Video Premiere: Lady North – 'Bum Jiggy'

Having proven their worth on the live scene over the last four years, instrumental rock trio Lady North announce Stellar, their debut full length LP due for release this year. Today they unleash lead single 'Bum Jiggy' – a sharp taster of what's to follow. Guitarist Scott Bullen tells us a bit more about its genesis...

Lady North, you've been missed – where the devil have you been? 
Hi, hello and thanks. What have we been dain? We've been day-jobbing our collective t*ts aff, writing a few 'super-pop' covers, moving a third of our 'kin to Landin, innit, and recording our album. Not necessarily in that order.

Your debut has been a long time coming, were there any significant obstacles in the way of putting it together, or did you simply prefer to take your time?
We wrote, recorded and mixed what became Stellar in just over four weekends, spread over a few months. We were among the privileged elite lucky enough to record and mix at the brand new Tape Studios in Edinburgh with the amazing Dr. Stephen Watkins and the ever creepy, yet always somehow creepier, Grollum. We were with them as they moved from the arse-end of Forth One Radio studios (were we were the only band to record live in the studios mix / green room) to their brand new purpose-built, neon starship of a recording haven in the depths of Leith. Moving between studios and all the technical 'flies' took quite a long time, meaning there was a long wait between recording and mixing, but we were happy to wait that little longer to ensure that we got to record and mix with Stephen and his team, and the unique crazy toy-to-radgeness ratio they maintain. 

You've been a force on the Scottish live circuit for a few years now, what does Stellar represent to the band?
It's the first output we are proud of, for a start. For us, it was a culmination of a few years of gigging with no recorded material of our own, playing some great shows and some not-so-great, and wondering what we could achieve in a studio atmosphere. The songs are a mix of ideas that were fleshed out and written in the studio with Stephen 'the Professor' Watkins and Grollum. Making songs in somewhere other than a bedroom was completely new to us, but a massively positive experience. The idea is for this to launch us up a few levels on the shit-to-alright scale of band worthiness.

Tell us how it all sounds, and when will it be released?
From the word go, the tagline that was getting banded about for a theme, if there should be such a thing, was 'space.' After we got the artwork done by my glamorous assistant, Penny, Stellar just seemed to fit. Musically it's a mix of old Lady North lengthy pyschobabble beats and newer, more direct pop-structured assaults. We hope to build a bit of interest in the album with the release of the first single 'Bum Jiggy', with the hopefully non-foolish intent of enticing a label or any other interested party into our sticky web. This is our first statement of intent and exposure of potential, and we hope people buy into on any level. So to answer your question: when it is released depends heavily on what the future holds.

Bum Jiggy is a sharp shock (fans of quality instrumental rock – Don Cab, Battles and Trans Am are going to dig this), is that exemplary of the rest of the LP to your mind?
I hope so. Paul [Bannon – drums] kept on saying we need to write 'the hits' and that's what we have tried to do. There's still some expansive songs on there though, but we tried to condense our ideas for the shorter songs which meant quite a bit of culling, which was sad, but they turned out OK, we think!

And the tripped out video, what was the inspiration behind that?
Me and my mate Alex just went filming for no more than an hour one night, then a few months later we asked him to make a video for us. The result is just a tiny glimpse of the wonderful craziness that exists in that man-bear-boy's head.

Can we expect to see you play live this summer? Where?
We will be, yes. But we hope to build our live shows into tours rather than one-off shows. I live in London now, so the more we can play at once, the better. London is already spicy enough on my terminal wallet.

You can watch the video above and stream/download the track for free below. 'Bum Jiggy' was recorded with Stephen Watkins at the new Tape Studio in Leith, Edinburgh.