revealed
The teenage musicians you want to know about
How these two students managed to turn what they love to do into a successful band
Music trends
Tim Bentley and Kyri Thalis
introducing D-Shlang
What is 'D-Shlang'?
"Essentially, we are D-Shalng. As with most of our ideas, the name we decided to call ourselves was a joke from the beginning. We said it randomly when we were hanging out with our friends one day and we all had a laugh but ultimately it stuck."
Who are 'Big D' and 'Rick Ruth'?
"To put it bluntly they are no one. They're not even our musical alter egos, that's the first time we have ever said those names. Really, it's a similar story to where D-Shlang came about. When we did our first performance, basically no one knew who we were and we thought it would be funny to introduce ourselves as whoever we want. We come up with new names every time we go up on stage and we aren't going to stop until it gets old. It is yet to get old."
Tell us about your inspirations
Similarly to a lot of people 'in the industry', we aren't a big fan of this question. Obviously we said Lil Nas X and Jack Harlow inspire us and they are are cool guys, they are great musicians and all but we aren't aiming to make what they make. We just put different songs together based on what we like at the time. So we might pick up a track that we both like and then change it to suit us. We just adapt what we hear. Recently we took a trip to Spain and we became so obsessed with the music they played at the clubs that we made our own track of it. It's not something we would play at a gig but we liked the music and decided to do it ourselves."
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our story
Tim Bentley and Kyri Thalis, students in sixth form in Kent have played music separately for years, but more recently joined forces, first meeting in their school's jazz band. Between the two of them, they play a total of twelve instruments. While they both have music lessons in the school, between classes they usually spend most of their time in the music department to improvise and have fun together. Despite Bentley and Thalis doing Music at A-Level, with Thalis also studying Music Tech and planning to go on to achieve a degree in music at university next year, the duo never had it in their plan to take their talents to the public.
"It had never even crossed our minds," Thalis explained. "It's not like our music is private and special to us though, we were just so content with where we were at, we had no reason to change anything about our 'hobby', as we considered it at the time".
It wasn't until later in the summer of 2020, when neither of them had played together in months due to the national lockdown taking place at the time.
"We both had the exact same thought when we saw each other for the first time after the lockdown started to ease up. It hadn't been the same for either of us, playing with out the other." Bentley told us.
They thought they had hit a roadblock since they were both out of school and didn't have the right location to play together, until Thalis asked his manager at the café-bar he worked in at the time if they could use the stage area they had while no one was playing.
"We didn't even ask to be paid because we didn't consider what we were doing to be 'performances'. We needed somewhere big enough to practice that was easy for us to get to and that we didn't have to lug our instruments to. To be honest, it was sort of just a coincidence that we now had an audience."
As friends and family made a point to watch them play and brought people along with them to listen, the two began to gain a following of people as word got out. It even came to the point where customers who didn't personally know the pair came back to hear them play, and even asked for them personally.
"It was funny for me because I would be serving these customers and they would only be interested in when me and Tim were going to head back on to the stage."
The support of their friends was particularly important for their success because they became popular amongst their age group and eventually were bringing a new customer base to the café-bar. After their contribution to the café-bars new-found popularity, it was only fair they got a pay-check. But the next part of their success was not as easily found.
"It was only at this point that we realised it wasn't just us who enjoyed the music we were playing, and we thought if one guys is going to pay us for this, there's no reason another one won't too."
They weren't entirely right about that though. The next few months were particularly hard to find places that would let them play, especially having to juggle the search with school. Eventually though, a small bar, famous to Thanet let them volunteer to play a gig.
"Even though they weren't paying us, like we ended up getting used to, we didn't mind. We had performed without a pay-check as a motive before, we would do it again. It was getting our names out there and getting new audiences."
It was smooth sailing for the twosome from there on out, though. Gigs came pouring in and they were touring all the pubs in their local area.
Bentley and Kyri, back in the place that started their journey, like old times
The next steps for them now is to take their passion out of Thanet and try and start recording some pieces and get them on music platforms for their friends and family - as well as their growing fanbase - to listen to at their leisure.
"It takes a lot more effort and planning than we anticipated, but we will get around to it. There's no rush right now, we are still doing exactly what we started doing and we are still loving it. But we do know what is coming next, and if we have come this far with no plan, we are pretty confident we can take it further with a plan." Bentley concluded.
Written by Harriet Rowland
Published 6th April 2022