Ist Ist made their debut performance in Stoke on Friday night at the legendary Sugarmill venue. A band on a roll on the back of a successful 2024 that saw them breach the top 30 album chart with their fourth album Light A Bigger Fire and sold out shows across the UK and continental Europe. Performing favourites from across their career as well as showcasing two new songs, they demonstrated what a powerful and compelling live act they are.
Oliver Marson is a one-man acquired taste and the majority of the Stoke audience take a little time to warm to his one guitar and backing track approach. His songs drip with electronic 1980s influences and he changes from a mild-mannered young man into a showman the minute he takes to the stage. Songs like Death Of A Pornstar and Past Life stand out in a half-hour set that builds as it progresses, the quality of the songs outweighing the unusual approach to the live stage.
Ist Ist hit hard from the start and over the course of eighty-five minutes barely take the foot off the accelerator pedal as they blast through twenty-two songs ranging from their early singles Silence and Jennifer's Lips to two brand-new songs The Echo and Makes No Difference from their fifth album that they plan to record this summer ready for a push towards even greater chart success than they achieved with Light A Bigger Fire.
As great as their records are, it's live where you capture Ist Ist at their best. Supremely confident, as you would be having recently played to four-figure crowds on the Continent, they take no prisoners in their opening trio of Stamp You Out, Something Else and Lost My Shadow. They hit hard from the start and continue this through a section mostly taken from Light A Bigger Fire - a brooding menacing Repercussions and a soaring The Kiss being the highlights - and their debut Architecture with crowd favourites Silence and Black bringing the Stoke crowd to life urged on by a more extroverted Adam than we've seen before on stage. They know how good they've become and are embracing it fully.
The band's tenth anniversary this year has seen them revisit some early songs that many of their long-term fans feared were lost to memory. Jennifer's Lips, from their second EP Everything Is Different Now, still feels as fresh and belligerent as when it was first recorded, not out of place amongst its chart-bothering comrades on the setlist whilst Extreme Greed, from their second album The Art Of Lying, should have been a staple on the A-list of any radio station that makes any claim to be alternative. Key to Ist Ist's development, and why a growing army of people love them, is the way they fuse their influences and their own musical loves into something fresh and of the moment.
XXX is the one pause from breath, Andy and Joel leaving the stage, whilst Adam prowls the stage, losing himself in the song. Dreams Aren't Enough and Nothing More Nothing Less highlight just how they've added synths to the deep bass lines and forceful drums to uplifting effect, before they finish the main set on Trapdoors, the final track from their third album Protagonists, which builds and builds, battering the audience into submission.
They've not gone for good though. Emily is the oldest song on the setlist tonight, but there would be uproar if it were ever removed. It starts slow and blossoms into a huge anthemic track whilst Hope To Love Again that follows is a perfect goth disco crossover track. They finish with You're Mine and Ghost, the former a two minute something explosive blast that grows more powerful with time and latter a haunting synth-led song that builds like a dark movie soundtrack before crashing back to earth at the end.
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