If you mix the chiming guitar of Inhaler and The Night Cafe, along with the groovy bass lines of The Stone Roses and the pumping drums of Royal Blood, sprinkled with the cheeky chappy energy of McFly – you’ll end up with none other than The Midnight Suns. An Oxford-based indie alt-rock band made up of lead singer / lead guitarist Harrison Deas and drummer Jake Gibb. Releasing their debut EP ‘Sunrise’ in June 2022, they have already performed their songs at established venues like The Bullingdon. Brookes Creative Assistant, Katherine, interviewed Harrison and Jake to find out about the band’s inception and capture their advice about forming a group and releasing original music.
How did The Midnight Suns come to be?
Jake: “Before we even knew there was a Group Performance module in our second year of the Music degree, Harrison and I were trying to find ways to just play music together. Our first year at Brookes was plagued by Covid restrictions, and music students were hit especially hard because our facilities were all in the basement where they were extra strict about ventilation. We lost a lot of time and opportunities to play music with any of our peers in the first year, so when we saw this module as an option in the second we just decided to go for it.”
Harrison: “Although the module helped bring our band and our vision to life, it was already on our minds way before that. Having this as an actual class we were taking as well as the support of the Music department allowed space for us to explore and grow as a unit.”
So you released your first single, ‘Mary Jane’ in April of 2022, followed by your debut EP ‘Sunrise’ shortly after in June. What was that whole process like, to write those songs, promote yourself and get your music out onto streaming platforms as an independent artist without a label?
Harrison: “It was a very long process that started in our first year. I wrote the song ‘Mary Jane’ and played it to Jake, which is what actually kick started this idea of forming a band. When the Group Performance module came around, we knew we wanted to play original music even though it’s not how things are usually done. Thankfully our lecturer was okay with that as long as we took the initiative to really make it work. It was in one of our rehearsals where we played ‘Mary Jane’ for the first time together, and that was a really nice moment. I think we really felt something was there, and it was that moment of knowing that this could actually work. That was the first single we released out into the world, and the first track people heard from our EP. The other songs were written in the span of 2-3 weeks. After that, it was a process of rehearsing them as a band and getting them performance and recording ready.
By then we got to know another Oxford-based band called SugarRush, who had gigs coming up locally and were generous enough to give us the opportunity to tag along and perform our set in public. That inspired a timeline for us to really learn all the music and get in the recording studio to release music as soon as possible. We recorded Mary Jane in two days.”
Jake: “The promotion aspect of it all was surreal. Just thinking of ideas for content like videos or images to announce things. Our first ever band photoshoot was so awkward. None of us knew how to stand or what facial expressions to use. We had our mate who is studying Photography take our photos and it was weird seeing him so serious when that’s not what we’re used to from him. It was a massive learning experience to understand what we needed to do in order to accomplish everything we were trying to achieve. We took advice from a lot of people.”
Harrison: “In terms of streaming, I learned how to release music on TikTok, of all places. There’s a guy on there that makes videos explaining how to get music out into the world if you’re an unsigned artist. That’s how I learned about DistroKid, which is what we used to get everything out onto streaming platforms. You subscribe to DistroKid for a fee, upload all of your music to that platform and it will share content to every streaming service altogether. It’s handy because you can also check your stats, upload your lyrics on there so they appear in a professional way. It continues to count your streams as time goes on and from that you get a bit of money. Since we released our first body of work, we’ve earned about £6 in total at this moment in time! DistroKid was the thing that really helped, and it meant that we didn’t have to worry about putting tracks separately into different streaming services and maybe incurring costs from each one. It made the process of making our music available to everyone a lot easier.”
“If we didn’t have something like DistroKid, we would have really struggled to get our work out there.”
What did you learn from this experience? Is there anything you would do differently for projects in the future?
Jake: “So many things! Firstly, the entire recording process of our EP. We took our really limited knowledge (at that point) of recording studio practices and techniques and really just improvised our way through recording the EP. Some solutions we came up with were definitely not industry standard and were really funny – someone would hold a phone next to my ear as I was drumming so I could hear the backing track, not knowing then that there are definitely proper ways to go about it. Taking our learning about recording studio practices and audio mixing in other modules throughout the last two years, we now know exactly what we could have done better to focus and do things right, instead of having to improvise. For next time as well, just trying not to get loads done all at once – slowing down and really thinking about what we’re doing, how we’re doing it and concisely creating a method rather than rushing everything to meet a self-imposed deadline.”
Harrison: “I think taking more ownership of our work and instruments will be a top priority for next time. Like tuning the drums or making sure sound settings are set up just right. We really just plugged everything in, recorded the whole EP in a few days and sent it off to be mixed. We’ll definitely take more ownership of what we want it to actually sound like right off the bat from the recording studio.”
Jake: “We sent our recordings to a friend who did all the mixing, and as a result of that somehow it didn’t feel like it was completely ours. We’ll be doing it ourselves next time and be fully involved with the entire process of sonic production. So again, taking ownership of everything will be something we strive for in the future. The main thing we can take from ‘Sunrise’ is that it was a fantastic way of starting off, but it feels more like a stepping stone rather than a bridge.”
“It’s so cliche, but just do it. Keep playing, keep writing, keep putting yourself out there. It takes a lot of effort, and a lot of sleepless nights, but it’s not going to happen overnight. You have to keep trying.”
What advice do you have for people who want to start on a journey of becoming a band and releasing original music like you have yourselves?
Harrison: “My dad, being a London black cab driver, has picked up so many musicians or music industry people off the street, and when he talks to them, they all say the same thing: just keep at it. If this is what you want, it will become your life. You’re going to spend so much time together as a band, whether you like it or not. It’s incredibly important to make sure you surround yourself with people who you can work with. You might have people who are amazing musicians or are your best friends, but those two things don’t always go well together because the relationship you have with your bandmates is something entirely different. Finding middle ground and compromise is key.”
Jake: “Marketing is so important as well. These days, everything is online, and it’s your greatest tool. That’s something we need to catch up with as well.”
Where do you see yourself headed next, what’s coming up? What’s on the horizon for the Suns?
Jake: “We’ve got new releases in the works, particularly a new single coming soon. Probably another EP at some point next year, but we’ve learned from our experience with ‘Sunrise’ that we don’t want to tie ourselves down to any strict timeline. We’ll definitely be doing more gigs. We 100% are going to keep going.”
Harrison: “It’s a little up in the air after that though, since we’re both in our final year of university. We think in order for The Midnight Suns to work in the long run, it’ll have to be put aside for a bit because we both will move out of Oxford and back home, and so it’ll first be about getting ourselves settled into our new out-of-uni lives and then finding a way to fit TMS around that. That doesn’t mean this is the end, we absolutely have plans to continue. We’re already thinking about our fourth and fifth album! But given that there will be major life changes for all members of the band coming up, we want to take our time and really figure things out and plan so that we can put ourselves in a position to do everything we want to be able to achieve.”
Jake: “I think that would be the smart thing to do for us. I think if we were to focus on TMS wholeheartedly and put a load of money and dedicate all of our time towards it, and there is always the possibility that it could go sideways, then you’re really stuck without another option. Whereas if we can first focus on what’s going on individually, then figure out how to work around that, it would allow everything to be more concise, especially financially. For us, it’s the more responsible choice. I mean you hear stories about bands that drop out of university and pursue this full time. They do get lucky, and the reason why you hear about that is because they’ve made it. There’s probably loads of people who’ve done that, but we don’t know about so many of them because they didn’t find a certain level of success. There are many paths we can go down, which is a good thing we have going for us. It’s just about figuring out which one makes the most sense for us.”
Harrison: “Don’t get me wrong, as much as we would like to drop everything, get a van, drive around the country playing gigs and pursue this full time, we know it’s not smart. We know we’re not in a position to do that and we need to get ourselves grounded first, in whatever way that it turns out to be.”
Any parting words?
“We just want to say thank you to everyone – friends, family, listeners, collaborators – who have supported us on this journey so far. Having this genuine support from people around us has been so motivating and validating. Being on stage and hearing people sing our words back to us is a feeling like nothing else.
We also want to thank a few specific people who have made this possible for us so far, including Charlie Wickham who stepped in as our bassist to help get us off the ground, Archie Valentine who mixed and produced ‘Sunrise’ and the Music team at Brookes who helped make us happen.”