BOSTON, October 16, 2000 – INSTAR celebrated the release of the first single from the group’s upcoming album by giving away an MP3 player…pre-loaded with the band’s entire song catalog. The new song, “The Future’s Going to Forget You”, is the lead track from the band’s forthcoming CD “Amusing the Enemy”.

“We wanted to do something unusual”, says INSTAR front man Karl von Kries. “Every group on earth promotes new releases with the usual nonsense like shirts or key chains. We thought, why not give away something that’s actually cool?”

To enter, fans simply downloaded a track from the INSTAR website. Each song had a “secret phrase” recorded at the end, which fans entered in a simple online form along with their name and contact info. The contest ended on November 30th, and Kimberly Sock of Cransville, PA was the lucky winner.

Founded in 1998 by von Kries, the group’s self-recorded debut was called “Excellent” by London’s NME magazine, and received much praise in the US press as well. “We were pretty surprised to get the nod from NME”, says von Kries. “We finished the disc, stuffed in an envelope and sent it to NME, and forgot about it. We were totally surprised that a national mag like NME even listened to the disk