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

The Ting Tings The Ting Tings are an English indie pop duo from Salford, Greater Manchester formed 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 an area in East London, located east of Charing Cross in the west of the modern London Borough of Newham. The area, which lies immediately to the north of the River Thames and east of the River Lea, was originally an ancien ...

, the son of

Northern Irish Northern Irish people is a demonym for all people born in Northern Ireland or people who are entitled to reside in Northern Ireland without any restriction on their period of residence. Most Northern Irish people either identify as Northern ...

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, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

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 ''lemures'' – ghosts or spirits) 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 exist ...

from

Madagascar Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Africa ...

), 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 (November 17, 1966 – May 29, 1997), raised as Scott Moorhead, was an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. After a decade as a session guitarist in Los Angeles, Buckley amassed a following in the early 1990s by ...

'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 uninco ...

''. 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 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 Jules De M ...

'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 in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

and formed a band with

and DJ Simon Templeman which they called Dear Eskiimo (often misreported as Dead Eskimo). The name was intended to be as nomadic, tribal and independent as possible. There were already several bands called ''Eskimo'' but De Martino, who wrote the lyrics, wanted his songs to tell good stories as if in a letter, hence 'Dear Eskiimo' with the odd spelling of 'eskimo" with two 'I"s to make it stand out. Their first performance was as a support between two rock bands. They were signed up 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. In the United States, it is ...

at the end of 2004. Creative differences and the management style of the record label caused them to split up.http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/entertainment/music/rock_and_pop/s/1008/1008617_ting_tings__the_hottest_party_in_town.html

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 (; ) is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language of ...

for

band stand A bandstand (sometimes music kiosk) is a circular, semicircular or polygonal structure set in a park, garden, pier, or indoor space, designed to accommodate musical bands performing concerts. A simple construction, it both creates an orname ...

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

slang Slang is vocabulary (words, phrases, and linguistic usages) of an informal register, common in spoken conversation but avoided in formal writing. It also sometimes refers to the language generally exclusive to the members of particular in-gro ...

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

Islington Mill arts centre Islington Mill is a six-storey Georgian mill building, located at 1 James Street, Ordsall, Salford, England. The name 'Islington Mill' is commonly used to refer to the wider collection of nineteenth and early twentieth century buildings that re ...

Salford Salford () is a city and the largest settlement in the City of Salford metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. In 2011, Salford had a population of 103,886. It is also the second and only other city in the metropolitan county afte ...

and their debut album, ''

We Started Nothing ''We Started Nothing'' is the debut studio album by English indie pop duo The Ting Tings. It was released on 16 May 2008 by Columbia Records. The US edition has a different cover image in several background colours. The album was also released ...

'', 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 people of Irish descent English people of Maltese descent People from Kirkby Stephen Rhythm guitarists