Welsh cult heroes Islet bring their exhilarating live show to Chapter, playing tracks from their back catalogue and 2023 album ‘Soft Fascination’. They play with a fierce urge to challenge, to embrace, communicate and excite. Islet are following their own course, awash with synthesisers with a rhythmic pulse creating a delicate balance between repetition, volume and the romance of time, an ecstatic experience through music.

“The perfect mix of experimentation and entertainment, brain and heart engaged simultaneously”
-Stewart Lee

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About Islet

Islet, as in small island, is pronounced ‘eyelet’. Islet are a band’s band, a band who make people want to start a band. They’ve been playing by their own rules since forming in Cardiff in 2009, where the four members were drawn together by a common desire to affirm life through the making of noise. Since then they’ve released three albums and a handful of EPs on their own label Shape and on Fire Records. In 2023 wife and husband team Emma & Mark Daman Thomas and friend Alex Williams are rejoined by brother John ‘JT’ Thomas. Founding member JT, who was absent for 2020’s ‘Eyelet’ album, has now returned on drums, this fixing of roles a shiny new consistency for the band who have previously switched instruments. What persists throughout their music is an intense energy: driving rhythms with unexpected shifts; inventive, playful lyrics and vocals that shapeshift from airy to unleashed.

https://www.islet.wales/

Support: ICHI

ICHI, from Nagoya in Japan, takes the notion of a one-man band to new limits, combining his quirky handmade instrument inventions (Stilt-bass, Kalilaphone, Balloon-pipes, Hatbox-pedal-drum, Tapumpet, Percussion-shoes & Hattrick-hat) with steel-drum, ping-pong balls, a typewriter, toys and everyday objects all in the space of one short set. There's an ancient, ritualistic feel to his performances – like the misplaced leader of a tribe, he invites audiences to witness something both familiar and entirely new.