June 2008
Hello, faithful listeners (and, of course, you slatternly ones at the back who only show up for the occasional emotionally traumatic yet extremely erotic booty call).
It's a strange old time at the moment. I can see insanely busy weeks and months ahead and I'm desperately trying to prepare for them, but I'm still working out where to begin. However, a few announcements.
Confirmation has just arrived that ist will be playing this year's Sugarhill Festival, which takes places on 5-7 September, (www.sugarhillfestival.co.uk). We're on the New Independents Stage on Sunday, 7th September, just before the headliners, The Flies (led by Spiritualised's Sean Cook). We're hoping this will kick off the process of bringing Toothpick Bridge to the masses, and we're planning a number of events, both online and in real life, to kick the latter part of 2008 off with a bang.
The next week, we will be taking part in the Shoreditch Shuffle (http://www.whos-jack.co.uk/shuffle.html) event in good ol' London Town, being organised by the fine people at Who's Jack Magazine. Over the 13/14 September, you'll be able to take in a cornucopia of art, films, music and, I have no doubt, interpretative dance.
In between times, amongst other dates to be confirmed, we will be visiting Bar None in Nottingham on 14th August. As always, new dates on the horizon over the next couple of months while we finalise plans for the now about 3 days work from completion new album. We are actively looking for some events which are a little off-the-beaten track, as well, so if you know of strange and interesting gigs that may suit, feel free to let us know on kenton@istianity.co.uk or kenton.ist@gmail.com.
In fact, plans are afoot to get the first single/taster/frightener from the album out to you soon. We'll be doing this in a rather strange and interesting way, so if you'd like to be involved and get in on the ground floor of that, again with the emailing us, you little monkeys.
I have, as you might remember, recently returned from another writing sojourn in Italy and some of you might have expected another blog-fest by now. I'm still assimilating the experience at the moment, but I would like to take the chance to thank Chris D, Marti P, Linda L, Chris S, Matt D, Madelaine H, Rachel D, Jim B, Vivien S, Eran J, Athena A, Claire H and Jan B for an extraordinary time, which I'm not sure yet I can capture in words. And, of course, to our hosts Alessio and Valeria, Art and Seth - much love and awe. As with my last trip, however, I will need to introduce you to the work of these fine folks at some stage because there is a wealth of music you need to hear.
I think that's all for now. Keep an eagle eye out, cause there's soon going to be more ist about than you could shake a reasonably stout stick towards.
K.
Endorsement
We're proud to announce that our very own rhythm king, Flash has - quite deservedly - been awarded an endorsement from Pellwood Drumsticks. We'd like to congratulate him and we look forward to being hit in the back of the head by Pellwood sticks for many years to come.
May 2008
Tour Update
The first few dates in the 2008 Toothpick Bridge tour are now up. Many more to follow. Kenton will be appearing as part of a songwriter's festival in Montone, Italy, alongside Squeeze's Chris Difford on May 31st, and the tour proper kicks off back home in the UK on June 6th at Sumo, Leicester. Hope to see you there.
Album Update
Toothpick Bridge is nearly complete, you'll pleased to hear, and we hope the 3,000 year gestation period has been worth the wait. New music will be making itself available soon, so you can hear some of what we've all been suffering nervous breakdowns over for the past year. We hope to have some news of when the album proper will reach you over the next couple of months. Keep checking in.
ist on the Telly
ist recently debuted two songs from the new album on Sky 186's new music programme, Ditto TV. We hope to have samples from the performance and interview up shortly.
ist on the Radio
Following hot on the heels of the TV show, ist continued to hawk their wares on the wonderful Fuss FM. Four new tracks were aired as part of an exclusive live session. Once again, we hope to be able to bring you some of the tracks and interviews very soon.
Learn Drums from Our Very Own Flash
As some of you may know, our resident hitter-of-things, Flash has his own website: www.flashdrummer.co.uk, covering his entire career in and out of ist, including special offers for those of you interested in learning the drums for yourself. We particularly recommend the free online drum lessons. Even Kenton nearly managed to stay in time with them!
(Limited Time, Special Offer: 10 half hour lessons for £75 for a block booking.)
March 2008
Flash's new website
Finally after much hard work the all new www.flashdrummer.co.uk website is up and running. The
site covers all of my career in music so far, the site features my
teaching, session and kit restoration work.
Album Progress
In February 2007, we decamped to The Way Studios, Hackney to begin
work on our 3rd album, 'Toothpick Bridge'. On March 8th, 2008, we
finished what we, in our passion for mixed metaphors, are declaring
'principal photography'. Barring a few overdubs and special guest
appearances (more news on that soon!) we have most of the album in
the can. It's been an incredible, if occasionally
breakdown-inducing year, and we just wanted to thank everyone at
The Way and The Premises for all their help and expertise in
helping us and our producer, Jay Burnett, realise 18 songs worth of
brand new ist. Still some miles to go before we sleep, but there is
a bright light at the end of the tunnel. We can only hope it's not
a train.
News 2007
OCTOBER
Showcase Gig
The band are performing a one off night featuring The Swinging
Laurels, on Saturday 3rd November at the Donkey in
Leicester, this will be the last chance this year to see them play
two sets of songs charting ist's career from 2001 to the present,
including an exclusive preview of material due for release next
year, support on the night will be the excellent M48.
JULY
A BIG thankyou
Thanks to everyone who came to the show at Guilfest, we had a
marvellous time, and it would seem you did too...Due to the
cancellation of the Song Festival by an extremely shortsighted
local council in Huddersfield, ist will be making a one-off stop at
home in Leicester for Gaz Birtles' Song Club Special, a two day
mini-festival celebrating the spirit of the festival, which, if
there's any justice, will be back next year. The Song Club for more
details. ist will be playing on the 28th July at approx. 9:00pm, at
The Donkey, Welford Road, Leicester.
Work on the album continues apace, and to say we are pleased with the results so far, would be...true. Anyone looking for more information on the album can contact Jay Burnett on jayburnett@gmail.com.
There will be announcements over the next couple of months of our movements for the rest of the year, but until then, we return to our series of small rooms to complete 'Toothpick Bridge'.
APRIL
ist confirmed for Song Festival 2007
The band are now confirmed to play Song 2007 in Huddersfield on
28/29th July (day to be confirmed), The Proclaimers and The
Levellers are headlining.
Flash & STRESSBITCH @ Hawkfest
2007
Stressbitch are Hawkwinds annual festival Hawkfest the event runs June 15/16/17th at
Castle Donington, Derbyshire, (Junction 24 of the M1), this will be
the bands first festival but hopefully not the last, click on the
link for further details.
Guilfest 2007
ist will be appearing on the Surrey Advertiser Live Club
Stage from 3: 15 to 3:45 on Saturday, July 14th. Discount
tickets for the day are £35 or £87.50 for the weekend. We have
either 50 day tickets to sell or 20 weekend ones, after that it's
on full price.
Headliners: Friday> Supergrass, Saturday> Squeeze, Sunday> Magic Numbers and Madness
Goodbye Andy T
A recent bit of very sad news for anyone who's involved in
Leicester's thriving music scene was the untimely death of Andy
Tomlinson on Tuesday 3rd April 2007. Andy was a long time friend of
the band, booking us early on in our career a number of times, he
was a genuinely great bloke and will be missed by us
all.
Cheers Andy RIP
MARCH
Back from the brink
Welcome to the new ist website, a bit slicker, filled with a lot
more information and signalling the start of the next period in ist
history.
The recording of ist's 3rd album 'Toothpick Bridge' is well underway with US Producer Jay Burnett, and it promises to hold quite a few surprises.
Also fellow Leicester band Stressbitch
(Flash moonlighting again with Porkbeast, ex of Crazyhead) are
currently recording their first single to be released later this
year, no release date confirmed as yet.