With a sea of bands clamouring to be heard across the UK, the importance of carving out a space that is uniquely your own has never been greater. Contemporary post-punk trio Deep Tan (Celeste, Wafah and Lucy) are doing just that, nestling restlessly in a self-styled pocket of haunting, constructed compositions with a sharpened punk edge.
Having only been on the scene for a couple of years – so far releasing one EP and eight singles – the trio’s been catching eyes and ears across many interlinking music scenes, drumming up a loyal fanbase in the process. Formed through friends, housemates and queer events in the heart of East London, the band emanate the darkly cerebral and self-aware energies that tend to accumulate between these spheres.
With Deep Tan’s new releases regularly featuring in Clash, we thought it high time to sit down with the band and catch up in the lead up to their upcoming release.
We sat down with the two of the three members at a cafe off the beaten path of Dalston’s high street with the intent to get to the bottom of some key queries.
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Your sophomore EP ‘Diamond Horsetail’ is set to come out early May, how are you feeling as we approach the release?
Wafah: Well we’re quite excited, it’s like a step up I think in terms of production and sound.
Celeste: I think in terms of the writing as well, like we love our first EP (‘Creeping Speedwells’), it’s totally one of our children but with ‘Diamond Horsetail’, the songs feel a bit more beefy and kind of muscular and we’re just excited to get to play all of them live.
Wafah: I need to put a lot of time into learning how to play and sing at the same time for the title track because my guitar parts quite hard!
Are these tracks that you’ve been sitting on for a while or are they relatively new creations?
Wafah: Actually last year when there were lots of lockdowns Celeste was staying at mine and we basically wrote the EP during that period.
Celeste: EP one as well! They both came together between all the lockdowns.
Do you feel lockdown had any specific impact on your writing process/the music you created?
Celeste: Yeah completely. Before the pandemic put a halt to everything we were only writing on weekends and in between other life stuff but when the lockdowns happened we were living together and there were no distractions. I got made redundant and Wafah was on furlough.
Wafah: I was on furlough for nine months!
Celeste: So we had the time to wake up and write and the songs we were writing were steps ahead of the ones at the start and we kind of abandoned the ones we first started off with.
Wafah: We abandoned our first children. You know if you want to make something good it has to be re-written and re-worked on until you get the best stuff. Or sometimes it just happens like magic!
So do you feel like you had to slash and burn a lot of material to get to what you have now?
Celeste: Well it was more just over time we became more comfortable with the way we write. When I go into writing a bassline now, I know I want to incorporate space; I want movement, I want rhythm. I think both of us are just more confident in our styles and the way we write now. We just wrote loads and then picked the ones we were most excited about really. We’d come together in a room, choose a metronome, I’d do something on bass – Wafah would do something on guitar and then we’d do an extended jam and just play with it until we found sections that got us excited and would expand on those.
There seems to be a duality in your music between darker elements and playfulness. Could you explain why that juxtaposition is so important?
Wafah: I feel like it’s all about if the song can stand up on its own, have a life of its own and when it does it’s because it has few different elements. Does that make sense? With ‘Beginners’ Krav Maga’, it’s dark but also vulnerable and strong. It has a dynamism. That’s a very French word.
Celeste: When we are writing – lyrically and sonically – I do always find it interesting to feel out whatever mood we’re playing with. When we’re jamming, we like to explore how dark we can take it versus how light we can take it and then within that the songs start taking shape. We’re always interested in contrasts.
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I think that comes through in your sound, especially in your later work. I loved the EP, especially the track ‘Device Devotion’, this critique of society’s fascination with the strangest parts of the internet – it felt particularly poignant with the world being so online through the pandemic…
Celeste: I’m so glad you liked that one. That and ‘Diamond Horsetail’ are my favorites.
Wafah: I think that one actually took the longest to come together. Although did we not just like, read a few things and then you said a few things and then we patched all that together?
Celeste: I mean there’s a little more to it than that! I wrote a lot of the lyrics for this one and it was a fun one to collaborate on. Have you seen The Social Dilemma? It’s about how social media is tearing apart the fabric of society. The main woman talks about how when you unlock your phone there’s a casino wheel being spun, because it could be anything, the notification of your dreams, the person that you’re in love with likes your photo. Or it could be some terrible news. It’s so wild how our minds are now programmed to exist in this state of high alert. So in the chorus goes, ‘I spin the wheel, I see new worlds in motion.’
Wafah: So I did the topline of that and then I added those lyrics to fit.
Celeste: We often work like that, like Wafah will come up with a topline for something and then we’ll talk about what the song could be about or what it feels like.
Wafah: So we fit it like a puzzle on an existing melody line. For me it’s really important to have a strong melody for all the tracks and then we add the lyrics so every aspect is strong. We also want to do a video for that one…
That leads me to my next question. Are there any specific visual elements you want to explore and invoke with the new material?
Wafah: We just filmed the video for ‘Rudy…’ on the weekend!
Celeste: We got these crazy Rudy Giuliani masks and a pack of three mens suits for like £7 off eBay and ran around the woods.
Wafah: There’s a shot of us in the masks half naked. I was so ill that day and was like I don’t wanna get naked! I’m still stuffy, can you hear?
Celeste: I’m still getting eBay reminders for fish masks!
I’ve got to know, what was it like filming the video for ‘Tamu’s Yiffing Refuge’, running around London in those furry suits?
Wafah: Honestly that was the most fun video ever, because I loved being that furry. We went to Sainsburys and were hoping we would get kicked out but the security guards were just laughing at us so we asked them to pretend to kick us out.
Celeste: I was trying to fit vegetables in my strap-on harness when he saw us and they still didn’t kick us out! We also went to Body to Body which is our friend Alex Loveless’ night and were in the sweatbox that is VFD (Vogue Fabrics Dalston) with these incredibly hot and heavy fursuits. It was madness.
Celeste: Wafah’s fursona was Skinny Manoo, the black cat with the diamonte belt. I was the husky wolf with the lemur tail and Lucy was the murderous rabbit.
Wafah: I wish Lucy was here!
Celeste: Yes, she’s actually on holiday in the lakes with her girlfriend and there’s no wifi otherwise we would have got her on zoom. They’re one of the best people!
I hope I get to meet them! In other interviews each of you have named influences from Mogwai to Scissor Sisters to the Cure to Les Claypool. Are there ever intentional influences you invoke when you write together or does the sound come together subconsciously?
Celeste: Sometimes there are overt references. Like in ‘Tamu’s Yiffing Refuge’ there’s a Nine Inch Nails reference. Obviously the whole song is about having sex in fursuits. We had to reference their song ‘Closer’ which has the lyric, ‘I want to fuck you like an animal.’ It was so perfect. Our lyrics go: ‘Trents getting closer to God, gripping tight his new cattle prod.’ Trent is the name of the Nine Inch Nails vocalist.
Wafah: Matt Wilkinson said that we sound quite like early Cure which for me is obviously a big compliment because I think Robert Smith is incredible; how he layers everything together and everything has its place.
Celeste: Bass-wise, I love Les Claypool. ‘Beginners’ Krav Maga’ is a little bit indebted to Holger Czukay from Can, his inflections are such a driving force. Someone also recently said my bass reminded me of the first time they heard Killing Joke so that’s pretty cool.
I believe you’re going on tour in a couple of days! And your first headline tour is coming up in May…
Celeste: Yes we’re getting the train to Holland in a few days! I’m so excited!
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Does the band have any routines or rituals while traveling and performing together?
Celeste: Pray that we get there on time! I’m the person responsible for getting us from A to B. Other than that, just our train beers – those are quite important.
Wafah: I just love going out in different towns and not knowing anyone. We get into weird situations, I like the unknown.
What are some communal spaces and scenes you draw from as a band and individuals? Which demographics are you appealing to on your new EP?
Wafah: I think we’re in lots of different scenes. Like we’re definitely in the indie music scene and we’re also in the queer scene.
Celeste: The people who follow us is a 50/50 split of cool younger queers and older white guys; those guys will buy most of the records and then the people going nuts in the crowd will be like our mates. On the new EP we have a song called ‘Gender Expansion Pack’. When we wrote it we were like, what would scare an older cis white man – a hypnosis track where we’re inviting people to question their gender. Wafah’s vocals are pitched way down so you can only hear whispers. It’s a perfect example of us coming from both of these scenes. To be honest this whole EP is just trolling! Our drummer Lucy has a good take on this so I’m quoting them when I say EP one is a bit more serious and a bit darker, EP two is a bit lighter, bit less serious, bit faster and cheekier.
Which artists are you enjoying right now? Which of your contemporaries do you find inspiring?
Wafah: I always love Folly Group. Every time they put up a track I get so excited. They’re our mates.There’s so many others I don't know where to start. We’re surrounded by great musicians, we’re very lucky.
Celeste: If Lucy was here she’d say Adrienne Lenker and Big Thief! Also Crack Cloud, from Vancouver! I’m having a brain blank though…
Wafah: PVA! And Bodega!
Post-punk seems to be a genre/subculture you are described as the most, a genre that has resurfaced as a popular classifier in the last few years. Do you feel like you fit into that category?
Celeste: I want to flip this question back to you…post-punk is the name of a genre that’s been around for 40 years. There are marked differences between the originators of the genre and the new wave of ‘post-punk’ now. I feel like it’s a lazy name for the genre because there was punk and then what came after: post-punk. It should almost be post-post-punk but that's ridiculous so they’ve just kept the name. Now, post pandemic, post technology revolution we’re creating in entirely new ways so really there should be a new name. As a journalist if you could come up with a new genre name you could give yourself a right pat on the back.
Wafah: Any ideas? (laughs)
I’ll get back to you on that one! And finally, what would you like your audience to take away from the new EP?
Wafah: To question concepts in the music. And just to enjoy it!
Celeste: I hope that people enjoy it. We’ve worked so hard on it. It’s our strange beautiful weird baby and we just hope people can take away something that they like. And maybe also have the cis-het men question their gender a little bit!
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‘diamond horsetail’ EP is out digitally on May 6th, vinyl follows on July 22nd.
Words: Oshen Douglas McCormick
Photo Credit: Alex Loveless
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