A Co Tyrone songwriter and composer has released his debut solo album after overcoming major health struggles — including partial deafness.
LMINL, better known as Declan Gallen, has been creating film scores and work with his band, The Jane Bradfords, for many years.
But his debut solo album comes despite becoming deaf in one ear and losing most of his hearing in the other.
His album, The Dance Hall, features sampled sounds from his family home; a former parochial house attached to a disused dance hall in Castlederg.
He creatively uses old instruments that shaped his love of music and crafts them into digital forms.
He has described the album as a “cinematic and indie record” which features a range of instruments — from bells, drums and guitars to a broken piano found in his old home and even a music box given to his mum on her wedding day.
“I sampled it and turned it into a playable instrument, so it features on several songs,” he explained, adding that the music box also inspired the album cover.
Providing guest vocals on the album were Canadian singer Ché Aimee Dorval and local songwriter Andrew Wilson, who also helped Declan when double checking mixes and giving crucial feedback throughout the process.
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“If you’ve got bad ears, it helps to have friends with good ones,” he said.
The record was conceived and written during the most tumultuous time of his career when, in the midst of the pandemic, Declan experienced catastrophic hearing loss as the result of a tumour.
“I can pinpoint the exact moment I knew something was wrong; I was on a flight coming back to Belfast from Brighton back in 2019 and I had the most excruciating pain in my ears, and once we landed I felt this pulsating in my right ear,” he added.
“It was like someone turning the volume up and down, so I went to the doctor to investigate it further but then Covid happened.
“Eventually my hearing just kept deteriorating and it was difficult to hear people talking. I already had some unrelated issues where my hearing in my left ear wasn’t the best, but I could still hear something.
“Two years later, it just kept getting worse, and all of a sudden one day I woke up and I was completely deaf in my right ear.
“It was one of those heart-stopping moments; the doctors tried all sorts of things like steroids trying to bring it back and it fluctuated for a while but eventually it was totally gone.”
The music box his mum was given on her wedding day
Declan went to a new ENT consultant who spotted something inside his right ear — a small tumour called an intracochlear schwannoma. It caused him to go deaf in his right ear.
After losing most of his hearing, he found himself in the “liminal space between the hearing world and the deaf world”, having to work in completely new ways to compensate for his new normal.
“Modern music technology is absolutely amazing,” he explained.
“Using hearing tests, I mapped my hearing loss into an EQ in Logic Pro, this allowed me to boost the frequencies missing in my left ear to get a more balanced sound.
“I started running my projects in mono, as I have no stereo sound perception. My studio setup is now tailored to my hearing loss.
“I imagine it’s an aural nightmare to a person with normal ears.”
After years performing live gigs in bands and as a DJ, Declan said it was “frustrating” knowing that his hearing loss was not sound-related.
The broken piano which features on the album
“I was always so careful wearing ear protection all the time when I was performing,” he said.
“It’s frustrating knowing I did all that and still somehow lost my hearing; it’s so important to not take your hearing for granted because when it’s gone, it’s gone.”
After his diagnosis last year, Declan was motivated to get the album finished.
“It was a challenge in ways that I’ve never experienced, both logistically and emotionally,” he said.
“But it has come with a huge sense of accomplishment. And despite imagining it would be my swansong, I feel like it’s only the start of something.”
He said realising he would not be able to play live again “freed” him in the creative process of making of the album.
“Throughout the process I never had to think about how I would do this live or that bit live, I just did what felt right and was able to experiment with things I normally wouldn’t have,” he said.
“I’m used to composing and writing scores for short films and documentaries and I guess you could say this is a bit of a score to my childhood home.”
The Dance Hall will be streaming from all major streaming platforms from Friday. The Oh Yeah Centre is hosting a listening event for the album on November 7 from 7.30pm.