To Believe was The Cinematic Orchestra’s (TCO) first studio album in 12 years, so there has been a lot of anticipation for it.

Building on the album’s core question of “what to believe?” and the idea of stopping, slowing down and really taking in what’s around us, we had the idea of actually disconnecting from the internet and how this changes your perception of what a website is and can be.

We invited fans to go to the band’s site and were asked to disconnect from the internet. When they did so, an offline site appeared, including announcement of a limited 12-inch of lead single ‘A Caged Bird’ / ‘Imitations Of Life’ that was available to buy from local record stores. It sold out within hours. We also revealed the album tracklist – it was blurred, but there was an allusion to the fact that there was more coming from the band.

At the same time as the website launch, we uploaded Spotify Canvases to the key TCO back catalogue tracks. Each had the blurred-out tracklist image but with one of the tracks revealed. At the bottom there was messaging telling fans to listen to a certain catalogue track next. When they went to the next one, it revealed the next track title from the new album, each in turn.

We wanted to tie the second single, ‘A Promise’, back into the initial concept of disconnecting and taking time to be “in the moment”. We put together a site that would let fans unlock an exclusive 30-second preview of the single (ahead of release), triggered by their laptop or phone microphone picking up that the fan was in a quiet space, with no wider distractions.

We held immersive album playbacks in London, Berlin, Paris and Tokyo on week of release, which took place in the dark, further playing on the theme of focus and taking a moment away from the madness of the wider world.

We wanted to reward the people who had bought tickets through TCO’s artist store but hadn’t yet purchased the album, so we sent them a dedicated mailer with a discount code close to the album release, thanking them for their ticket purchase and encouraging them to pick up the album at a special price.

We ran a ticket giveaway before the album release through another label built, bespoke website where, once disconnected from the internet, fans were encouraged to support independent record shops in order to get tickets to the upcoming live tour. Our aim was to support independent artists and stores, so in order to get the tickets, fans simply had to go to one of the participating stores and buy any record, by any artist, on vinyl.