It’s been a good year for Glasgow’s Dialects; their début EP Let The Kids Light These Lanterns received glowing reviews when released in May and they’ve been out on live dates playing with Mutiny On The Bounty and Waking Aida. They’re out on tour with Sólstafir next week, playing Nottingham on the 28th of July and then Glasgow, Liverpool, Birmingham before finishing off in Colchester on the 1st of August. Kindly, Conor Anderson from the band has taken the time to answer a few questions about the band. Have a read and, if you’re near any of those cities, free yourself an evening next week.
Firstly, for those people who aren’t aware of Dialects yet, who are you and how would you describe yourselves to people who haven’t heard you yet?
We’ve always described it as math rock/ post rock with an experimental nature about it (just due to our varying influences).
You released your debut EP LTKLTL in May, how have you found the response?
So far it’s been pretty awesome! Reviewers seem really into the tracks and we’ve had some glowing reviews which have been incredibly humbling. Watching where people have been finding our music is pretty exciting. Recently we were shared by a well known Facebook group and now loads of people in Japan are buying the record! Insane!
Our shows down south though have been amazing. We’ve been playing in Glasgow for a while now and to finally get our music out there and folk to see the live performance from a fresh perspective is great. Whilst on tour we sold physical copies of the record prior to the release and we’ve had some wonderful messages back. To finally be out there and to have joined this wonderful community of incredible bands is awfully exciting!
Your music blends a lot of elements together, from technical sections to more straight up post-rock; when writing do you start with a plan of how the song should progress or do you come up with a lot of ideas and plan how they sit together?
Tends to go by section. We start of with an idea and work out what we’re all playing with it. Steve is pretty excellent at working out what keys and stuff work together, which then dictates his ideas, I usually play it by ear and see what I like to play, Jonathan usually then begins chopping everything up with Ali, changing the time signatures or length of sections to create a more interesting rhythmic side to it. We all have input on it so it’s incredibly fun. We have a huge no rules policy so we’ll keep trying different things until something excites us all.
You’ve played with some truely excellent bands in the relatively short time you’ve been a band, has there been any highlights so far?
LITE definitely sticks out for me. When they toured the UK we were asked to support them in Glasgow. That show was packed. We were this new instrumental band that barely anyone had heard of with a handful of gigs under our belt, and no material online. The feedback from that show was amazing and I think it had an impact on the way we progressed.
We played an all day show that had a bill of: Maybeshewill, Flood of Red, Mutiny on the Bounty, Jean Jean, Vasa and us which was pretty fantastic to be a part of.
We also played a very intimate show very early into when we started gigging at a small bar in Glasgow called Bloc. It was a gig labelled ‘Teenage Riot’ a night our friends in ‘United Fruit’ used to run. They asked us to play for as long as we wanted and we played the EP plus a load more of new material. I love shows like that, play on the floor and just go for it. Local bills for unsigned bands usually have more than one act on the bill so it was extremely peculiar for one act to perform. I think that was maybe why people came down! Just to see what all the fuss was about!
Those gigs all stick out for me as they were either playing with some of my heroes, or doing something a little bit different.
On the other hand, are there any bands you’d particularly like to tour with?
Wow. Literally so many. I would love it if we could share a touring bill with the likes of: Mogwai, And So I Watch You From Afar, 65daysofstatic, Maybeshewill and LITE. Any of those guys we’d be honoured to go on the road with. However I’d love to go on tour with bands I haven’t previously heard of either. Pains me to say it, but I hadn’t heard of Solstafír until we were asked to go out with them. I’ve since educated myself on them and discovered a band with an incredible prowess for atmosphere. I suppose that’s the beauty of music, there is always something new to listen to!
I read that you originally formed to escape a dire Christmas party – did you think at the time that you’d be progressing as you have been, with the album and fairly widespread touring?
Haha yeah! Absolutely not. We’ve never really dived into what happened that night so I suppose now is a good time. I was past the point of caring in all honesty, myself and Jonathan had polished off two bottles of Jack and the party was invaded by a bunch of unknowns with terrible chat. Steve threw the idea out there and we decided to go to the rehearsal space they had. I’d randomly seen Jonathan post about wanting a jam one night and I went along a few weeks prior. That led to Steve, who plays in another band with him, wanting to hear the material also. We jammed and it was good, it felt pretty natural and from then it just sort of fell into place. I never thought standing in that room, blind drunk and just thrashing the strings that it would develop into this.
(Presuming it was a work Christmas Party, ) Have your colleagues at the time been to see you live yet? Have they blessed your escape?
The party was actually at Steve’s but I don’t think any of our work colleagues get it, excluding Ali because he works in a guitar store!
We’ve seen a few of them come along to shows here and there. One of them said we sounded like Tiesto and we stopped asking them along after that…
You’re heading out on tour with Solstafir next week, which sees you play in some new places to new crowds – are you looking forward to it?
Yeah! Can’t wait it’s gonna be a great time we reckon. The band have so much experience and have an awesome CV for touring so I reckon we’ll learn a lot from them. We’ve watched quite a few of their live sets so we’re pretty excited just to see them play!
What does the rest of the year hold for Dialects?
At the moment all we can really say is that we have written a load of new material. We’re pleased to be ahead of schedule with what we’re wanting to do, can’t tell you much more than that!
There may be some things happening around October time but I really don’t want to give more away than that!
Dialects are on tour from the 28th July til August 1st. Find out more on their Facebook page.
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