Q&A - Vigilanti

Emerging from the lockdown in 2021, VIGILANTI, a rock band born from the camaraderie of school friends, has been on a meteoric rise. Since February 2022, they've tirelessly honed both their music and stage presence.

Their journey has been nothing short of spectacular. They've conquered multiple cities, celebrated a sold-out show at SWG3 in March, and headlined a packed King Tut's in the heart of summer. Sharing stages with renowned acts like The Luka State, Himalayas, and Daytime TV, VIGILANTI's magnetic performances have left audiences craving more.

It's really exciting to see you guys are about to release your debut EP '' Pick Your Poison", how do you guys feel and what was the process like for making it?

We are absolutely thrilled for our Debut EP to be released into the world, what was once some silly ideas & lyrics written washing dishes & waiting tables we turned into visual and audio spectacles, and it will now belong to our family, friends & fans to listen to wherever & whenever they want – which is what we started the band for.

The process was strangely overwhelming to say the least. Because The Four of us have busy work/life schedules in the restaurant industry it was quite hard to organise the required time and energy it takes to produce a full EP – Especially one as intricate & as eery as ours. The process had a strangely addictive feeling to it, spending hours in a DIY studio playing the same parts for days on end is torture for most people but for us we couldn’t contain our excitement or our laughter though the whole experience.

Initially we started off with the idea of releasing one single, but we weren’t too happy having so much anticipation for our first track of 2023 with just the One Track.  After finishing track 2 we were set on piecing a Creepy Halloween storyline together through a 5-track record. We scraped as much money together as we could, one thing led to another and we finally finished our first record – it got mastered, polished and is now ready for the perfect launch at our favourite time of the year!

We've seen from the likes of TikTok that you seem to be fan of Panic at the Disco and Arctic Monkeys, who are your biggest musical inspirations? 

The musical journey of the likes of Arctic monkeys, Panic! At the Disco & Måneskin are what make them our biggest influences, although it is somewhat surreal how far these bands have come their journey is what inspires us to perfect and have fun with everything we do. Recently However, our musical pallet has been enjoying the likes of My chemical Romance, System of a Down, Deftones & Nothing but Thieves.

  If you could collaborate with anyone on future music, who would it be? 

 The music we play just now varies between Heavy Rock & Alternative Rock with slight elements of funk, realistically we would be ecstatic to collaborate with a rap artist such as Bemz or have Dead Pony’s Vocalist ignite a track Of ours – but an all-time goal of ours is to collaborate with Queens of the Stone Age.

From an outsider’s perspective, it's really nice to see how united you all are, how did you guys form the band? 

Forming the band took a long time, Nico and I met with a few mates in High school to jam but it didn’t stick, through lockdown it was harder to see each other and practice but we were able to make TikTok’s & started gaining popularity as a bassist and singer. It was at a secret house party we met our drummer Ryan and the same week Adam, our guitarist, came into the picture.

Within a Fortnight we knew we had something special, something Nico and I waited over a year for – and the rest was history.

You've recently played at King Tuts, and it looked like an amazing show from the theatrics to the crowd, tell us your favourite parts of the gig?

The theatrics definitely took our fans by surprise, what took us by surprise was Ryan’s drums breaking at our fully coordinated introduction to the show just he stepped on the stage… there was at least 2/3 minutes of us quivering with fear that the Gig was over before we even started but he managed to keep his cool and fix them as our mate (dressed at the Circus master) cleverly stalled the crowd.

In all honesty when you are on the stage you can’t fully comprehend the impact your performance has on the crowd. On top of entertaining, we had costume changes, fake blood, make-up & our instruments to worry about which made it almost impossible to take in everything at once. Seeing our little community of fans congregate to see us was heart-warming but I think the best part of that show was us collapsing after it finished on the stairs outside King Tut’s.

We were practically drenched in sweat and fake blood, as we came to terms with basically selling out a venue of that capacity and stature and being fanned by the Organisers & Reps as they told us that was one of the best performances they had seen in that Venue.

Follow Vigilanti’s socials here

Vigilanti’s debut ‘EP’ comes out tomorrow on the 27th of October, look out for it! In the meantime, listen to their other singles down below!

Q&A - DORA LACHAISE

A European artist who recently moved from Bristol to Glasgow, Dora Lachaise creates dark and otherworldly music with a central role for her haunting vocals. Her first singles appeared during the pandemic, inspired by works of art and Victorian ghost stories. Her music has been played on BBC Introducing in the West, BBC Upload and Amazing Radio.

We love your use of influences from the 1950’s in your latest single, what inspired you to make music like this?

Dora: When we wrote Bluer Skies, Jonni played this retro-sounding keyboard part, and I improvised the "Bluer skies" line over it. We then watched advertisements from the 1950s that promoted a consumer lifestyle - old footage of beach holidays, houses filled with appliances, a bride with a scary grin - and used this imagery for the lyrics. But material things are no guarantee for happiness or love, and the lifestyle, we now know, is destructive.

Jonni: I'm a fan of vintage keyboard instruments and there are a whole range of them on our Weather Balloons EP. The specific sound used on the Bluer Skies single is sampled from a mellotron, which is itself an early sampler that used audio tape, made famous by the Beatles and Moody Blues. It's a sample of an acoustic guitar, but the mellotron gives it a slightly other-worldly and very retro sound.

Where has been your favourite place to gig in Scotland? 

Dora: We launched our EP, Weather Balloons, at The Old Hairdresser's. The staff were lovely and the building has a cool vibe.

Jonni: We made short films for each of the tracks on the EP and projected them during the performance. It's great when a venue has the right set up for that kind of multimedia show; The Glad Cafe is another favourite. We were due to play at Mugstock with some friends; such a shame so many festivals were cancelled or postponed this year. Here's hoping they get the support they need to survive next year.

If you could collaborate with anyone on future music, who would it be?

Dora: I love Danny Elfman's compositions - he's influenced some of my solo releases, like Bone Collector - so collaborating with him would be high on my list. At the same time, I also get a lot of inspiration from Glasgow-based songwriters Ember Quine, Becci Wallace and Sev Ka - and we'll definitely make those collaborations happen!

Jonni: I really like cross-genre collaborations. Getting people from different musical silos to work together on something hybrid can produce really fresh results. I like the idea of collaborating with people reworking my music through sampling and beat-making, so watch this space... I've also been gigging on keyboard with Ant Thomaz's band and with Becci Wallace recently, which is a different kind of collaboration, but equally rewarding.

Can you tell us 3 goals you want to achieve in the music industry?

Dora:

1. Number one for me is to create good art. The creative process needs to be fun and the resulting pieces need to add something - not sound like music that's already out there. Be unique; have a message; have mystery at its heart. 

2. Then, to get the music heard, I'd love to perform at festivals in the summer, and Halloween events in October. I find Victorian ghost stories and cemeteries very inspiring and love writing dark, eerie music. I've just written some haunting songs at a SongSeeds songwriting retreat in an old mansion near Perth. They'll have their first outing at the Women in Music: Season of the Witch event at Leith Depot in Edinburgh on 31 October.

3. Finally I hope that radio DJs and producers like my tracks enough to play them. We've been very fortunate so far, getting airplay on the BBC as well as community and internet radio stations. It all counts and I'm really grateful for this

Do you have any advice for anyone just  starting in their music career?

Dora: Go out and meet other songwriters and creatives, make friends with those you click with, and help each other. It's not a competition; we can achieve more together. (If you're a Weegie, you don't need me telling you this!) Also, Spotify is great for reaching new audiences, but if you'd like to make some actual money, sell your music and merch at gigs and on Bandcamp.

Jonni: Echoing what Dora said about making the creative process enjoyable, no musician or artist is guaranteed any financial success, so you have to love what you do and it definitely helps to be around other people who understand what drives you to be creative. If you don't know those people already, get along to networking events or songwriting retreats, connect with others and see where it goes.

Connect with Dora here

Dora’s new single comes out tomorrow (20th October), listen to her current releases down below.