POST-BURNOUT
Beginning in 2014, with acts like Joy Division, Interpol, and Radiohead cited as their major influences, the Mancunian post-punk band IST IST were in their infancy, playing small club shows for a number of years, when they brought guitarist and keyboardist Mat Peters into the band in 2018 to round up their distinctive sparce and melancholic sound, just before they hit the studio to record their debut album, 2020’s Architecture.
“The band were a three-piece, playing a bit heavier than we sound now,” Mat recalls of joining the band when he spoke with Post-Burnout. “We released our first album in 2020 […], and we didn’t start touring properly until after COVID, in 2021/’22.”
While the lockdowns were underway, and people were just discovering their debut, the band were already working on its follow-up, 2021’s The Art of Lying. “That’s the weird thing; a lot of people say that Architecture was their lockdown album,” says Mat.
“But, obviously, we’d written and recorded it in 2019. For us, The Art of Lying is very much our lockdown project. We were stuck at home, and we ended up sending each other files and stuff like that, which was a new thing.
“We’d never written [while] not in the same room together. So, we sort of learned a new project, really, which we’ve carried on. Like, we do send files back and forth and work on stuff remotely.”
Beyond the new structure of working, Mat also feels that the time they had to stew on The Art of Lying allowed them to try new techniques, which they would not have considered if they were to go on tour straight after Architecture.
When the band could resume performing, they had two full-length albums under their belt. While they would see a huge spike in interest in the UK, which resulted in them touring more extensively and at bigger venues, it wasn’t until a request to visit mainland Europe that they would see just how much reach they had, particularly in the Netherlands, which remains their largest market to date.
“The first show that we booked in the Netherlands was on a boat in Rotterdam, called V11,” Mat recalls of their first tour of Europe. “And the man who was booking it at the time was like, ‘We’ll book it, and we’ll see how it goes, and we’ll book a few other shows, and we’ll see what happens.’ And I think it sold out in, like, two minutes, and it was a 150-cap or whatever.
“Then we were like, ‘Oh, that’s weird! There must be 100 people that love us in the Netherlands! That’s cool!’ Then the promoter got back and said, ‘Oh, we’ll book Rotown in Rotterdam for the week after,’ and we said, ‘Oh, no! That’s a bit much! That’s not going to sell, is it?’ That was, like, 250-cap or whatever, and then that sold out in five minutes! Then we were like, [Laughs] ‘Right! I guess that’s that, then!’”
After this tour, the band would record their third album, Protagonists, which was released in 2023. But it was during the making of their fourth album, 2024’s Light a Bigger Fire, that the band quit their day jobs.
“It was terrifying,” admits Mat. “At the time, I was just that confident with it. We talked about it for a long time, and I don’t think we’d be doing it or taking that leap if we didn’t think it was really built on secure foundations.
“ Because we’re not signed to a label, all the money that we have is our own money, we don’t owe anyone any advances or anything like that, so, compared to a lot of other bands, it’s not that risky, if that makes sense.”
The coincidence of making such a decision while working on an album titled Light a Bigger Fire is not lost on Mat. “The title comes from a lyric in a song called ‘The Kiss,’ but I think Light a Bigger Fire, it sums up that whole period,” he says.
“That’s exactly what we were trying to do. We were like, ‘You know what? If we’re going to do this full-time, we need to do something that’s bigger, and we need to do something that’s going to take us up another level, just to make sure we can do this. And that was the concept behind that whole album, really.”
To help them realise their vision, the band enlisted the seasoned producer Joseph Cross, who has credits working with the likes of Lana Del Rey, Hurts, Little Boots, and La Roux, to engineer the album.
“Because it was our first album being full-time, we trusted him to make it a bit more snappy, and went with it,” Mat says of their collaboration. “We had never worked with a producer before, so it was a bit of just learning how that actually works, and how he works.”
Mat explains that Joseph added a lot of back-and-forth, which helped elevate the tracks they had written. When it came time to record the album’s follow-up, there was no one else they would consider for the job, even though the atmosphere they were looking for was totally different.
Released in February, DAGGER is the band’s fifth studio album in six years. “Ever since I joined the band, the number one thing is taking stuff away and leaving space for things to breathe,” Mat says of their aim with the album’s sound.
“I think that’s what we were trying to do on this album: get back to that original ethos. I think that’s why the artwork is quite monochrome and quite to-the-point, because we wanted to just, symbolically, tie it back to that first album.
“Because, I think with Light a Bigger Fire, we tried to do something that was a little bit more commercial, a little bit brighter sounding, which I think really worked, I’m really proud of that album, but I think it missed a bit of the aggression or the ‘grunt’ as we always call it, which, when you do go aggressive, you don’t have to layer as many things, because you just make something sound great and let it stand on its own, really.”
The band’s rise in fame, which has seen them headline the 1,500-capacity O2 Ritz in Manchester and Paradiso in Amsterdam, all while maintaining their independence, and the fragility of this trajectory when accounting for the entropy of life, partly influenced the document they made.
“That was sort of the duality, the double-edged blade, and the holding of the blade, but it’s sort of pointing back towards the person holding it,” Mat explains of the artwork. “Not so much consciously, but since we’ve thought about it a bit more, I think that’s what the album is based around, a little bit, is that sort of duality.
“You are on tour, and you’re doing this amazing thing, but it can so easily fall off the road, you know what I mean? We are artists, and we are musicians, but we’re also businessmen, and financial directors, and creative directors, and doing a lot of things behind the scenes that you just have to do.”
With the rise in popularity of IST IST, which will see them end their current tour at Manchester’s 2,000-cap Albert Hall, we ask Mat if such momentum can be maintained while remaining independent. “Probably not,” he candidly responds.
“I think the touring side of it, we can run that fairly well, and we have a tour manager and all the rest of it now, because we’re able to afford to have someone to run that. It’s more from a logistics [perspective], with the releasing of the records. I don’t know how many more records we can actually get out.
“Not that we actually ship them, physically, ourselves, but we do have to do a lot of manual work with a lot of the more personalised editions of the records, and stuff like that. We’re happy to continue doing it as we are; it just depends if we want to grow it a little bit more; we might need to get someone involved, but it would have to be a good deal. That’s the thing: We’re in a really nice position, where we’re not desperate to be signed by anyone.”
IST IST have spent the year thus far touring the UK and Europe, and on their current leg, they will be coming to Ireland for the first time. On the 28th, they’ll appear at The Grand Social in Dublin, and the following day, they will perform at the Ulster Sports Club in Belfast.
“We’ve been waiting for years to finally come over,” Mat says of coming to Ireland. “So, it’ll be very nice to finally meet our Irish fans. Because I know a lot of them have come over here [to the UK] to come to shows and stuff, so I think it’ll be great.
“And me and Joel [Kay, their drummer], especially, are big Guinness drinkers, so we’re very much looking forward to it! And that’s always on our rider! And I’ve also got family in Dundalk, which I know is sort of in the middle, so they’re coming to the Belfast show. There’s about six of them.
“And shoutout to Dundalk Garden Centre, which they run, which is brilliant! And I haven’t been there since I was thirteen. I don’t know if we’ll get a chance to stop by, but it’ll be nice to see them after a long time.”
IST IST’s latest album, DAGGER, is out now. You can keep up with the band through their website.
See the band live at:
April 28th – Dublin – The Grand Social
April 29th – Belfast – Ulster Sports Club
Tune into POSTBURNOUT.COM Interviews… tonight to hear this interview in full. Available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Amazon Music Podcasts.
Aaron Kavanagh is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Post-Burnout. His writing can also be found in the Irish Daily Star, Buzz.ie, Totally Dublin, The GOO, Headstuff, New Noise Magazine, XS Noize, DSCVRD and more.