We're Only Here For The Banter - Blank Canvas

Edinburgh is a city with a rich musical history, steeped in the post punk history of The Fire Engines and Oragne Juice amongst others.  Rather than stand back in awe of this, a whole fleet of Edinburgh bands are surging through and amongst the strongest are Blank Canvas.  Latest double A side single 'By The Fire' & 'Golden' sweeps across your ears with it's dreamy guitar riffs and urgent bassline.  The four piece have been tipped by bloggers and press alike, so 2012 will be interesting to see what comes out the bag.  The band were kind enough to have a quick chat to us, here's what they [guitarist Daniel] had to say:

It's the question everyone hates, but could you tell us a little bit about your music and your influences?

We are Blank Canvas and we come from Edinburgh. We collectively find it hard to pinpoint an exact genre that we would all relate to, but things like that are often retrograde anyway. Our musical style tends to shift between the ornate and the more uncouth, both to me seem equally valuable.

What's your song writing process like?

Each song is different. Some we write in a day, some take half a year. We usually start with an idea or an individual motif, often inspired by a unique sound or a more abstract ideal. These small bits of music then begin to mutate into songs or even parts of songs. We rarely write an entire song individually.

What could we expect to see from a live show?

Our live shows are where I feel we truly come to life. The songs become rawer and more primitive, which in itself can be liberating. Now that we are being a little more selective in terms of gigs I am hopeful that we can keep them as intense and fresh as they have been and that they can keep improving.

If it were all to end tomorrow, what would you say has been your greatest achievement?

That’s a hard question. The songs that we’ve written and the countless gigs we have played do sit very fondly with me. I think we are only just realising our potential musically, so hopefully our greatest achievements are still to come!

What have you got planned for 2012?

We have a bunch of stuff that will be announced over the next month that we are very excited about. We want to just record a lot of music and play good shows. I’m looking forward to the summer in particular as we hope to play a bunch of festivals.

At Scottish Fiction we focus on new Scottish music, how do you as a band view the Scottish music 'scene'?

It seems to be improving and diversifying at the moment, which is a good thing. We have never felt part of any scene, I think this might in part be due to the fact that initially we made music together in our own bedrooms and garages and didn’t really take our geographical positioning into account. There is obviously a great history of exciting Scottish music and lots of my favourite bands are Scottish, so when we raised our heads above the parapet it was cool to see ourselves hopefully in that same lineage.

What other Scottish artists would you recommend to the Scottish Fiction readers?

We played a gig with Discopolis, they're cool. I like Magic Eye from Edinburgh and Vienetta from Glasgow.
Check them out.

Thanks for speaking with us, would you care to share a joke with us?

I can’t think of one but here are some amusing pictures of Ross Kemp if that will do?

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