Julian "Jules" De Martino (born 16 July 1967) is an English musician and a member of the

indie pop Indie pop (also typeset as indie-pop or indiepop) is a music genre and subculture that combines guitar pop with a DIY ethic in opposition to the style and tone of mainstream pop music. It originated from British post-punk in the late 1970s and s ...

duo

the Ting Tings The Ting Tings are an English indie pop duo formed in Salford, Greater Manchester, in 2007. The band consists of Katie White (vocals, guitar, bass drums, bass guitar, cowbells) and Jules De Martino (drums, lead guitar, bass guitar, keyboards, ...

Early life

De Martino was born in

West Ham West Ham is a district in East London, England and is in the London Borough of Newham. It is an inner-city suburb located east of Charing Cross. The area was originally an ancient parish formed to serve parts of the older Manor of Ham, a ...

, the son of

Northern Irish The people of Northern Ireland are all people born in Northern Ireland and having, at the time of their birth, at least one parent who is a British Nationality Law, British citizen, an Irish nationality law, Irish citizen or is otherwis ...

mother, Rosemary (née Middleton), and

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, a Romance ethnic group related to or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance languag ...

father, Benito De Martino. Jules has one older sister, Maria. He began playing drums at the age of 13.

Musical projects

Babakoto

When he was 17, De Martino was the drummer and songwriter in a band called Babakoto (the babakoto is a rare

lemur Lemurs ( ; from Latin ) are Strepsirrhini, wet-nosed primates of the Superfamily (biology), superfamily Lemuroidea ( ), divided into 8 Family (biology), families and consisting of 15 genera and around 100 existing species. They are Endemism, ...

from

Madagascar Madagascar, officially the Republic of Madagascar, is an island country that includes the island of Madagascar and numerous smaller peripheral islands. Lying off the southeastern coast of Africa, it is the world's List of islands by area, f ...

), who once played as a backing group for Bros and released a single at the end of 1987 called "Just to Get By", which failed to chart.

Mojo Pin

After Babakoto broke up De Martino became the lead singer in another indie band called Mojo Pin, named after the first song on

Jeff Buckley Jeffrey Scott Buckley (raised as Scott Moorhead; November 17, 1966 – May 29, 1997) was an American musician. After a decade as a session guitarist in Los Angeles, he attracted a cult following in the early 1990s performing at venues in ...

's 1994 album ''

Grace Grace may refer to: Places United States * Grace, Idaho, a city * Grace (CTA station), Chicago Transit Authority's Howard Line, Illinois * Little Goose Creek (Kentucky), location of Grace post office * Grace, Carroll County, Missouri, an uni ...

''. Mojo Pin released two singles, "You" in 1995 and "My Imagination" in 1996.

TKO

In March 2001

Katie White Katie Rebecca White (born 18 January 1983) is an English musician and member of the indie pop duo the Ting Tings. After some success with a girl group punk trio TKO, which supported Steps and Atomic Kitten, her father David White brought in Ju ...

's father David White brought in De Martino as a songwriter and he wrote four songs for her group TKO (Technical Knock Out).

Dear Eskiimo

De Martino moved to

Manchester Manchester () is a city and the metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester, England. It had an estimated population of in . Greater Manchester is the third-most populous metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, with a population of 2.92&nbs ...

and formed a band with

and DJ Simon Templeman, which they called ''Dear Eskiimo'' (often misreported as Dead Eskimo). In explaining the choice of the name, De Martino noted the genre-crossing nature of their music, and that the name was intended "to be as nomadic, tribal and independent as possible" (as he states in the band's biography at their

public relations Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing and disseminating information from an individual or an organization (such as a business, government agency, or a nonprofit organization) to the public in order to influence their perception. Pu ...

website); he goes on to note that "there were already several bands called Eskimo", and that "some of our songs told such good stories that it felt... we were writing... a letter. As a beginning, 'Dear Eskiimo' just fitted." (About the doubling of the "i" in the spelling, De Martino only states, "It's two 'I's... ke on your face.") The first performance of ''Dear Eskiimo'' was as a support between two rock bands. Reporting in April 2010 states that they were signed by

Mercury Records Mercury Records is an American record label owned by Universal Music Group. It had significant success as an independent operation in the 1940s and 1950s. Smash Records and Fontana Records were sub labels of Mercury. Mercury Records released ...

, " st over two years" earlier. " eative differences" and the "heavy handling" of the record label led to the split.

The Ting Tings

In 2007, De Martino and White started a duo with White on vocals, guitar and bass drum and De Martino on vocals, drums, bass, guitar, and keyboards. They started writing songs together and performing short concerts. White was working in a boutique with a Chinese girl called Ting Ting, which sounds like

Mandarin Chinese Mandarin ( ; zh, s=, t=, p=Guānhuà, l=Mandarin (bureaucrat), officials' speech) is the largest branch of the Sinitic languages. Mandarin varieties are spoken by 70 percent of all Chinese speakers over a large geographical area that stretch ...

for band stand ( 亭) and White used it as name for the band. One transliteration of the band's name in Japanese is a

slang A slang is a vocabulary (words, phrases, and linguistic usages) of an informal register, common in everyday conversation but avoided in formal writing and speech. It also often refers to the language exclusively used by the members of pa ...

word for penis ( wikt:ちんちん). The Ting Tings started by playing for private parties at the Islington Mill arts centre in

Salford Salford ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city in Greater Manchester, England, on the western bank of the River Irwell which forms its boundary with Manchester city centre. Landmarks include the former Salford Town Hall, town hall, ...

and their debut album, '' We Started Nothing'', was released on 19 May 2008.

Personal life

In a February 2022 BBC interview, De Martino and White spoke of their 20-month-old daughter and personal relationship: "The pair have previously avoided saying whether they are romantic as well as musical partners. 'We never particularly spoke about it,' the singer says. 'We always wanted to keep it quite separate from the music, but it's quite hard when you have literally a mini person. We've been together a long time now.'"

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:De Martino, Jules 1969 births Living people English drummers English male guitarists English male singer-songwriters English singer-songwriters English people of Irish descent English people of Maltese descent People from Kirkby Stephen Rhythm guitarists The Ting Tings members