Making Music in the Pandemic: DeafDeafDeaf

There’re heaves of words you could use to quintessentially describe the Manc style. Trendy, hipster and I don’t want to say edgy but edgy. It’s the birthplace of many great bands. Oasis, New Order and the Stone Roses. Tough names to follow. But it’s in the city’s DNA to continue to spout the next generation of musical talent.

Now, conducting interviews throughout the pandemic has been a strange task. The past 10 years have seen many relationships with people move online to some extent but the last year has really accelerated the process. We’ve gone from meeting people in their working environment to getting a glimpse of people’s lives through a computer screen without ever actually meeting them. Social media has completely changed the way we interact with each other and changed the music industry forever.

Years ago, before Apple Music and Spotify, music consumers had to rely heavily on CD’s, cassettes, records, and the radio to discover new music. But for Musicians now they have the ability to reach out directly to their fans, which helps to grow a closer community/fanbase with them. This is something Manchester band DeafDeafDeaf have had to contend with as well as making the actual music.

I call up the members of DeafDeafDeaf, who mostly reside in the town of Leigh, Greater Manchester and we begin by talking about the origins of the band. It hasn’t been a straightforward process for them with the ensemble of post-punk enthusiasts originally forming in early 2019 under a different moniker. The current company met through other musicians and friends and have only been together since January 2021 which lead vocalist, Nathan Hill, 21, says is “insane” because they’ve only been officially making music since 2019.

The pandemic has been a scourge for everyone and by striking in 2020 it caused an initial struggle to the group’s early development in terms of the creative process and direction, but it didn’t stop them.

Hill said: “It’s weird, to say the least we’ve had a massive switch around in line-ups, but we’ve been able to rehearse and write which is a blessing, but it’s been odd.

“There were times especially early into the pandemic where we were facing extinction as a band for sure, but we’ve come out of it a better group.”

The band released their first singles, ‘Bodies’ and ‘Nothingness’ towards the tail end of 2020 with the latter currently showing over 110,000 streams on the popular music streaming service, Spotify which eventually led to them being signed by Disobedient Records. Hill mentioned that the band had a lot of time to reflect on what they wanted and what direction they intended on taking with their music but admitted that the past 12 months had been bleak.

And it’s this that catches attention. Because making music in a year where there’s no opportunity to go and promote themselves in clubs or bars or even really on the street, is a daunting task and one the band didn’t take lightly. DeafDeafDeaf found themselves spreading with the word of mouth and found outreach with fans via social media like Instagram where they have just over 1,000 followers. And you could argue that if the pandemic had struck without the technological advances of the last decade the band wouldn’t have amassed the outreach that they have during these times.

The bands bassist Ellis Whittle, 20, recognises the internet’s tremendous advantages but also highlights some caveats too, he said: “it’s positive in terms of you have access to such a great audience now, platforms like YouTube and Spotify mean anyone in any corner of the world can access your music. But the negative is things like Tiktok are controlling the industry at the minute, it’s got artists making songs solely for Tiktok and sea shanties in the charts.”

Whittle is of course, referring to the Tiktok sensation Nathan Evans who rose to fame on the video sharing app in 2020 and rocketed to success with his version of the traditional sea shanty Wellerman that went viral and amassed over eight million views.

Whittle admitted however: “Tiktok again has its benefits though, gives an audience to smaller artists who might not necessarily of had that exposure. As much as its possible for people to access your music from all over world, if you aren’t in these playlists or your music isn’t being promoted it’s likely to get lost in the mass on streaming sites, that’s another negative.”

The band derives from the lineage of traditional post-punk and post-hardcore and doesn’t shy away from drawing influences from their upbringing. Being from the north of England gives them a different perspective and in particular from Leigh they don’t share the same lives as those living it up in the city. They describe their music as ‘being somewhat bleak and aggressive’ and have spoken of the limited opportunity of their neighbourhood, ‘Any sort of ‘art’ is almost unheard of in Leigh.’

DeafDeafDeaf’s music is described on Spotify as: “music that spans the gap between the cruel drudgery of everyday life and the unsettling melancholia of disillusionment, burning the edges with its cathartic resilience. Whittle confirms to me that the band always writes from personal experience, he said, “Any lyrics in songs of ours you listen to will be our feeling towards something. Our music tends to have a bit of a darker sound or themes, I think subconsciously growing up in places like we have where it’s pretty dead end has shaped that to just come out naturally.”

The band collectively admit that they pull on a lot of influences. Lyrically, Nathan pulls inspiration from Joe Casey of Protomartr, who he lauds as a great lyricist. Jack Findlay,18, one of the bands two guitarists cites Heavy Lungs and Girl Band as his. Harry George,18, the other guitarist is inspired by early Biffy Clyro to the annoyance of Nathan who can’t stand them.

But with each member varying with different influences, you’d expect some conflict in the creation room. But that’s not the case. All the members draw off one another and they’ve come up with a fair solution to figuring out how to go with an idea. A simple vote.

Ellis describes the music honestly: “At times it’s quite brutal. I think we say the things people think deep down but don’t really want to say cause it’s quite pessimistic, but it’s important to stay true to ourselves at this moment in time.”

This is when I bring up some examples of bands that have started out in similar circumstances like the Arctic Monkeys. A band that began so true to their roots but over time moved on and ‘Americanised’ leaving their makings and values of their original works behind. This is something that DeafDeafDeaf have vowed not to replicate. They believe it’s important to always be the voice of their people and always want to be identified with.

Jack said on Alex Turner (Arctic Monkeys): “It’s deffo put on for his own character, purely for the fame I reckon, because if he didn’t have his persona that he has now he’s a completely different person than to what he was when he first started.

“He’s created this persona purely for the fact that people react to it and it’s worked for him and if it works fair play, but I don’t think any of us are like that because at the end of the day we’re just ourselves.”

Nathan added: “When you play you have to play out of your skin every time, there’s no showing up to shows and half arsing it. You’ve got to get on stage and just be confident. Keep interacting with people you know, don’t take people for granted.

“Be true to yourself and appreciate everyone that’s tried to help you. If we ever did make it somewhat big you can’t just be like I’m the bigwig now, I’m a Rockstar, you’ve got to like to stay true to yourself and people gravitate to that.

“We’re all from you know small town in Greater Manchester, none of us you know are from a mad privileged upbringing. We’ve all been raised right; you’ve got to be appreciative of what you’ve got so I can’t see us ever being like that because we’ve been in the position of asking bigger bands for support, so we know what it’s like.”

You can listen to DeafDeafDeaf’s three singles on Spotify and Apple Music with their latest release, ‘Odes’ just being released.