WHEN Graham Gillanders was growing up in Inverness, he reckoned his best chance of making a career in the music industry was to get out of the Highlands.
Times have changed, however, and now back in his home town, Graham is hoping to help younger musicians make their own mark right here in the North of Scotland — with the help of some high profile friends.
Graham’s career grew out of his own attempts to become a musician at the start of the 1980s.
"I couldn’t play guitar or read music, but with a synthesiser, all you had to do was press a button," he explained.
"But there was nothing for me up here, so I went to Liverpool."
There programming synthesisers led on to a career in production, an expertise he has brought back to the Highlands and the community studio he is currently setting up at the Spectrum Centre in the middle of Inverness.
Though the Spectrum studio may look modest in size, it is capable of producing broadcast quality recordings and Graham points out that the first album for hit girl band Atomic Kitten was recorded in a production suite only half its size.
Graham, who divided his time between Liverpool and Tenerife, began working with Atomic Kitten because of his long association with Andy McCluskey of 1980s hitmakers Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD). It was McCluskey who originally put Atomic Kitten together as a vehicle for his own songs, but Graham continues that association today and is currently working on re-mixes for OMD’s new
album.
Graham played keyboards for Atomic Kitten’s recordings, even appearing with them on television for their appearances on "Top of The Pops" and "CD:UK", but dropped his commitments to the girl band to concentrate on writing an album for a solo singer. Though she won a recording contract, Graham saw no return for his investment in time and effort and decided to quit Spain to return to the Highlands in 2002. At first Graham set up a studio in a five bedroom house in Culloden, but it proved unsuitable for a permanent base.
"The people around me weren’t impressed — not by the noise but by the comings and goings," he said.
"Having a heavy metal band on a Sunday afternoon bouncing around on a trampoline with all their tattoos out wasn’t what people really wanted to see when they looked out the window."
Though Graham established a studio at Inverness Ice Rink, it was to become a victim of a national trend for recording studios to move away from being businesses to social enterprises,
"Studios down south were advertising free studio facilities and we just couldn’t compete," he said.
"I put in over £30,000 to the Ice Rink, but I was dropping my rates to £10 because people weren’t recording. I couldn’t afford to compete with bands going to community studios in Aberdeen and Glasgow."
So Graham decided instead to set up a community studio himself, having already worked with one in Liverpool.
Every other city in the UK has one, he says, so 10 years on from Inverness achieving city status, it was about time the Highland Capital had a community studio of its own.
However, getting the backing for such a venture proved more difficult than he anticipated.
"When I came back people told me things were happening in Inverness with The Ironworks opening and agencies like HI-Arts, but I went to see HI-Arts and they told me they were no longer funding contemporary music. I think it could be viewed by some as discrimination against contemporary artists," he declared.
"There’s no parity with what goes into traditional and Gaelic music. That has its place, but it should not be at the expense of contemporary music. I won’t turn away traditional acts from the studio, but they won’t be a priority."
Graham applied to various agencies for funding, but chiefly Creative Scotland, and became increasingly frustrated at the lack of progress.
"The best excuse was that they could not give us any funding until we’d built up connections with local bands and musicians — which was something we had been doing since 2003!" Graham said.
Eventually a £10,000 award from the National Lottery for computers and monitors, along with the offer of studio space at the Spectrum Centre, allowed Graham to go ahead with his studio plans. "The target for me is to give people a better insight into how to use the equipment," he said, adding that the emphasis would be on working with musicians under the age of 25.
"Some of the older bands are set in their ways and that’s fine, but with some of the younger ones, I want to make them aware of what’s required to make them a success and offer them the freedom to record or rehearse," he said.
"For all the talk of the Inverness music scene, if a band wants to record or rehearse, outwith garden sheds, there’s nowhere. With the amount of funding supposedly dedicated to the arts, that’s scandalous."
So as well as the studio, Graham hopes to offer rehearsal space and use the Spectrum as a venue to showcase local bands.
One major change from his previous Inverness studio is that the young bands using the facility will be producing their own material.
Graham revealed that in the past bands would listen to his mix and invariably would ask for their own instrument to be given greater prominence in the mix.
"After four days I’d play them back what I’d originally recorded and they’d be delighted with it," he laughed.
Those who can afford to will pay for studio time, but Graham plans to offer free recording time to employed under-25s or those still at school.
However, Graham is looking for young people to not just record at the studio, but to run it themselves, and plans on taking more of a back seat when it comes to overseeing the work than he did at the Ice Rink.
To enable him to do so he has enlisted the help of his sister-in-law, Dara-Jane Smith, who came along to his Ice Rink studio as a potential singer, but quickly developed an interest in the production side of the industry.
"I thought I would have her in here, working with the younger people. It doesn’t seem to be quite so intimidating for them," Graham added.
That Dara is also a part-time model is also no bad thing when dealing with bands largely composed of young males, Graham believes.
However, his ambitions for the Inverness music scene go further than setting up a studio.
"One of the things we are looking at is bringing up people who have been or are commercially successful to use the studio and interact with local musicians," Graham said. "One of them is Hugh Goldsmith, who is the guy who signed Atomic Kitten. He has a villa up by Gorthleck, so he’s a regular visitor."
He also hopes Andy McCluskey will come north to host songwriting workshops.
"The bar needs to be raised," Graham stated.
"That said, there are a few bedroom composers around who write really good songs, like Colin Fraser from The Jyrojets, I’d like to work with him and a few others on what makes a good song.
"No matter what the genre, unless you have a good tune, people will not listen to you. The knock-on effect is that people don’t go out and we still have that situation where bands from Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee and Skye are signed to major labels — but not anyone from Inverness."
Graham hopes to give the community studio its official launch on 12th January, by which time the website should be up and running.
