Islet
BIOGRAPHY
As we wrote in our Sounds On the Ground Piece last November (yes, that is our professional equivalent of putting our thumbs in our ears, wiggling our fingers and poking out our tongues while saying “nah nah nah nah nah, we-ee saw them fi-irst”), Islet are a band that in all possible ways evade description. This is a band whose recent rise to the public psyche has been catalysed by their efforts to stay out of the spotlight. In a complete rebellion against the glutinous glut of MySpace/ Facebook/Twitter toting, over-marketed kiddies, Islet took a step back and made the mature decision that the best thing to do in these situations is to simply keep schtum. And schtum they did keep.
If you think I’m being obtuse, just try it yourself, type Islet into Google and you’ll find nothing of the ordinary sort. No MySpace. No Facebook. No band site. No PR Company. Nowt. Well, almost nowt - there is a little site there listed as This is Islet, which is a site made by a couple of guys who, in love with the band’s music and amazed by the lack of content, put one together themselves. Despite the fact that they were grown men who really should have something much better to do with their time than make a fan site.
Even though the band choose to keep things on the looooow-down, their music and live performances have a core of self-aware theatricality about them. That’s not to say that they don’t really mean everything they do, but that they seem to be inherently aware of the ridiculousness of taking things all too seriously. Like all the best bands, these guys make their own little-large world out of their music, blasting a crater in the terra firma just big enough for their bodies and their imaginations to spark and collide within. On stage, the group are a blur of kinetic energy, swapping instruments, hitting drums seemingly at random, looking more like some mental instrumental Ganesh than a group of individuals making music. Sometimes they stand and sing into microphones like any run-of-the-mill musician would do, but more often they meander around, off into the audience, behind the drum-kit, off to the loo, all the while singing/shouting/muttering with no real regard for conventionality or ‘rock’ aesthetic.
Since those heady days (aah…noughties nostalgia is already kicking in) a few more blog reviews have popped up across the interweb but surprisingly…no, disgustingly, many silly people still haven’t picked up on them. Or if they have, they’ve been infected by the band’s own anti-self-promotion, DIY aesthetic and just kept it to themselves, selfish buggers.
Fortunately the band have also unleashed some of their post-rock wig-out/Steve Reich drum-duo breakdown/rhythmic shouty noise-some-ness out on seminal Welsh label Turnstile’s Bento series – a run of downloads each curated by a different band. Islet’s lovely little lump of audio-visual love comes in the form of two songs recorded in barns and bedrooms across Wales, as well as ‘a visual and tactile device’ known as The Isness. If this leaves your heart palpitating in curiosity, then you’d best point your click right here and download that hefty beast for your own aural pleasure. For free, too.
Much as they’ve been proclaimed as a ‘live band’ (we’re not too sure what that means either), the band sound similarly chaotic on record, if a little more restrained, more refined. First track on the download release ‘Jasmine’ is a rhythmical work-out in the vein of post punkers The Rapture’s Echoes that just about clings to the edge of sanity with claws made of bass. If you were to drop out the party beat and the dance-floor bass-line you would be left with a screeching sprawl of phasing tribal war-cries and heavily reverb-ed guitar lines. A bit like Liars’ They Were Wrong, So We Drowned – a concept album about witches recorded in a deserted wood in New Jersey – or a slowed down, beefed-up, jazzed-out Shellac, but more coherent, slightly less uncomfortable. Oh goodness.
UPCOMING GIGS
The band will be playing on a Huw Stephens-curated free entry mini-tour in January, hitting 60 Million Postcards in Bournemouth on January 22nd , The Lock Tavern in Camden on Sunday 24th Jan and then Koko in Camden with other Welshsters Los Campesinos! on February 25th. Oh, and did we mention they’re bringing the pain to our very own Club Rockfeedback on March 5th? Buy your tickets here.
LINKS
Download their tracks from Turnstile
Our Sounds on the Ground piece
VIDEOS:
words and thoughts by Samuel Smith