Discovery Music caught up with Aberdeen indie pop group, Pages, before their recent show at House of Jack Festival to talk their creative process, their EPs released so far and the Aberdeen scene as well as much more! Read in full below!
I wanted to start off with a line from your top track "Get Out Of My..." and that lyric being, "What is meaning to a meaningless king?" How important is meaning to you when it comes to your work and does everything need to have meaning for you?
Alistair: Not for that one. That one was literally just walking around a room, spitballing. Matt came up with most of that, he had a notepad and was pacing the room.
Matt: Although I think no matter what, even if it doesn't feel like it has meaning at the time, if it comes out it must have some sort of meaning. That one just sounded good with the song.
Alistair: It was all just cool little lines.
Matt: We open all our shows with that one, it's a little lingering synth at the start and it's a good one to open the show with.
That one as well, it feels like such a personal song to me. How conscious are you of keeping everything personal and tied to you as opposed to slipping into cliches?
Matt: One hundred percent. The more personal the lyrics are, the more relatable they are. So we try to do that.
Looking to another of your tunes, "Mountain Song", which features this spoken word feature towards it's close. Is there a sample used or what's going on there?
Jack: "A Star Is Born" was out at the time but that's a sample from the 1930s version. It worked really nicely with the song and so it just got used. It's meant to be coming out of a small transistor radio, that's the effect it's going for. It sounds completely different,"Mountain Song" is quite a grand song and then it just goes into that little bit at the end.
When you're translating your music from live to recorded, what do you find most challenging?
Jack: We've had difficulties getting all the keyboard parts but that's getting easier over time because Kyle has a drum pad we can add all the synth parts onto it.
Alistair: Before it sounded bare.
Kyle: It's completely a new level with that now, it just fills in all the gaps.
Matt: When you're making a song you want it to sound full in the recording but if you can't make it sound full live as well then there's not much point. People who come to see your music live, if they've listened to our stuff before, want it to sound as close as possible. That's what the SPD's allowed us to do and with the help of our engineer, Greg, we're pretty confident playing them live now.
How closely do you feel your live and recorded tracks sound?
Matt: I think they're pretty close.
Alistair: Most of them are played to a click in Kyle's headphones, all the ones that need it are pretty much the same tempo.
Matt: Then it's nice to have a few we play without a click, just kinda freestyle and enjoy it. Overall the set is a pretty good reflections of which is nice.
And you guys have another single coming out soon, what can you tell me about that?
Kyle: It's a nice dirty pop song.
Alistair: Yeah, it's poppier.
Matt: We really like the song. This is the first time we've exclusively set ourselves out as doing a single. Therefore the song kinda has to be perfect. Whereas if you're releasing an EP then you're not as specifically focused on one song. We really enjoyed playing it live, we played it on our last tour.
Jack: It got a really good reception as well.
Matt: It's probably slightly more poppy than the stuff we've done before but at the same time it doesn't shy away from the distorted guitar and that.
You mention there the EPs, what was behind the decision to stick them out as opposed to the more traditional single by single approach?
Matt: Up until now we've always recorded, mixed and mastered our music at Jack's home studio. We've always had the option to spend as much time on the music and release as much content as we want. As opposed to spending a lot of money going into a studio. When we started the band and launched our social media pages our plan was to have the music already up. If you're inviting people to like a product but you can't actually see the product then it's harder.
Alistair: But it's changed now that we have a few folk following us, people are expecting something to look forward to.
What three qualities do you think are needed to succeed in the Aberdeen music scene?
Kyle: Commitment, that's my biggest one.
Jack: Be sociable with other bands.
Kyle: There are so many bands here and you hear people saying that the Aberdeen music scene is dead and it's not.
Matt: It's just internal. I don't know whether that's because it's two and a half hours away from the central belt? I don't know. What did you say for the first two?
Kyle: Commitment, be sociable.
Matt: And good music! You have to have good music.
Alistair: And there is a lot of good music here.
Kyle: There are so many venues here as well now.
Matt: Good venues.
Alistair: It's just a lot more DJ orientated in Aberdeen right now. Whether that will change who knows.
Jack: There are people out there trying to do bands.
Matt: And they're doing a decent job. Eight of the bands today are local and they're all good bands. Hopefully something breaks out of the Aberdeen scene soon enough, I can't see why not!
Pages play next supporting Voodoos on August 24th at The Cellar in Aberdeen.