Scotch Mist: Bringing Disco Back
Scotch Mists supplies a Refreshing Sound With Creative Antics
For those not yet in the know, Scotch Mist is the kind of band that defies easy labels. Playing throughout New York City usually, this trio, consisting of Ed Zighelboim on vocals and guitar, Fern Souza on lead guitar, and Gianluca Girard on bass and production, weaves a captivating blend of psych-pop with flavors of disco, soul, electronica, and rock. Scotch Mists takes us on a journey into their creative process, marketing ingenuity, and their highly anticipated album, 'Cabo Blanco.' Get ready for an inside look at the music and minds of Scotch Mist, a band you are going to have on repeat.
For those who aren’t yet fans, tell us about Scotch Mist.
We’re a New York City based Psych-Pop outfit, but we draw from a variety of other music genres like disco, soul, electronica, rock. Ed Zighelboim on Vocals and Guitar, Fern Souza on Lead Guitar, and Gianluca Girard on Bass and Production.
What’s the story behind the name Scotch Mist?
It’s a phrase that means “something imagined”. There’s a ton of interesting and obscure references to it in pop culture. I first saw it used in Alan Moore’s Watchmen comic, then in Radiohead's Webcast from 2007. I loved that it was super mysterious sounding and sort of classy. Although our sound has changed a lot since we first chose the name, we find it more fitting than ever.
You have some creative marketing, could you talk more about that?
In 2021 we put our heart and soul into our 2nd album, called ‘crybaby’. We did a great campaign for it, with videos for each single and great social media outreach, but we were naive in not using TikTok or Instagram to create content for people that weren’t familiar with us. We thought people would just suddenly care and share the music just based on its merit.
Now it’s 2023, we’ve made an EVEN BETTER album and we’re prepared to market ourselves as much as possible across all social media platforms. As an independent band we don’t have much of a budget to work with, so we’ve had to get as crafty as possible. We try to stay on top of trends, and use technology like AI to our advantage. We worked with our manager Daniel Gov to create a hotline where people could get a sneak peek of our songs days before they’re released, and we advertised the hotline by posting mysterious flyers across New York. After hanging up, every caller would receive a text from us with info about the song and a pre-save link.
We really try to cover every angle possible in marketing ourselves. We’re not afraid of experimenting, and we’re not afraid of putting ourselves out there. We make a point to convey our personalities through short-form content to develop a deeper connection with our audience. You have to take advantage of the reach social media has. Most artists can reach more people with a single post than how many will show up to their gig.
Who are some of your inspirations and influences?
Collectively, we listen to a lot of music and wear those influences on our sleeve. You can hear it in the music. It varies individually. For Ed it’s Radiohead, Beatles, Nirvana. For Fern it’s Pink Floyd, Gorillaz, Floating Points, Grizzly Bear, Josh Homme, Tame Impala. For Gianluca, it’s Milton Nascimento, Chic, Steely Dan, Chaka Khan, Mac Demarco, Tears for Fears.
We really like the DIY aesthetic, the indie or pop duo approach of the "one man band”, but we are also very much into huge productions of late 70s and 80s, the "LA" sound, big arrangements a la Phil Spector, Arif Mardin. We try to do as much as we can by ourselves, but we love having fun with great musicians just like how Steely Dan would work with session musicians. We feel like it adds so much to the music.
What does your creative process look like?
We work out of a recording studio on the Lower East Side of Manhattan called Dimension 70, a beautiful space that we’re lucky to call home. We recorded ‘crybaby’ and our upcoming album ‘Cabo Blanco’ there.
During the ‘crybaby’ sessions, Ed would bring songs to the group and then build off the skeletons of those ideas. For the new album ‘Cabo Blanco’, it’s become much more collaborative. Sometimes Gianluca or Ed would bring in a demo, other times the three all wrote together.
Our songs are pretty maximalist; we love layering and we love a wall of sound. After we finish a demo, we record “real takes” of synths and keys and drums with some of the best players in NYC (Justin Salisbury, Danae Greenfield & Jonah Bobo for keys, Reef Cole & Gui Fuentes on drums, Shaan Ramaprasad on strings, and Jared Yee & Daniele Germani on tenor and alto saxophone respectively). We normally over-record and try to get as many ideas and layers in, so there’s always a session where we comp takes and try to strip the song down from there.
Everything from recording and production to mixing is all done by us. Once that's done we always hand it off to Julian Picado for mastering.
What are you looking forward to this year?
We can’t wait to release our new album ‘Cabo Blanco’. We really believe in these songs. It’s our best work yet. Once it’s out, we’ll be touring it all around the US. More than anything though, we’re excited to see Scotch Mist evolve, continuing to expand and exploring genres we grew to love when creating music, making people feel something!
Scotch Mist’s new album ‘Cabo Blanco’ is out now wherever you hear your music.