I’m going back to unfinished biz.

Have you got a favourite memory from your time in music so far – the one that sticks in the mind?

Jules: There’s so many...

I have to check my journal as each time an event surpasses the one before it becomes my fave. Sitting on the street tarmac in Las Vegas after a very heavy night when our T.M. (tour manager). He forgot to get us to the airport on time, which meant missing the next show and getting more messed up in Las Vegas…pretty memorable. If I'm not mistaken, we wheeled our T.M. back to his room that night in a wheelchair as he couldn’t stand up; ex-military dude at 6ft 5.

Katie: Jakarta blew my mind when the promoter crammed 15k peeps into a 5k venue falling apart at the seams. The audience had to watch a military film before we went on stage. (There were) military personal everywhere and we thought we were in for a dud but the 15k sung every single lyric of the entire set. It took a while for me to compute. Things aren’t always what they seem.

Which one album means the most to each of you would you say (and why)?

Katie: That’s tough. We Started Nothing will always be special as it was the first.

Jules: Yeah. I though; I still feel like I never got to finish the production on it…I’m feeling The Black Light big. It just feels like it’s really about where we are now - and the process of getting to this independent point in our lives means a lot. It’s the most honest record we have made.

If you could support any musician alive today, and choose your own rider, what would that entail?

Jules: David Byrne. I would need to be playing drums on Once in a Lifetime - with tequila backstage.

Katie: If The Smiths reformed; I’d like to warm up then watch them from side of stage munching a salad and drinking white wine, of which Morrissey would approve. I love The Smiths…

Jules: I once confused J. (Johnny) Marr for J. (John) Squire. Marr showed up at our studio in Salford (Manchester) and I was hungover. Making small talk; I told him I loved his new band, The Seahorses. I think the single was You Can Talk to Me…which, of course, was Squires’ band. D’oh. No chance of a side of stage if The Smiths reform, then?

What advice would you give to new artists coming through?

Jules: Do not do it unless you feel it is honest and you want to support it fully. Take no advice; stay true. The industry is in chaos and only artists creating their individual moments will save it.

Katie: Go slowly, surely; have a vision and stay in lane.

Do you have tour dates coming up? Where can we catch you play?

Katie: Not yet, but working on it.

Are there any new artists you recommend we check out?

Jules: The Sleaford Mods.

Do you get much time to chill away from music? How do you unwind?

Katie: Not at the moment. We are fully-independent releasing our own records. No time to turn off. Never been one to turn off but the time will come and I’ll fall into a big cream cake (or summin’).

Finally, and for being good sports; you can each choose a song and I’ll play it here (not any of your music - I will do that).

Jules: Sleaford Mods’ Jobseeker

Katie: The Smiths’ There Is a Light That Never Goes Out and Cardi B - Bodak Yellow

Bye,
J. & K.

[George]

[George]

[George]

New album is on the way, along with a tour. PLUS they duo welcomed a daughter 1-2 years ago!

[George]

http://instagram.com/p/CzwOBZMtDhr

[George]

New single “Down” is dropping this month followed by a new album! Style and sounds seems to be they’re going for a Country/Folk feel this era.

They’ve previously teased two other songs:

“Danced on the Wire”

“Home”

[George]

New single dropping the end of this month:

[George]

Would love for them to jump on a remix!

[George]

Performing at SXSW 2025:

[George]

New show announced for 2025:

Looks like we’re really getting a new album!