Ideal Living

“Tom Waits’ gritty energy but with a gobby British edge” Far Out Magazine

“Love this tune” Deb Grant, (BBC Radio 6 Music)

“Blending together the brooding Gothicism of Have A Nice Life and steeley vocals of Opus Kink…a gut-wrenching, desperate shot into the smoke-filled darkness.” So Young Magazine

“religiously hypnotic.” Backseat Mafia

Coming ahead of the band’s most comprehensive headline tour of the UK to date - including a performance at Mutations Festival next month - Brighton art-rockers Ideal Living share explosive new single ‘Loving & Still’, out today (16th October) via Crafting Room Recordings (ELLiS·D, SoftTop).

A brooding concoction of pounding, The Birthday Party-esque gothic rock horrors and the larger than life theatrics of Tom Waits - amplified by expansive orchestral overloads and booming spoken word - ‘Loving & Still’  provides band’s most grimly thrilling recording to date.

Produced by Ben Hampson (Lambrini Girls, Ditz) at Agricultural studios, the track delivers a lyrical maelstrom of anger and confusion, directed both inwards and outwards, as frontman (and band founder) Billy Marsh explains:

“The opposite of a love letter,  ‘Loving & Still’ attacks the general idea that you need to achieve a lot by the time you’re 30. It’s a mixture of anger towards myself, for not being where I perhaps should be in life, and towards the vapidness of modern social settings in general, and the feeling that ideas of success anyway are veiled in emptiness and fakery.”

Formed in Brighton in 2022 by frontman Billy Marsh, Ideal Living features musicians from across the city’s current wave of emergent alternative acts - among them Flip Top Head, SoftTop, Jamie Broughton and Freddie J Watts - drawing inspiration from brooding narratives of Tom Waits or Nick Cave, the brash melodrama of Ennio Morricone’s Spaghetti Western soundtracks, and a passing obsession with Classic FM.

In recent months, their dramatic live performances have ushered in tours of the UK and Ireland with Flip Top Head and Lifts, support slots for Egyptian Blue, Borough Council and Opus Kink, radio play on  BBC Radio 6 Music - New Music Fix and The New Eves' curated Freak Zone playlist), and press backing from So Young, Far Out, Rough Trade, Still Listening, Blogotheque, Backseat Mafia and Dansende Beren (BE).