Rock Music News: ALLDEEPENDS Interview For Manchester Punk Festival 2023 (2024)

Who are ALLDEEPENDS?

Hooligan: Alldeepends is a collective of artists that are based in Dundee. The name is quite well suited because it’s a pun on all dependent but also going really deep into things, giving extra layers. So sometimes we might be putting on plays, or doing shadow theatre, putting fanzines out, playing music, putting records out, painting together, vandalising the streets. 

John: Hooligan was quite adamant that we’re an art collective, we were looking at Crass and how they describe themselves as an art collective, not just a band and that inspired us to have a broader approach. 

How would you describe ALLDEEPENDS’ sound?

John: It’s very difficult to have the frame of reference to the points that the band references. I’m personally inspired a lot by the Minutemen. One of the early hardcore punk bands from LA, who played with Black Flag and Dead Kennedys. They were one of the bands that focussed on funky basslines, had a bit of a post-punk outlook. One of the things that their lead singer D-Boon said was ‘punk is what we make it’ – it’s not a sound, it’s not a style, it’s a way of doing things. They would bring in other elements to the punk scene like dub, reggae, to a certain extent ska, funk. I was inspired by that. 

Nikki: Something I always like to point out is that all of us have a deep appreciation for music but also a very wide appreciation. Obviously the banjo as an American folk instrument has a really long tradition of these very simple songs that get passed down, these lyrical motifs that appear over time but also the fact that the banjo is all based in triplets. I don’t really use a pick, I never have even when playing the guitar, but the banjo is all based in triplets and they create that almost rolling, galloping sound which I think translates really well to punk and folk music brought into a modern context and brought into modern electric, distorted sounds. 

John: It’s harder isn’t it, it’s harder than playing in a guitar based punk band. I think that’s something that lends credence to the name ALLDEEPENDS as well because our shows can vary wildly and it’s up to chance how things go on the night and whether everything works okay, there’s a lot more things but we embrace that. 

Do you find that you end up on a lot more mixed genre bills because of your style?

Nikki: The UK has quite a defined DIY scene, there’s different venues that you go to pretty consistently, you know what to expect from the bands that you support. But even still, the range of bands that we end up playing with – Cocky Horror and Endless Swarm, very heavy, very technical, almost power violence type stuff all the way to Café folk songs. The ability to push and pull the amount of distortion, even Hooligan stripped down to just a washboard at times, doing street busking – to Grateful Dead bars, to Sunday Oi matinees, to somebody's basement – the flexibility and the ability to evolve and respond to circumstance and environment is really important to us as musicians. 

You spoke about being an art collective. In art there aren't any rules, does that approach follow on into your music?

Hooligan: The outlook that we have towards music comes from art, it is a big umbrella where within you can find art itself in music. 

Nikki: I think that all three of us are coming from a background of creating something of our own style, something with our own voice and being able to incorporate it into a collective and being able to collaborate and make something greater. I think of our sound generally as a musical collage in that everybody has a very specific outlook and voice and nobody’s phoning it in and trying to follow a specific guideline. Everybody’s doing something creative constantly in the way we all have very different styles artistically as well.

Hooligan: That’s also observable in the artwork for the music that we’ve released in the way that Nikki was mentioning. A musical collage, in this case, is a 2D visual art piece where the three of us come together with our ideas and put it together for it to be the cover of our albums. 

John: It’s like translating us visually into us sonically and vice versa. It’s like three quite idiosyncratic people in an idiosyncratic band then on the flip side you’ve got the visual side of that as well which corresponds quite directly.

How did ALLDEEPENDS form?

John: We all met in the basement, Conroy’s Basement. Hooligan probably tells the story best.

Hooligan: The first time I met Nikki was when Joe McMahon (Smoke Or Fire) played the Basement. In the middle of his set he pointed out Nikki and said they just moved here a few days ago, someone go and speak to them. That was the first thing I went to do and then I heard about their project named Misery Guts. We started jamming and we knew John from the scene and also from art school.

John: We just happened to all be from the same school as well. 

Hooligan: It just all came together after we had some practices.

Nikki: Playing in the band was preceded by a lot of very long conversations about the ethics of punk and about what we want to do in an outlook sort of way and a general understanding of what punk is as a concept. 

John: It’s an ongoing conversation.

You mentioned Minutemen as an influence, what other bands influence you?

Nikki: Oooh, I’m gonna say Beastie Boys, Nomeansno and Defiance, Ohio. So folk punk, hip-hop vocal delivery and almost theatrical, a lot of rise and fall actions, that’s for me personally.

Hooligan: Recently I’ve been finding joy in my friends making music. There’s a new band called Wrecking Joy who are a bunch of my friends. The Sewer Cats. To me there’s nothing more inspiring at the moment than being at an event where everyone is part of it. The people onstage are not any more devine or majestic than the people on the other side of the stage. I think that people that are my friends or people that I know, going for it, that is what really inspires me at the moment. 

John: A band for me, both musically and ethically like Fugazi are really important for having a model of what DIY punk can be and how far it can go. Digressing a bit from this question, like Hooligan was saying, being inspired by the ethics of breaking down the divide of the audience and the band, as well as the spaces being safe spaces for everybody and everyone feeling comfortable in those spaces is really important. Also, Fucked Up. 

What are you most looking forward to about MPF?

John: All the bands, it's the pinnacle of DIY punk in the UK isn’t it? Super stoked to be a part of it. 

Nikki: It’s such a fun structure with all the venues being in walking distance and just the really unique sensation of seeing all these people around with T-shirts and patches that you recognise just crisscrossing.

What bands in particular are you looking forward to seeing?

Hooligan: I’ve been listening to the MPF Spotify playlist with all the bands. I’ve been listening to it and every time there’s been a song I like I tried to make a note of it so that whenever we know the times I can end up going A, B, C to venue to venue, like an abstract map. I found this band called Ithaca that I enjoyed and there’s also this power violence called Krupskaya. Also Cherym and Throwing Stuff. 

John: I’m stoked for Petrol Girl, that’ll be good.

You’ve played Manchester before, how did it go?

John: It’s a beautiful experience. We really like playing Manchester, it’s quite similar in tone to our Dundee scene. People go for it. The TNS crowd, the Garlic Bread Club nights are just wild. People come out for shows and it’s really supportive. We’ve had a good time there. 

Nikki: It’s quite fortunate that people are really swinging hard for it. We’ve played Fuel. I really enjoyed playing Fuel, I love the straight stage and I love the floor bouncing with people jumping.

John: We had complaints from downstairs at Fuel because everyone was jumping at the same time and they came up to beg us to get people not to jump at the same time because they thought that the ceiling was going to cave in or something and said ‘could you please get people to jump up and down at odd intervals or something?’

Nikki: The overhead lights were swinging back and forth.

John: It’s a cool place, it’s very stripped down. It’s kind of reminiscent of house shows in the USA where a lot of the sound people would just turn things up, turn mics on and away you go. It feels very punk rock, it’s not like these twenty minute sound checks. People are just setting up and going for it. We enjoyed the sound and the people who we were with, the bands we played with. It’s one of the best places to play in the UK.

Hooligan: I think that The Sewer Cats are a lot to do with the good times that we’ve had there.

John: Yeah, we’ve got connections there. Josh in The Sewer Cats is my brother, so it’s proper family. We always laugh because me and my brother are in our 30s and we got into punk and the DIY scene and we’ve got no business doing this at this time, being over 30 and doing these punk shows. It’s just a really nice feeling and it’s brought us closer together, it’s all we ever talk about on the phone now, gear, guitar stuff or bands.

Anything else you want to mention?

Hooligan: We have new music coming out, we recorded it a year ago just before our USA tour. Hopefully it will be up on all digital platforms before MPF.

You can stream and download that new music, Banjoviolence, Hooligan mentioned on Bandcamp here.

This interview was for the Manchester Punk Festival 2023 programme which you can read here – there’s loads of great articles and information in there.

See you at MPF!