In September 2021, Nothing But Thieves returned with their new single ‘Futureproof’ and it would be the first focus track from the Moral Panic II EP. Moral Panic, the full 11-track album had come just 11 months earlier.

Futureproof pre-release The band started releasing social fly-onthe-the wall clips from the Futureproof studio sessions. The clips contained glitches with codes that could be deciphered to the track title and date: undetectable unless you freeze-frame at the right moment. Fans deciphered them in hours.

We purposefully used different footage for different social platforms. The clips were gathered into longer three-to-five-minute pieces that dropped weekly and placed behind a pre-save wall.

The band has always directed fans to subscribe to their mailing list and receive a “NBT ID”, a unique identifier – so we made the fan Discord “official” and password-protected it: only those with a NBT ID could access it. Mailing list subscriptions rocketed and the Discord server quadrupled in size.

Futureproof release

During lockdown the band had done regular Solitude Sessions livestreams to great effect.

The Futureproof Solitude Session started the same way, seemingly from isolation in the band’s own homes (due to tight camera angles); however as the final chorus dropped the camera zoomed out to reveal the band all performing in the same space, for the first time since lockdown started. We nicknamed it the Un-solitude Session and fans were overjoyed.

EP announcement

The rollout picked up pace, with just two weeks between instant grat track ‘Miracle, Baby’ and the release. The day before ‘Miracle, Baby’ dropped in the UK we kicked off a series of digital puzzles.

Starting in Southend, at the venue of the band’s first-ever show we planted 10 signed prints of the EP artwork, instructions to redeem two tickets to a show of their choice and a cassette player with headphones. In the cassette player was unheard music from the EP and on the back of the prints a QR code linked to unseen content and further clues. The cassette players had a USB socket to allow fans to digitally record what was on it, with the aim of these unheard tracks finding their way back to the fans online.

Moralpanic2.com went live at the same time with an animated map, showing fans the next city to be targeted. Fans online had to solve puzzles, find clues in images and text, and “link scanning”.

The activation went to Birmingham and Manchester, before moving to Europe and eventually New York – we had planned to end the activation in Australia, however, the country went into lockdown. We worked closely with the international team, Sony UK, and teams from multiple territories, helping plant cassettes and players locally.

EP launch

The EP launched with heavily stylised lyric videos, and the band treated fans to a listening party. Fans logged in with either Apple or Spotify and the band were in the chat room taking questions. Joe (the lyricist) did a second listen with fans that wanted to discuss the lyrics.