Ting Tings

Katie White and Jules De Martino needed a name for the "unintentional band" they'd created in 2007. For the sheer fun of it, Katie (vocals, guitar and bass drum) and Jules (vocals, drums, electronics) had begun writing songs together and doing impromptu shows as a two piece. Suddenly, they were generating massive excitement at a series of house parties at Manchester's Islington Mill, a derelict cotton mill from the Industrial Revolution converted into a thriving underground artist collective housing painters, filmmakers, writers, sculptures, musicians and more. At the time, Katie was working in a boutique with a Chinese girl called "Ting Ting," which is also Mandarin term for a "band stand". "I thought it was lovely," Katie remembers. "It can also refer to the sound of innovation or an open mind. Like the 'ting' you hear when you get an idea." Jules also loved the idea of becoming the Ting Tings. The name had two Tings "and there were two of us." And, like the sonorous peal of a bell, the new moniker held the rhythmic perfection of onomatopoeia. "We're quite percussive as well," says Jules referring to one of the elements of the electrifying Ting Tings' sound that makes them "The most exciting new band in the country," according to the NME, a highly respected UK music magazine. But Katie and Jules were not always the Ting Tings. Katie grew up on a livery farm outside Manchester, where, she says, "It's so cold and so boring that there's nothing to do. So all you do is sit and make music. It's just grey skies. I really did just spend my entire childhood bored. I listened to really rubbish music growing up, don't know why. Bad music, bad pop. Whatever crap was on the local radio. I grew up as a teenager in the 1990s so girl bands and boy bands were all the rage. I had a Spice Girls pencil case." (more on thetingtings.com)