Salford has an artsy underside from which its first breakout stars have emerged. Welcome, if you will, The Ting Tings - the Sonny and Cher of Salford Precinct for the Noughties.

The Ting Tings are Jules de Martino and Katie White. Driven by personality, unstoppable momentum, friendship and the love of greawt pop music, their sound is immediately identifiable and purposefully perky. Their debut album, We Started Nothing, comes hot on the heels of their new single, 'That's Not My Name', the follow up to the massive success of 'Great DJ'. The new album is full of snappy choruses, angular guitar work and whipsmart drumming, breaking the codes of manufactured pop. GaydarRadio’s Gary H caught up with the duo to find out more.

What did you guys have for breakfast this morning?
Katie: I had room service croissants and some fresh fruit that I forgot about and, because the room was so warm, it tasted soggy and horrible when I went to eat it.
Jules: I didn’t have anything for breakfast.

So that’s how you keep your svelte figure!
Jules: Yeah, that and not running marathons.

I’m going to start with a really obvious question – where did your name come from?
Katie: I used to work with a girl called Ting Ting and she told me that it meant an old band sound in Chinese Mandarin. I just liked it; I thought it was a really cool name. Then we googled it and found that it meant the sound of innovation and an open mind, which is ‘ting!’, like when you’ve got an idea, like a light bulb thing.

It’s perfect, isn’t it?
Katie: Yeah; it’s also a personal use head massager and a Jamaican drink, but we didn’t know that. But we’re getting it all sent to us for free now.

Jules, you’re originally from London and Katie, you’re from Salford, Greater Manchester. So how on earth did you two meet and connect?
Katie: We met in London in a rehearsal studio. Jules knew people in Manchester anyway and he was going backwards and forwards a bit, so every time he came to Manchester we wrote together. He eventually moved to Manchester and we formed a band with somebody else. That didn’t work out and then we just wrote a couple of songs and it turned into The Ting Tings.

Foolishly, I thought that you two were brother and sister at one point. But you’re not, are you? Are you an item?
Katie: No.

No? Do you want to be an item?
Katie: No!

"We’re so used to hearing really big hooky pop songs that are so over-produced and so auto-tuned that you can’t even tell that the singer’s human, you know? So we just did it [the album] ourselves and it’s pop music that’s home made and real."

Okay, fair enough! Your previous single, ‘Great DJ’, wasn’t initially chart eligible, but it ended up on Radio 1! That must have been quite a trip for you?
Jules: We put out a couple of albums ourselves when we first started the band on bits of vinyl – little bits of vinyl, like little quarters – and we were doing all the artwork ourselves. When it came to ‘Great DJ’, we wanted to continue that, so the way we did that was by going to car boot sales and getting old 45s that people were selling on eBay. We went and bought loads of old 45s, reversed the sleeves and put tape and all sorts around it to make it our own artwork. It was chart ineligible because of the way it was set up and so we decided it was the way we wanted to keep doing things with our audience and our artwork.

The label let us get on with it that way and we made 2000 vinyl and 2000 CDs – and that’s how it went out. Then a couple of weeks later, our manager was saying that it’s made some serious radio play and it’s all starting to kick off with a record that’s not really available, which is great! Then we got some digital sales out of it.
Katie: We also gave it away on our MySpace for a day and got shouted at, but we had a whole day where it was like, ‘Quick, go get it! Download now! Free!’

Who shouted at you?
Katie: We were shouted at because, while the American side of the label were happy to do it as a free download, they obviously needed to wait until we were releasing it over there. It was to benefit us, in effect.
Jules: We were so unused to things being coordinated. Then, all of sudden, being with a label meant everything had to be coordinated, so we learnt our lessons.
Katie: It took them a few hours to clock onto it!

By then, millions of people had already downloaded it! So how did you end up doing 4 showcases in 4 different countries at one point? How did that happen? Did you finance that yourselves or were you already involved in the record company by then?
Jules: We weren’t signed; we were kind of just getting a lot of interest and things were happening. It felt like a risk that was worth taking on the credit card. We did these 4 cities which were Berlin, New York, Salford and London. We picked those towns because they were quite artistically dominating cities and we wanted to be amongst that, so these places we picked to put our sleeves on the wall and let people come along and do our artwork for us. Those sleeves went to the next city and they were released accordingly. Berlin was a really good show; it was quite interesting.
Katie: Berlin was one of our favourite shows. When we’re asked about our most memorable show so far, it’s not Jools Holland or Glastonbury, it was the show in Berlin. It was in an old doctor’s surgery in this block of flats. You went in and there were broken tiles on the floor, a big hole in the wall for the bar and the stage was made out of beer crates. We turned up and wondered what the hell we were doing playing there, but it turned out to be one of the best gigs we’ve ever played.

It sounds fantastic!
Katie: Yeah, it was really good.
Jules: The artwork that came out of that from the people of Berlin was just phenomenal. They brought their train tickets and they were sticking them on our singles and little maps of how they got to where they were going - to the gig – were also being stuck onto the single; it was fantastic. New York was interesting as well, because we were giving the audience colours and mediums to play with. For example, we had an electric toothbrush with a pen on it that they had to use and there was all these different items we made up.

When we got to New York, we had these inks that were gold and a plum colour. After we came off stage, the artwork was brilliant - really pretty, really beautiful and creative. Straight after us, there was this metal band that played. They went mental on stage and everyone got drunk, so the artwork just went really messy! But it was what we were looking for – we were looking for a reaction, rather than just going away with audience applause. We were looking for something more than that and that’s what we were getting. You can check them out on our website at www.therecordofsalfordlondonberlinandnewyork.com.

I think it’s a fantastic idea to involve your fans. To them, it’s probably quite a huge thing that you’ve asked them to be involved. With something like that, they feel like they’re getting something back.
Katie: We did it with the track, ‘That’s Not My Name’, as well. Obviously, where we hand made everything before, we couldn’t do that on a full release because we would be there for about 10 years trying to hand make CD sleeves! We got the people who were into our music to ring in and leave their name so we could do an alternative version of ‘That’s Not My Name’ with just the names of everybody who rang in – it was so funny listening to all the recordings!

Where can you hear that?
Katie: It should be up online, I think. If you go to our website, it’s probably being streamed from there at the moment. It’s going to be the B-side of ‘That’s Not My Name’. It’s lovely; it’s so cool.

The new single that you just mentioned, ‘That’s Not My Name’, is from the debut album, which is called We Started Nothing – which is a great title. What can we expect from the album? Is it much more of the same? I think your music is fantastic and you guys are just so unpretentious about it!
Katie: It’s like a home made pop album. We made it ourselves in Salford and we produced it ourselves. Jules produced it and it was just done in a non-typical pop album way. But it’s got real pop songs and I think people will like it because we’re so used to hearing really big hooky pop songs that are so over-produced and so auto-tuned that you can’t even tell that the singer’s human, you know? So we just did it ourselves and it’s pop music that’s home made and real.

It’s quite a frustrated record because, at the time when we wrote some of it, both myself and Jules had been in a band before where something had gone wrong and so stuff like ‘That’s Not My Name’ is a frustrated song that still has something uplifting about it.

Jules, you were more of an indie boy, is that right?
Jules: Yeah.

What was it like, then, working with a real pop person like Katie? Did you find it difficult or were there elements that you had in common, anyway?
Jules: I found it really liberating. When we first met, there was one thing we did have in common in that we both liked a band called Portishead. That’s what started me and Katie working together, even though we were cities apart - we were both in love with that kind of slightly hippy, hip-tronic dance music which Portishead were delivering. We started getting together and doing some of those recordings. I mean, Katie used to be pure pop - she was in boy and girl bands when she was younger.
Katie: When I was a lot younger, yeah.
Jules: She came out from that background and it was really refreshing because she didn’t deny that and it was great. You meet a lot of people in music who don’t want to admit to liking something they shouldn’t like.
Katie: They all had Take That pencil cases at school; they just don’t want to admit it.
Jules: Katie was one of those people who was unapologetic about what she did and what she liked. She used to do ballroom dancing when she was a kid and all that sort of stuff. What she did was fantastic and amazing; she was so full of life. She found the same with the darker sort of the music that I was into! So we kind of crossed and we met somewhere in the middle. I’ve gone off on this sort of pop tangent and found out more about pop, while Katie’s discovered bands like The Smiths, Talking Heads, Joy Division and stuff like that. She’s gone mental with it.

This is going back 3 or 4 years now and I think that implosion was really healthy because it kind of gave us something to argue about in the studio. There’s nothing more boring than having a good song, going to the studio and having no tension. The tension kind of creates an atmosphere; you battle it out. It works because there are only 2 of us. If we were a 5 piece band, it would be a recipe for disaster. You can’t have 5 people sitting there with different influences all over the place.

"We wanted to just go on stage and not really know what we were doing...When we’re just sort of hanging on the edge, it gives us that extra electricity when we perform."

You’d still be waiting to release your first single! In terms of music nowadays, I think there’s a very thin line between genres – they all seem to be crossing over at the moment. Indie bands seem to get dance mixes and vice versa because they know that there isn’t that much of a divide anymore. Katie, how did you find working with Jules? Was that a real eye opener for you?
Katie: He just showed me so much music that I was in awe. I still love pop music, but now I’m just going back over these amazing artists like Blondie and Bowie – stuff that I missed the first time round because I was too young. But Jules likes pop more than I do now - it’s really weird! If Britney comes on he’s like, ‘Now this is a tune!’ And I’m like, ‘No, no, it’s dirty!’

You both seem pretty much in control of what you’re up to and what gets out there. Do you think the ‘MySpace generation’, so to speak, has helped you in terms of building your fan base and all that?
Katie: Yeah, especially when we started out. It gave us quite a lot of confidence. I don’t understand why the whole online thing for bands sometimes gets a bit of a knocking. It’s so honest. People go onto your page and they either like it or they don’t. You can sort of gauge it quite well without anybody giving you any sort of bullshit. We put songs on MySpace and got messages from Canada all the way through to Sweden.
Jules: It kept us going at the very beginning. We put out quite a limited amount of records and, while half of it was fun, half of it was kind of, well, getting ourselves sorted out. We needed to make a statement with artwork and put painting on the wall for it to be seen. There was no plug there and no PR - it was just ourselves and friends who put it out together.

The great thing about that and the thing that kept us going was MySpace because we’d get messages from people who had been able to get a hold of the record. It went as far as Venezuela and Toronto. People found this record and they took the time to write back and tell us that they were playing it in their club. We’re talking about 500 records that are out there, so a possible 200 of those found themselves in clubs, while the rest were just people buying them for their own collections, you know, locally. Just having people bothering to do that was really touching. It’s huge; it’s a massive thing for a new band.

You are in the middle of a tour at the moment; you’re going to Birmingham and then back down here to London Astoria on 22 May, Sheffield, Glasgow, Leeds. Live performances have to be a big part of what you do, is that right?
Katie: It’s the main part of what we do. That’s how we started - we weren’t a studio based band. We started just jamming and rehearsing and then recording it. Because there are only 2 of us in the band, we’ve got to put 100% into every performance. If one of us is feeling ill, the whole show’s over, really. We may as well not go on at all because it is all about our chemistry - us both just bouncing off each other all the way to the end of the set.

How do you prepare for a show? Do you have a little routine? You don’t rest your voice for 2 days like Mariah, do you?
Jules: We keep getting told that we should warm up before going on stage with voice exercises, but we’re not that type of band. I mean, how we walked into this whole thing - being on the stage and doing house parties and stuff like that - is kind of the way we’re still carrying on. We go to the gig, we get to the dressing room and we try to grab some food or rest because we’ve been travelling so much but, 10 minutes coming up to the gig – which is probably not the right thing to do and every band should warm up, but – I might do 10 push ups or something. Katie will be jumping around and telling herself to wake up. As we walk to the stage, it’s almost like, out of the blocks, first one to the finish line. Then we’re off and soaking wet and we’ve given it all we’ve can.

I agree with what you just said there - I think your unique selling point is that you do have that raw vibe about you and you don’t really want to be too produced and too formatted.
Katie: We don’t want to be too polished, either. We made a sort of unconscious decision when we were rehearsing that we didn’t want to rehearse too much. We wanted to just go on stage and not really know what we were doing. For some reason, it gave us that little edge. When we’re just sort of hanging on the edge, it gives us that extra electricity when we perform.
Jules: When we recorded the album, it was also in quite an unorthodox way. We gave every new song 2 hours maximum in the studio. If it wasn’t working, it was scrapped. There were building works where the studio was, so there were cranes and automatic drills going on all the time. I mean, I’m sure they added percussive elements to the actual recording and we’re going to be hit with a law suit of 10% fees for the builders next door!

Are you taking part in any Gay Pride events this year?
Katie: Oh, we don’t know yet, but we’re hoping to. We’ll let you know when they’re confirmed. Where we’re based – in Salford – they’re always doing alternative Mardi Gras parades. I’d love to play Mardi Gras because all our friends will be there.

Katie, is there anything you can tell us about a certain FHM photo shoot? Was that something I misread?
Katie: The media were basically saying that I turned down an FHM photo shoot – which I didn’t. I don’t know if they’ve asked or not, but I’ve not heard! In our last band, we got signed to a record company and, in the first marketing meeting, I brought in a book of all my favourite imagery that I’d spent all this time getting together and they just pushed it out of the way and straight out asked me if I was prepared to get my kit off in men’s magazines. I was like, ‘Fuck right off’, you know! It’s not what I do and there’re girls who could do it a million times better. But somehow it got twisted into a story saying that I turned down FHM, which I wouldn’t do in a million years, anyway. I’d just rather be sat there looking scruffy and painting my shoes red or something.
Jules: It’s amazing how much of a story it’s turned into with Katie, whereas I actually did it and no one’s written about it at all!

FHM?
Jules: Yeah, they just didn’t write a thing about it!

"We keep getting told that we should warm up before going on stage with voice exercises, but we’re not that type of band."

Jules, I hope you don’t mind me saying, but you are – if you’re not already – going to be popular with the gay boys. Are you prepared for that?
Jules: My friends are gay up in Manchester, so I’m very much used to being surrounded by gay people. It won’t make any difference; it doesn’t bother me at all.

You’ve both got a really cool image. Do you design any of your clothes?
Katie: I make my own stuff. My friend Bill studied at St. Martin’s in London. He doesn’t make clothes anymore but he’s got this massive sewing machine and materials knocking around and he showed me how to cut some patterns. Sometimes, you know, if you don’t like the fashion at the time - and especially when you’re a bit skint - you’re pretty stuffed because you go into one high street shop and they’re all the same. You might as well have gone to them all, so I love making my own stuff.

Put a couple of rips in, a couple of layers and you’ve got a whole new image. The video to the new single looks like a lot of fun; do you like the self promotion side, like the MySpace thing and the videos for your singles? Do you accept that as part of what you have to do?
Jules: Yes; on the video side of things, we were quite busy, so we didn’t have a lot of time to make a video or to prepare to make a video. We are very much a performance based band – just the 2 of us with drums and bits and pieces, so we wanted to capture that in the video. The idea was to keep it as bright as possible. We found a video director and we filmed it in half a day, really. We went into a studio and created the colour, brightness and optimism that are in the track. We wanted to just keep that going and I think we achieved it in the video; it’s got a lot of energy.

Find out more at www.myspace.com/thetingtings and www.thetingtings.co.uk.

We Started Nothing, by The Ting Tings
Label: Columbia
Released: 19 may 2008
ASIN: B0017PCXMO

Buy We Started Nothing online now and watch the video for the new single, 'That's Not My Name', below!