Bands nowadays, it has to be said, have things quite easy.
But still they complain about finding the time to get together, and having to schlep all the way to the rehearsal studio across town.
Spare a thought then for the members of Iglomat, who are separated by several thousand miles – yet still have managed to make four albums, including brand new long-player ‘The Man Made Man ‘.
As Scott McDonald tells us, things have become a little more straightforward since their debut, almost 10 years ago.
“Sandy (Carson, guitarist) has lived in Austin for about 20 years now and is very much the Scottish Texan,” Scott recounts. “He still hasn’t lost his fine Wishaw accent though.”
I ask if Scott’s remoteness from his US-based cohorts presents any problems. Bassist and producer David Jack interjects: “I live in Pencaitland, you bams!”
“Ha ha, yeah, just around the corner from me,” laughs Scott. “For about five years now. Which weirdly enough has not many any difference in how we work. Not being in the room at the same time is quite a large part of that… if that makes any sense.
It doesn’t, so Scott elaborates further: “Sandy would send guitar riffs that we would generally mess with. Then we would write stuff to play over the top of that track.”
“Scott or I will have more complete ideas and build from there as opposed to a million wee sections cut and pasted together,” David adds. “The result is that you are forced to play things that you naturally might not,” continues Scott, “and therefore come up with melodies that you would never have found whilst strumming a guitar.”
Curiously, it wasn’t music that brought the band together, but BMX bikes, Scott being a former world champion in the sport. “Sandy and I met through BMX competitions and Iglomat really was his idea so I guess without bikes there would be no band… if that’s what you can call it.”
Since those early days, the trio have moved onto more electronic and less vocal-based work, including the soundtrack to Walid Shaib’s film The Kelpies and appearances in the Ewan McGregor apocalypse flick, the David Mackenzie-directed Perfect Sense.
While David is known for his instrumental and hiphop-flavoured solo work, Scott’s background is more in guitars, but he’s embracing the new tech.
“We love doing soundtrack stuff – last year Channel 5 licensed a track for their weekly football show and the BBC used at least three tunes on one of their travel shows. And Calvin Klein have been in touch recently about an advert which hopefully will happen. That appeals to my ‘Back to The Future’ geekyness.”
This article originally appeared in the Kirkintilloch Herald