Introducing: Deaf Stereo

“Being deaf stereo means being equally deaf on both sides, as if you’ve got your hands over your ears,” explains Ben Vella to an intrigued Gigwise. Vella is the guitarist with North London’s Deaf Stereo, the latest band to emerge from 2006’s ménage a deux love affair with the clash of danceable guitar lines and rave beats. Having already supported the likes of Mylo and The Infadels the five piece are readying themselves for a full on attack of the public’s senses with their debut EP ‘House On Fire/ Blackout Falls’. Thankfully they are deaf in neither ear so they heard all the questions Gigwise put to them ahead of the release.

Staying on the topic of the bands name Vella explains the reasoning behind it. “We thought it worked on two levels as we felt like our music was being ignored at the time, but also as we were trying to ignore everything else going on around us, trying to do our own thing.” However, with all the practice they’ve been putting in lately he laughingly adds that its “starting to have a worryingly ironic meaning now.” The band took shape several years ago when of the its five members met on a music course but things didn’t really get serious till the last two years Vella tell us though he admits that he’s dreamed of being in band since he was nine years old. Before that he wanted to work in a pub which explains a lot he adds.

So how would he describe their music to an uninitiated Deaf Stereo virgin we ask? “We’re influenced a lot by remixes of bands,” Vella explains. “The idea that you can have a song with live parts, but production and structure that makes a crowd dance, so I suppose we sound like a remix of ourselves.” Enlightening, not quite, so we move on to the inspiration behind the songs to gain a greater understanding. “As I was saying remixes and dance music are important to us in terms of sounds but you can’t ignore the song under it all, I still listen to my Beatles records, you can’t forgot where its all come from,” says Vella. “A lot of our lyrics are quite dark, a lot of songs about longing and stalking for some reason, I don’t why, we’re all quite happy and those charges were dropped.” Note to self: Check that we're not being followed on the way home.

All Deaf Stereo’s tracks are recorded using Synth man Barney’s Mac (Until someone comes along with the cash for a studio we guess) and the song writing is mostly a democratic process. “Its very much a group project when we work on songs,” Vella tells us. “I may do more of the basic song writing but when we work on the song its great tearing it to bits and seeing where it ends up, the production is a big part of our sound and we’ve got a free reign to take it anywhere.” That anywhere seems to be somewhere no one knows according to their singer but the band like it that way. “Our music is changing all the time, we don’t really know what direction we’re going in and we don’t want to know,“ he explains. “We’ve got such eclectic tastes as a band that’s it best just to play it by here and see what happens.” We like the sound of that even if no one knows what it is yet.