Album of the Week: Islet – Illuminated People
Cardiff four-piece Islet have slowly but surely built up a profile over the last 18 months, courtesy of two acclaimed mini-albums, festival slots and a burgeoning reputation for unhinged live shows.
When a band becomes known for its on-stage mania, the challenge is always how to channel that energy into a record that is both coherent and exciting.
With Illuminated People, we’re pleased to report that Islet have pulled it off. Think what would happen if Can ever produced Slow Club or Broken Social Scene and that ought to give a fair approximation of what to expect here – both wilfully awkward and melodic, usually within the same bar.
The band have maintained their DIY ethos and refused to compromise on their principals. Kicking off an album with the nine minute sprawl that is Libra Man, hardly smacks of a band chasing the Yankee dollar, but even that feels like it’s merely building up to the pounding syths and hammering drums of This Fortune.
After the playful Entwined Pines, we strike gold dust. It’s What We Done Wrong that really lights up Illuminated People. Almost following convential song structure and with something that, with a bit of imagination, could even be described as a chorus. It’s a full-on pop song and in its searing instrumental outro, it’s easy to how that live reputation has become such a talking point.
At the other end of the scale is We Bow, as stripped back as Islet get. It’s simply main man Mark Thomas’ voice, an acosutic, light brushed drums and lady harmonies. And it’s bloody lovely too.
The second half of the album pulls back the wall of sound a little but Fillia stills ebbs and flows towards bursts of noise and album closer A Bear On His Own hits those ‘pop’ buttons we heard earlier on the album.
This isn’t technically a debut but as a first full length record, but it feels like this exciting band has made peace with the conflicting needs of doing exactly as they please and entertaining people.
We’re confident this will be a huge year for Islet.
Rather belatedly, we spoke to the band’s Mark Thomas…
It feels like a full length record has been a long time coming – how does it feel to have it out?
It feels great to have a new record out! It is always a buzz as you never know what is going to happen. It’s also the end of a cycle and it feels exciting as you can instantly crack on with the next one! However, it doesn’t feel like it has been a long-time coming for us as at all. All our records are recorded and tours are toured around our jobs (not through choice – we just need to eat!!).
Can you feel your sound progressing since the early days of the band?
We all love making music together and it has been constantly evolving and changing since we started. Music is a constant thrill in all of our lives, we’re addicted to it!
Do you feel you can achieve everything you want to with your DIY work ethic?
We call in ‘doing it together’ as opposed to DIY. It comes naturally to us to do our own artwork, build our own websites, send out all our postal orders from home and do a lot of recording. It’s fun – we’ve got our own cottage industry! There are quite a few things we don’t do ourselves though – we have a live agent and other bits and bobs like that.
Can we expect to see more live dates in the coming months?
Yes, we’ve just announced a small European tour in April and a UK tour for May. There should be some cool festivals as well in the summer, we’re excited as we’ve just been announced to play at Greenman festival. We played there before in 2010 and it was great fun!
