Band pay tribute to Inverness home with new name
A trio of talented musicians from Inverness have released their debut EP.
The Extended Play consists of covers as well as original music.
Indie rockers Jake Maclean of Dalneigh, Lewis Anderson of Charleston and Aidan Ryles of Smithton perform now as FANTY-SHEENY though north music lovers may also know them from their former moniker,Trading Places, of which they formed three-fifths.
Formerly regular performers in Inverness the three made the decision last year to move to Glasgow to fully commit themselves to their music, going in search of more gig opportunities and pursuing their musical studies at the city's Riverside Music College.
When the band renamed themselves, they decided to pay homage to their Inverness roots.
Drummer Jake Maclean said: “It was me who chose the name. It was mainly because I wanted a name that still sounded Invernessian and something that captures that we are from Inverness, even though we don’t live there any more. It means ‘a good performance’ in Italian but is said like it would be with an Invernessian accent.”
Jake also spoke about some of the challenges that the band faced in getting to this point: “The main challenge we faced as a band was the lack of places to gig in Inverness with the Ironworks closing down; there weren't many more options left. This played a big factor in our move to Glasgow. We decided to move to Glasgow in search of better opportunities.
“We originally went to a couple different studios. We went to Edinburgh Napier and a few other places but we weren’t capturing what we wanted so we decided to set up our own studio.
"Two of the boys in the band are studying sound production at Glasgow Riverside so we decided just to set up a studio in the house."
The recent release of the band’s first EP feels like a massive milestone.
Jake said: “It has done really well – in the first three or four days it had over 5000 plays – and there have been listeners from loads of different places! So that was good to see.”
Looking to the future he added: “Now we are just focused on getting some more bigger gigs and hopefully some festivals for next year. We are also planning to record another single that’s hopefully going to come out at the end of the year as well."
