“Your shadow is the last thing you own after you’ve lost everything else,” IST IST frontman Adam Houghton tells For The Love of Bands, elaborating on the meaning behind the lyrics for their new single Lost My Shadow.
“Someone who has nothing left to lose has everything to gain… it makes them fearless. Maybe the position we’ve found ourselves in, where we need to be fearless and take this band far and wide, was on my mind?” he adds thoughtfully, explaining the loftier ambitions that he, Andy Keating, guitarist and keyboardist Mat Peters and drummer Joel Kay have now set for themselves: the band always keen to evolve and grow, and test themselves musically and lyrically from those early foundations firmly laid by their brilliant debut L.P. Architecture.
“I can’t wait for people to hear the new track, and the album. I know it’s the best thing we’ve done,” Adam adds quickly, his sense of excitement clearly palpable. “We’re levelling things up constantly, the songs are stronger and it feels like we’ve worked with Joe forever, the energy of the recording sessions comes through in the music.” The “Joe” referred to is producer Joe Cross, whose impressive CV features the likes of the Courteeners, Hurts and Louis Tomlinson, the band inform me.
My Lost Shadow is IST IST’s first tantalising offering of the new sound that will make up their, as yet, untitled fourth album due out later this year. Again, it holds up those deft undertones of Joy Division with a Buzzcock’s beat crafted with flourishes from that inspiring Mancunian scene that bounced brashly outwards across the UK, only now the guys have coloured it all in with the bold blemishes of their evocative “timeness”, as, “this year promises to be our biggest yet!”
Bassist Andy Keating is in an even punchier mood regarding IST IST’s past, as well as their immediate, and future, aspirations.
“We’ve had chart successes, we’ve headlined the Ritz in Manchester,” where the band originate from, “and now we’re packing out venues across Europe!” As I sit here, typing this article, the guys have just played a sold out show in Hamburg on the latest leg of their European tour, supported by October Drift.
“We’ve been politely knocking on the door for the best part of a decade now but, if no-one feels like answering it, we’ll just kick it down!” Andy declares with a tone that comes from an ever-burgeoning sense of determination.
Since forming in 2014, IST IST have forged a formidable reputation, fuelled largely by loud, “word of mouth excitement”, especially around their intense live shows, combined with, and tied together by, a fierce Mancunian do-it-yourself work ethic that has created an ever-growing catalogue of successful studio, as well as “live”, album releases, all of which, as they tell me with rightful pride, were released through their own Kind Violence Records label.
Championed early on and supported ferociously by influential radio stations such as Radio X and BBC 6Music, and brimming with confidence and excitement, the guys are keen and ready to show everyone that this is their strongest body of work to date, and it all starts with Lost My Shadow.
“Our new music is bolder than ever,” Andy reiterates. “We just want more and more people to hear it… love it!”
“We want to light a bigger fire everywhere we go,” Adam assures me, backing up his bandmate’s barely contained excitement.
Lost My Shadow follows on from Protagonists, which reached number 41 in the full charts upon its release in 2023, quickly securing IST IST their third set of top ten positions in the Vinyl, Independent and physical charts, as well as presenting them with the number one download in its week of release. Encouraged into taking yet another characteristically bold step, the guys then set up their very own rehearsal studios, KVR Studios, on the outskirts of Manchester, “to enable us to focus fully on the band,” Adam reveals, as well as their new tour.
Their tour, which started on the 19th March in Oslo, hits the UK at the Hare and Hounds in Birmingham on the 4th April, and will see them play places like London, Edinburgh, Leeds and Liverpool, as well as appear on the bill at festivals including Y Not… and Tomorrow’s Ghosts. They promise to reveal more new music on the road, as well as perfectly showcase songs from a now bulging back catalogue. The tour will reach nine countries and see their reach continue to spread out from across these shores: “bucking the trend of acts struggling in Europe post-Brexit,” they add, full of hope for a future both post-Brexit and pandemic.
Lost My Shadow was released on the 8th of March, and full tour details can be found at: https://www.ististmusic.com/pages/tour
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