Field Dispatch
The Azurescens | Matt Connarton Unleashed
Speaker 1: Dance into the Night. Great single from the Azer Resins.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to ask if I'm saying that correctly,
Speaker 1: but let's see. I think we have uh, I think
Speaker 1: we have at least gas from the band and we'll
Speaker 1: see you else, yazz.
Speaker 2: Are you there?
Speaker 3: Yeah, go on as well.
Speaker 2: Oh wonderful, wonderful, welcome. Guys.
Speaker 1: Love that song, very very very catchy, very positive and
Speaker 1: uh no, that's great that came out and uh, that
Speaker 1: came out in May.
Speaker 3: Correct, Yeah, yeah, it's not me yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: So relatively new. Yeah yeah, what what's the response been
Speaker 1: to it? I would imagine you're having some success with
Speaker 1: it because it's impossible to uh you know not. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of infectious. So the first time I
Speaker 1: listened to it, it was stuck in my head the entire day.
Speaker 4: That's a good thing, isn't it.
Speaker 5: Very wantch inside your head to like actually the.
Speaker 4: Call of it and play it back.
Speaker 3: No doubt it's going to do well.
Speaker 6: It's always been like a favorite, even at it live
Speaker 6: and chosen it so you get recorded, so did ever people.
Speaker 2: It's it's been good, yeah, excellent, excellent. You guys have
Speaker 2: been around for a while.
Speaker 1: Right, did did you start basically, are you a COVID
Speaker 1: I would probably hate this term about a COVID band?
Speaker 2: Did you start during the pandemic?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Right, we did, but maybe they started anyway.
Speaker 5: I think we were all at a point in our
Speaker 5: you know, they were kind of all looking for something
Speaker 5: like that. I think, Yeah, the COVID just a coincidence
Speaker 5: that that happened.
Speaker 4: At the same time.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, gave It's a wee bit of a
Speaker 5: boost at the beginning because obviously we're able to practice
Speaker 5: a you know and putting new songs together and stuff
Speaker 5: like with with a bit of peace and quiet, right
Speaker 5: with everybody in the world being locked away.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, it's interesting because we've had a lot of
Speaker 1: you know, even I mean it's it's you know, quite
Speaker 1: a few years after now, although it might not seem
Speaker 1: like it, but in twenty twenty six, even now, we
Speaker 1: have a lot of guests on the show who will
Speaker 1: talk about, you know, they've they formed around that time
Speaker 1: or before them, and then the pandemic happened, and then
Speaker 1: everything really changed for a while, and it kind of
Speaker 1: kind of forced people to find new ways to be
Speaker 1: creative and to work together.
Speaker 2: And and.
Speaker 1: But but you guys, you know, starting around that time obviously,
Speaker 1: because I was reading that, I didn't think. I don't
Speaker 1: think you played your first live show until a couple
Speaker 1: of years right later, right in twenty two.
Speaker 3: Twenty twenty two was the first one.
Speaker 6: But we wonder what just jump in in to do
Speaker 6: like a live show when we're only ready for it.
Speaker 6: So yeah, basically, we took our time and we worked
Speaker 6: on a set. Go to our songs the way we
Speaker 6: were wanting them.
Speaker 5: Nice and tight, next and tight, so that you know,
Speaker 5: when we're playing people with our music would come across correctly.
Speaker 5: And if you go out before you've practiced songs properly,
Speaker 5: or you had them into set too quickly, you're bound
Speaker 5: to make mistakes, you know.
Speaker 4: And it's fine making mistakes and everything like that.
Speaker 5: Right, most people don't notice them, but they do notice
Speaker 5: that by that's not tight.
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, yeah, absolutely, So tell me about the name
Speaker 1: and well, actually, first let's let's clear this up.
Speaker 2: Am I saying it correctly? The azuresins? Am? I am?
Speaker 2: I close?
Speaker 4: That's that's actually quite good.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I don't I'm not sure of the definitive way
Speaker 5: to say it, right, But we're named after a magic
Speaker 5: mushroom that grows in America, and it's called the Azuris.
Speaker 5: But I mean I might actually be pronouncing that wrong
Speaker 5: as well. It might be ever, act, yeah, it's it's
Speaker 5: like it's called Azuris, and I suspect right, I've never
Speaker 5: really actually seen the mushroom itself, but it's called a
Speaker 5: blue minis. I take it it takes its name from
Speaker 5: azure as.
Speaker 4: In you know, the color. So okay, So that's that's
Speaker 4: the basic thing of it.
Speaker 5: I mean, the reason for choosing that really is because
Speaker 5: we're kind of quite a psychedelic like to you know,
Speaker 5: have nice reverbs and delays and stuff like that going
Speaker 5: on in our tunes. So it kind of makes the songs,
Speaker 5: although they're poppy and rocky, you know, at the same time,
Speaker 5: they're quite psychedelic, so they give somebody something to listen to.
Speaker 4: Well that's what we hope anyway.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, right now, what went into the choice to
Speaker 2: go with Well, how many? How many?
Speaker 1: Let me ask it this way, because I'm curious about
Speaker 1: the choice of dancing to the night for a single,
Speaker 1: But how many songs do you guys have recorded that
Speaker 1: that you've released at this point?
Speaker 6: I think it's sixteen. I think we will maybe a
Speaker 6: love in singles and we've done a six.
Speaker 3: Trap okay last year. Okay, I think maybe about fifteen
Speaker 3: or sixteen that we've got recorded and now okay, yeah, all.
Speaker 5: The ones we've got one say that we've recorded already,
Speaker 5: but we've not worked on them yet, as in they
Speaker 5: they're just a desk mixing.
Speaker 4: At the moment, you know.
Speaker 3: So to be back.
Speaker 4: Another four yeah, and then we're gonna do an album
Speaker 4: after that.
Speaker 5: But the problem is that people have a very short
Speaker 5: attention span nowadays.
Speaker 4: Most people really really do have a terrible attention span.
Speaker 5: So it was so like the kind of idea is
Speaker 5: is that folk like to see things that are.
Speaker 4: Like short, you know, and whatnot.
Speaker 5: You know, so when it comes to putting things on
Speaker 5: the internet, it's all shorts, you know, so very basic
Speaker 5: brief clips of videos.
Speaker 4: That's not the way that we work.
Speaker 5: Our tunes have got a bit of depth in them,
Speaker 5: you know, they need somebody to have an attention span, unfortunately, right.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, It's interesting. We live in a time where
Speaker 1: there's so many different ways to release music and you know,
Speaker 1: I'm old enough to remember when I was growing up.
Speaker 1: Most most bands or solo artists whomever would release an album,
Speaker 1: you know, the first single would go to radio ahead
Speaker 1: of the album, and then the album would come out
Speaker 1: and then you'd yet, you know, if if all went well,
Speaker 1: you know, you might get a second single and a
Speaker 1: third single, et cetera. But now a lot of artists
Speaker 1: are kind of doing the inverse of that, releasing a
Speaker 1: series of singles that eventually coalesced to an EP or
Speaker 1: an album, because you know, you got to feed that algorithm,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 4: So that yeah, that's what we're kind of doing.
Speaker 5: We're just bombarding the internet with lots of singles and
Speaker 5: then at some point we will re record, you know,
Speaker 5: a whole album and start to finish and it will
Speaker 5: be probably a few new songs next, you know, mix
Speaker 5: of ones that we've previously recorded but obviously have refined
Speaker 5: over the years. So like some of the things that
Speaker 5: we've recorded, we're playing them slightly different now obviously.
Speaker 4: With them being live.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, when you when you play a few
Speaker 5: you know, gigs and things like that, things change. So
Speaker 5: so sometimes it's some of the cording that we've done,
Speaker 5: we feel that we're a lot better that those students now.
Speaker 3: A lot of genderman go back, get them done better.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you guys went through you know, speaking of
Speaker 1: playing live, you guys went through a lineup change last year.
Speaker 4: Correct, that's correct.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we've actually been through a couple of
Speaker 5: lineup changes, but not they're they're not. We've lost our
Speaker 5: drummer on a couple of occasions.
Speaker 4: The first time was our first drummer was a guy called.
Speaker 5: Jay, and Jay you know I got his girlfriend pregnant
Speaker 5: and had to leave the band, you know, because he
Speaker 5: worked its and things like that, you know, and obviously
Speaker 5: family is a slightly different thing. Yeah, and then we
Speaker 5: got we've got another guy and he was sound. It
Speaker 5: was two years and then he offered a like kind
Speaker 5: of a dream job for himself. Yeah, so wouldn't have
Speaker 5: the time to do the band as well. But we've
Speaker 5: landed on our feet. We've got a really good, a
Speaker 5: good replacement. It took us about six months so to
Speaker 5: refine some of the songs and actually they've they've all
Speaker 5: got better because of that, you know, the change, because
Speaker 5: it's forced us to rethink how we play things and
Speaker 5: get you tighter again, you know, and with slightly different
Speaker 5: melodies within the songs and stuff.
Speaker 4: So yeah, it's all learning process, isn't it. You know.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's the same there, but here,
Speaker 1: you know, when you lose a drummer that that can
Speaker 1: be a death noell, because drummers are very hard to
Speaker 1: find here. I have a theory about it. I think
Speaker 1: it's because when when you're growing up and you want
Speaker 1: to learn to play a musical instrument, and you have
Speaker 1: to have the conversation with the parents. If you tell
Speaker 1: them you want to play drums, they're gonna either that
Speaker 1: or the tuba. They might try to talk you out
Speaker 1: of it, you know.
Speaker 5: But yeah, yeah, anything that's hellish to listen to you,
Speaker 5: they're going to want to.
Speaker 4: Get rid of that ideas. It's kind of like that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's it's definitely down to the parents and not
Speaker 5: wanting it.
Speaker 4: But you still do have good drummers. It just happens
Speaker 4: to be that.
Speaker 5: I kind of knew a guy that was saying, you know,
Speaker 5: in between bands at the time anyway, and he's had
Speaker 5: a really good drummer. So, you know, if we were
Speaker 5: to lose a member of the band, is it's devastating
Speaker 5: because you lose a certain dynamic you know that the
Speaker 5: band brings. You know, it's not the band's never about
Speaker 5: one person. It can't be about one person, you know,
Speaker 5: It's about I'm a collaborative, you know, venture I suppose
Speaker 5: you know, and the minute you take one part, it
Speaker 5: just changed. But you know, luckily we've just grin and
Speaker 5: you know, grit our teeth and just grind bear it
Speaker 5: and just got on with it. And on this occasion
Speaker 5: we came out the other other ends smelling the roses,
Speaker 5: I suppose. So our new drummer is really really good.
Speaker 5: He's really entertaining to watch as well.
Speaker 2: Excellent, excellent.
Speaker 3: We added a.
Speaker 6: Keyboard player as well, Vote further and playing keyboard and
Speaker 6: extra guitar as well, so the band expanded our sound
Speaker 6: as well. With that, we've always wanted to get the
Speaker 6: keys involved in our sound. Don't rote further, and he's
Speaker 6: he's added a lot to the band as well.
Speaker 5: No, excellent, Yeah, I mean like we've we've always wanted
Speaker 5: to sort of make our sound looser and bigger, and
Speaker 5: that's not always the case by adding extra instruments. But
Speaker 5: then if you're a musician, you'll understand that the more
Speaker 5: that you can add the more space can be creative
Speaker 5: if people are tasteful. You know, it's all about being
Speaker 5: tasteful and not overdoing things, you know. So you know
Speaker 5: it's given every single instrument a space within the music.
Speaker 1: I suppose yeah right, well said, yeah absolutely.
Speaker 2: Did did you guys open? Is this correct? You guys
Speaker 2: open for.
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: Definitely? Away Sis? Is that a is?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 2: Is that an Oasis tribute band?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's one of the travel in the world or
Speaker 6: one of the one.
Speaker 4: Of the premieer ones.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we were opened for them at the Electrotrons say
Speaker 5: big Benjy and Edinburgh say nice. Yeah, but like obviously yeah,
Speaker 5: that was a really nice gig for us.
Speaker 3: It was yeah, one of the best one. Yeah, that
Speaker 3: was that was top that top night.
Speaker 4: No, it was absolutely rammed.
Speaker 5: You've got to do like you know, you probably know
Speaker 5: the way Scotts people are like to party, you know,
Speaker 5: you know, the gigs themselves are really really charged, like
Speaker 5: you'll have an audience that's right up for it, you know, yeah,
Speaker 5: every one of them. So yeah, it's it's quite entertaining
Speaker 5: that a little stick in your head for a while.
Speaker 4: That guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the second time in the show today that
Speaker 1: Oasis is come up because with with our our previous guests,
Speaker 1: we were the radio addicts.
Speaker 2: We were talking about Oasis.
Speaker 3: Is that?
Speaker 1: Is that a band that's an influence on you guys?
Speaker 1: They're one of my favorite bands. But I've noticed when
Speaker 1: I talked.
Speaker 3: About over the band as well.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, but like everybody in the band is all
Speaker 6: different sort of influences as well. They're like, h like,
Speaker 6: I love them, but I love people and they I
Speaker 6: think they're all right right, So.
Speaker 5: You know, I'm more into city like where they got
Speaker 5: their influences from, like sort of grew up listening the
Speaker 5: led Zeppelin and you know, the beat Oats and the
Speaker 5: Stones and things like that, you know, and and even
Speaker 5: more obscure ones. Gas is in the ivy bit and
Speaker 5: tease and stuff like that, you know. And then Brian's right,
Speaker 5: and he's indy, but he's kind of like, you know,
Speaker 5: a bit like me as really like some of the
Speaker 5: older bands. And then everybody's got their own and only thing,
Speaker 5: and we actually laugh at each other's influences.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 5: It creates quite a good but ban within the band
Speaker 5: because yeah, Brian can't stand country music. Yeah, it's not
Speaker 5: here to unfortunate, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Scottish as far as Scottish bands too, you know,
Speaker 1: because I'm curious about that. Simple Minds is what was
Speaker 1: one of my favorite bands growing up. They're the first
Speaker 1: ones I think of when I think of Scottish bands.
Speaker 2: But I mean, like, what what is the scene like?
Speaker 1: There are there a lot of bands that sound like
Speaker 1: what you guys are doing or do you kind of.
Speaker 4: No, definitely not. We do have a quite unique sound
Speaker 4: as e since.
Speaker 5: But no, don't get me wrong, the Scottish music scene
Speaker 5: is absolutely bustling. Yeah that was you know, and I
Speaker 5: really cracking scene here. But it's just really hard to
Speaker 5: to get gigs in venues now.
Speaker 4: And that's not because of the lack of talent.
Speaker 5: It's actually just because the price of actually running a
Speaker 5: gig now is tripled or something in the last six years.
Speaker 5: So when you go into a venue, they you know,
Speaker 5: it's expensive. You have to charge more for tickets. Everybody's
Speaker 5: getting paid a wee bit more, and that there isn't
Speaker 5: much left for the musicians. So we're all struggling. We're
Speaker 5: all struggling in Scotland, but we don't care about that.
Speaker 5: It's not that that's not an.
Speaker 4: Issue, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah, you just gotta got to keep going.
Speaker 1: But I mean it sounds like you guys have a
Speaker 1: lot of have a lot of momentum. And by the way,
Speaker 1: the EP we we kind of alluded to it earlier.
Speaker 1: But Common Bond that that came out last year, right,
Speaker 1: mm hmm, yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, last October. I think of this. Yeah, six tracks
Speaker 6: on that one a Common Bond. The sort of the
Speaker 6: main one that done well for that was one host
Speaker 6: Down that was another week cat to s three minute
Speaker 6: radio friendly song. But we recorded our first two singles
Speaker 6: Middle of Nowhere and like from.
Speaker 5: That and then but they were posted onto the EP
Speaker 5: we to give folk an EP, you know. But that
Speaker 5: that was a WEE test in the ground, wasn't it.
Speaker 5: And I think from that we realized that we actually
Speaker 5: need to split the songs up, you know, and release
Speaker 5: them and individually they each get like what sort of
Speaker 5: attention if you like the songs each Yeah, we all
Speaker 5: believe right that every one of our songs has got like,
Speaker 5: you know, potential greatness, you know, and it's just I
Speaker 5: suppose finding the right people. But with the short attention
Speaker 5: span that was talking about, we released the E p
Speaker 5: and most people, well there will be folks that did
Speaker 5: listen to the whole thing, but the majority folks were
Speaker 5: only really listening to the first chart, and that's just
Speaker 5: not what it's about, you know, see, So unless you
Speaker 5: can give them a physical copy, you know, which is
Speaker 5: rare nowadays people get physical copies. It's a lot a
Speaker 5: lot of it's just digital download and stuff like that.
Speaker 5: So you know, like they'll just press skip, won't listen
Speaker 5: to the first churn and then that's it.
Speaker 4: So yeah, that's what we're struggling against.
Speaker 5: Sure, people's attention span. But then again, it's just you
Speaker 5: need to keep just doing it, keeping putting the music
Speaker 5: out there and let you know, and then you never know.
Speaker 5: We've had some really interesting things happen. We animations and
Speaker 5: stuff made for us, and quite a lot of nice
Speaker 5: attention on the radio and things like that, so we
Speaker 5: hope to build from that moving on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, excellent. Well you're definitely on a positive trajectory,
Speaker 1: no doubt about it. At the end of our conversation,
Speaker 1: when we let you guys go in a couple of minutes,
Speaker 1: we're gonna play this this song, Light from Dark.
Speaker 2: I really like this a lot is there is.
Speaker 1: There any kind of a particular story behind this song
Speaker 1: or uh? And you know, and again I like the
Speaker 1: I like the positivity, which seems to be definitely a
Speaker 1: theme with you guys.
Speaker 2: But anything we should know about this song, well, that one.
Speaker 3: That's an old song that I went and wrote.
Speaker 6: I don't know, maybe close to twelve year ago, maybe
Speaker 6: really yeah, but I'd always like before I joined the band,
Speaker 6: it's the first band I've ever been in, so I
Speaker 6: would I wrote just loaded songs just for playing on
Speaker 6: the acoustic guitar in the house, But that one I wrote.
Speaker 6: My message was going for a bit a a hard time,
Speaker 6: so that was kind of like it was a wee
Speaker 6: song for her. But I just basically kept it to myself.
Speaker 6: And then I went and played it to Andy and
Speaker 6: Brian when we were first thought of getting live together,
Speaker 6: and as soon as they heard it, they were like, wow, like,
Speaker 6: let's work on that till we worked it and I
Speaker 6: did the way as and I it's phenomenal. I such
Speaker 6: a proud moment when we're playing that tune because it's say,
Speaker 6: it's very emotional, because it's it's obviously it's describing to
Speaker 6: somebody that's having psychological issues that there's all light at
Speaker 6: the you know the end of the tunnel.
Speaker 4: It's not all done included.
Speaker 5: You know, it's trying to positive and that's what you know, I.
Speaker 4: Mean, set aside.
Speaker 5: You know, Gas is a brilliant songwriter, you know, And
Speaker 5: whether or not the songs are about depression, yeah, I often,
Speaker 5: quite often the music behind it's quite positive. So we
Speaker 5: try to balance it, you know, So if the message
Speaker 5: is really dark, right, the music will be sculpting around
Speaker 5: it to be really beautiful and hopefully positive. And I'm
Speaker 5: glad you're playing light for dark because it's it needs
Speaker 5: to be heard more from more people.
Speaker 6: Do you even me that one there is a message
Speaker 6: and again that there is hope, there is like that
Speaker 6: is basically there is, like say the end of tunnel yard.
Speaker 5: Too many people get stuck in a rut, you know,
Speaker 5: we were you know, bad, bad psychological issue and stuff
Speaker 5: like that, when they could just share it with somebody,
Speaker 5: I mean, you share it, you know, it makes things
Speaker 5: a whole lot easier. I mean, I do realize there's
Speaker 5: folks that are out there that you know, just can't
Speaker 5: get away from the problems they have. But you know,
Speaker 5: it's good to share them with folk gay and you
Speaker 5: never know when you share things what will happen. You know,
Speaker 5: sometimes a right positive thing comes out of it, like.
Speaker 4: For that being a good change.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, As someone who struggles with depression, I can really
Speaker 1: appreciate all that. Maybe that's why the song connects with
Speaker 1: me the way that it does. But yeah, absolutely absolutely, guys.
Speaker 1: This has been wonderful guys and Andy. I really enjoyed
Speaker 1: talking with you guys, and we'll have you back. We'll
Speaker 1: definitely do this again in the future as you're releasing
Speaker 1: on more music. Yeah, sounds like you got a lot
Speaker 1: of good stuff coming up.
Speaker 3: So I've got another one coming soon as well.
Speaker 2: Oh perfect, perfect, not long.
Speaker 1: Where where's the before we let you guys go and
Speaker 1: we're going to hit that track light from Dark? But
Speaker 1: where's the best place to go online? To keep up
Speaker 1: with everything that you guys are doing, the the azuresence
Speaker 1: as as I the appreciation that I'm going with.
Speaker 6: We'll go like all social media. We're on Instagram and Facebook,
Speaker 6: tech Talk, and our music is on like every Spotify,
Speaker 6: Apple Music.
Speaker 4: If you type in our name, you'll find it. You
Speaker 4: know it's there.
Speaker 5: It's sometimes think we've got it in too many to many.
Speaker 4: Spotify seems to be the thing where we getting nat.
Speaker 2: Really.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but yeah, it's helpful that you have a name
Speaker 1: that's not a common word. So yes, it's it's very
Speaker 1: you're you're very google doable. As I like to say,
Speaker 1: it's if you google, if you google that, it comes
Speaker 1: right up.
Speaker 2: Guys, thank you again. We'll let you go and we'll
Speaker 2: hit that track.
Speaker 1: But thank you both again so much for joining us conversation.
Speaker 4: It's been interesting.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Oh thanks guys.
Speaker 1: All right, take care bye bye. All right. That is
Speaker 1: Gazz and Andy from the band the Azusins, and let's
Speaker 1: play this song. Like I said, this really connects with me.
Speaker 1: This is called Light from Dark
Podbean