Fresh Meat Monday - Bottle of Evil

Would you care to introduce yourself?

Hello, we are a duo hailing from Lanarkshire, Derek Bates and Steven McGilvary, creating music along the lines of shoegaze/electro/folk, even though our name is often mistaken for being a death metal act. Deathgaze as a friend recently suggested.

How would you describe the music you make?

We've just released our self-titled debut album through iTunes and eMusic, with a CD version coming in the next 2-3 weeks. The album began life as a collaborative experimental recording project at E.H. Studios where i work, and it has grown over the last year into this 11 track album. It can be heavily fx driven at points, and the music drifts back and forth between walls of noise and the underpinning beats and emotive harmonies. A recent review suggested we're a bit like a Scottish Animal Collective and another found our music to be of the Dream-Pop variety, which is very flattering indeed.

How did you start out making music?

We' ve both been involved in music for the last 10-12 years, myself previously with shoegaze noisters Genaro, and my own project Evil Hand, and Steven with his own project Bottle of Steven. Which is where the Bottle of Evil name appears from. We both grew up out in the depths of Lanarkshire, where theres so many great musicians born out of from small town boredom and shit weather.

What process goes into the way you write songs?

The writing process was very open-ended, we rarely had something to start with, it was a case of picking up an instrument and seeing what we could get from it, then layering the song very quickly with keyboards, omnichords, effected guitars, xylophones, percussion, basses, balalaiekas/mandolins, and whatever else we had around. We'd then take our time over the mixing and collaborate with vocals that would work best with each track. There were a lot of late night recording sessions which comes through when listening back to the album.

What can people expect from your live shows?

Thats a good question as we've still to play our first show as a band! we had never really thought about or planned gigs when we started recording. But after realising how much we were enjoying it we decided to piece together a live troupe and are rehearsing at the moment, with the view to be gigging in the next couple of months. It'll be a bit noisier and edgier, with the additional of a couple of very talented musicians, so keep your eyes open for dates on our myspace or facebook pages.

What are you all listening to at the moment?

There has been quite a bit of music being indulged in recently such as Bill Callahan, Malcolm Middleton, Slowdive, The Associates, Tom Waits, Foxface, The Phantom Band, The Sound, Beck, Cat Stevens, Leadbelly, The Kinks, The Silver Apples, Ben Folds, Caribou, and the list could go on forever, but we're always on the look out for something interesting, either new or old

What can we expect to see/hear from you in 2010?

We're looking forward to getting onto the gigging circuit again, with a few select gigs with the right bands around Scotland. We'll then probably put together a band EP in the autumn, after we've crafted the tracks live for a while

Bottle of Evil - Seize The Day

Myspace