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Dykeenies provide Sounds for the City of Stirling

Fubar was the last stop on the Dykeenie’s latest tour promoting the release of their new album Canyon of Echoes. The band released the album off their own back following the decision to stay independent from a record label.

I caught up with the band to find out how life was own their own.

AJ: The new album has a very different sound to ‘Nothing Means Everything’, what was the thinking behind the production of the album.

Dykeenies: We never had a definite plan for the direction of the sound. On the first record, we recorded it with lots of different producers in lots of different studios and it was a matter of finding a producer we could click with. It was almost as if the first album was research. The second record was all made in the same studio with the same guy and we were all comfortable with that. I think the fact that we’re now independent made a big difference as well because we could take our time with the recordings and we could do a lot of experiments at home on our computer. We felt a lot less pressure with this album because we could do a lot of recording on our computers at home without it costing us money like it would if we were writing songs in the studio. So on the second record, we were a lot more prepared to record because we’d had that time to experiment at home.

AJ: What’s it been like being your bosses, is it all a much more fulfilling experience now or not?

Dykeenies: When we were on Sony, they wanted to control everything, including our haircuts and clothes. Now we can dress how we want.

AJ: What are the advantages and disadvantages of being independent?

Dykeenies: You can make your own decisions first and foremost. We always said to the guys from Sony that if we chose how to spend the budget they had allocated us, we would have been ten times better off. But now we don’t have the big massive budget, but we can make our own decisions.

AJ: Do you think going independent is the way forward for a lot of young Scottish bands?

Dykeenies: I think it’s going to have to be to be honest. Our music lawyer has only signed three bands to record labels in the last two years and he’s one of the best ones in the industry in Britain. Now the artists they mostly sign are pop acts that either look good or can sing fairly well but don’t write their own stuff, but that’s what it was like before Franz Ferdinand and the likes of the Strokes, so I guess it goes round in circles really. I think there’s been a lot of trial and error with bands releasing their own music and I think it’ll still be some time before they work out what the best way of releasing music is.

AJ: How do you see yourselves fitting into the current music market?

Dykeenies: I think we were perhaps a couple of years too late to fit into the surge of guitar music that occupied the 00s. There was a big thing for a while when all you ever heard was another band from another town in the UK and then people got fed up with that. It’s changed now to pop acts and things like dubstep, but even now people seem to be getting fed up with that because it all sounds the same. It’ll go round in a circle.

AJ: The video for Sounds of the City was good fun, was it as much fun to make as it is to watch?

Dykeenies: We took all the photos ourselves. There were 3800 photos in the end video, but I think we took over 10,000 photos overall. It was an absolute nightmare to edit! It took us 11 days to edit it.

AJ: What’s the reaction been to the new album?

Dykeenies: it’s been great. Nothing beats the sound of the crowd singing your new songs back to you, that’s when you know people are enjoying your music. 

If you're a fan of Scottish music, noise makers Sucioperro will be dropping into Fubar next week (11th November) to blow the roof off - Tickets available for £7 from Ticket web / Europa Music / Barton St Music