Leeds band Din Of Celestial Birds are currently flying high, being beloved of both critics and fans alike. Their emotive sound draws upon deep themes such as depression, anxiety and mental health, and coherently conveys these issue without a vocalist – no mean feat. Having been invited back to ArcTanGent for their second appearance in two years The Midlands Rocks had to corner Matt Benatan (bass/synths) and Tom Hazlehurst (guitars) for an exclusive chat straight after their set (reviewed here). (The band also includes Chris Core, guitars; Andie Gill guitars/samples; Vince Knight-Schrijver, drums/percussion).

You are fresh off stage. How was it? Are you a band to go back and analyse your performance?

Matt: A little bit. We definitely worry about things when we come off stage, but as with most bands we worry about our own performance more than external things that impacted it. Plenty of people seemed to enjoy it, which means that we can stop worrying now.

Tom: When I’m on stage I just tend to enjoy it. I’m in the zone.

So how do you psych yourself up for an afternoon slot? It’s a very strange time to hit the stage.

Matt: It’s quite good actually because the thing with us is that we love ArcTanGent and we don’t want to be worrying about performing the whole festival, so playing the afternoon of the first day is perfect. We can now enjoy the rest of the weekend. Getting ready is just a case of making sure all the equipment is where it should be and everything is working.

Tom: I felt psyched up when we were driving here yesterday. After we set up, that was it; I was psyched and in the zone and ready to go.

You both seem pretty chilled, but I’ve spoken to some musicians just off stage and they are all hyped up from the adrenaline. So, how do you ground yourself after the excitement of a show?

Matt: I was very hyped up on adrenaline and then we spent half an hour looking for Tom’s watch. And that’s not as exciting as playing a show. I’m still hyped, playing here with so many bands that we are friends with, so many bands that we respect and love and are inspired by means we are going to be hyped all weekend.

It must be nice to be invited back.

Matt: It’s amazing. Thanks so much to James and the team at ArcTanGent for having us back, it means the world to us to play at our favourite festival for two years running and the tenth anniversary, It’s absolutely mad.

The band’s name is in homage to the film of the same name. Is that why your sound is so cinematic?

Tom: I guess so. When you don’t have a vocalist you have to lean into that cinematic bent to create all the emotions that you want to in the music.

Matt: We want it to be cinematic, we want it to be driving. There’s fun bits in the music, too. It’s not all about being moody.

Tom: if you watch us on stage, we’re definitely not moody.

Hailing from Leeds. I wonder, how did that environment impact your sound?

Tom: Leeds in particular has a great, great, great post-rock scene with a great promoter called Stuart from Bad Owl.

Matt: The people from Bad Owl do a great job in bringing bands in from all over the country and all over the world. They bring them to Leeds and they’ve helped to create this amazing scene.

Tom: And the work they do in creating a vibrant scene is a help to everyone.

It’s rare to find a band like Din Of Celestial Birds with three guitarists. How easy is it to write for three guitars and make sure they don’t get tangled up?

Tom: I find it really difficult. One of our guitarists, Andie, has a real good skill of weaving them in. It’s like those girl groups with the three singers and they all harmonise, that’s kind of the approach that we go for. It’s a good way of knitting them all together; we rarely play the same part, whenever we have a lead bit or a rhythm bit, it tends to flow in and out.

Matt: That’s crucial; one of the important things when you are composing for three guitars or three instruments that are all in the same register, you can’t get too complex because then you will get tangled up and things are going to sound messy. You have to keep it concise and Andie is really good at that and I’ve learned a lot from him about these sorts of techniques and it is amazing how you’ll get given a piece, you’ll learn it and work on it, then when you play it live you know that it really works. It’s a challenge but it is part of the fun.

What musical avenues does having three guitars open up for you?

Tom: It is a wall of sound. The thing is, we either get booked with really heavy bands or really light bands and the thing is we end up playing metal gigs and post-rock gigs and I think it is good to have a broad appeal rather than being pigeonholed into one genre.

Matt: 100%, and it means that we have a place on the bill and we tend to have our own niche. I think that having three guitars forces us into writing the kind of music that we do definitely helps us have a unique edge.

The band recently made their first sojourn into Europe to play the Dunk! festival. How we did your sound travel?

Tom: I think that it went really well. We had such an amazing reception at Dunk!, it was really incredible. We played ArcTanGent last year so we kind of knew what to expect this year, but going to Dunk!, it was such an unknown and the crowd there was just amazing. People from all over Europe told us they just came to see us which was mind blowing.

Matt: That festival really means a lot to us, even though I’d never been before but I’d heard live Dunk! recordings by bands that I absolutely adore; Russian Circles have these amazing recordings from there, it really holds a special place in the hearts of post-rock bands, so for us to play and get that reception…we loved every second of it. We had zero sleep.

Tom: We drove over from Cambridge the night before and we had maybe one hour sleep, and we arrived and it was the most tired I’d ever been for a gig. They gave us all this free beer, so I had three bottles and it turned out it was 10% strength; I was like “Oh no!”. But we made it work.

Did being instrumental help you break the cultural barrier?

Matt: I don’t know that it did. So many people in Europe and across the world listen to music with English lyrics, so I don’t know how much that helps, maybe it does a bit. It just seems to be that there’s a bigger appreciation for instrumental music in Europe and particularly around Belgium, Netherlands, Germany and that’s amazing.

What made you do down the instrumental route?

Tom: Well…I used to be in a band when Matt was the singer! And we don’t talk about that! I used to be in a band when Andie was the singer, he’s a pretty good singer, but it’s something a bit different. I think it is more of a challenge when there’s no singer. You really need to make the music speak to people and it’s something I like to do.

Matt: I think it is better, I prefer instrumental music. I think vocals can turn a lot of people off bands as much as they turn people onto bands. From that standpoint; while instrumental music is a niche, we want to play music in this genre anyway and we want to play instrumental music and all the things Tom said is spot on. It is a fun challenge and it also allows us to explore things that you can’t with vocals. If we had vocals we’d be expected to have traditional song structures, I think that not having vocals is better than having them. And we don’t have to write lyrics, which is good because you’ll never know how they’ll be misconstrued.

Even without a vocalist, there’s a lot of emotion in your songs. What is it like inhabiting them onstage? Do they well up emotion within you, and do you find it hard to leave that emotion onstage?

Tom: There’s always a few moments in the set where they hit particularly hard. Even playing them, it’s hard not to think what they are about. I could easily break down in tears onstage, but I tend to harness that energy instead to perform the best I can.

Matt: We are all very different people. I want to be connected more to the songs when I’m on stage, but I’m more concerned with playing all the right notes. Playing live there’s always something to think about, it never goes 100%, although that Dunk! show did. When everything is set up and working, it’s amazing, but there’s always some little thing in the back of your mind. My priority is enjoying the moment along with the crowd. Once I’ve got all the technical side sorted I just try to align with the audience. When we play ‘Downpour’ at ArcTanGent it means a lot because that song was wrote about this festival, so you’d think that would be in my mind when we played it, but I was just thinking about hitting the right notes.

Finally, What is your one wish for Din Of Celestial Birds?

Tom: It was always my dream to play ArcTanGent, and we’ve done it twice so my next wish is to play in the United States or at Glastonbury.

Matt: For me, playing with one of our hero bands would be amazing. Explosions In The Sky, if we could play with them…

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