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Dictator on playing TRNSMT and what the festival means to Scottish people
National World - LocalTV
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26/06/2025
We speak to Dictator, a band gearing to play the BBC Introducing stage at TRNSMT 2025 on Glasgow Green.
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00:00
Most importantly is people's grannies know what it is.
00:03
Hi, I'm Michael from Dictator.
00:05
We are a band from West Lothian, but we live everywhere,
00:08
and we are playing Transmit this year.
00:11
Every band you probably speak to says we can't be defined,
00:13
which is not true, we can be defined.
00:16
Quirky indie pop is what we'll go for,
00:18
but what we have struggled with over the years
00:21
is defining what we sound like, right?
00:23
So it's like, we try and go a bit like Gorillaz,
00:25
a bit like Alt-J, a bit like Glass Animals,
00:28
and it's very hard to say this is what we sound like.
00:30
So quirky indie pop kind of fits,
00:33
but I reckon if you listen, there's a bit of hip hop in there,
00:35
there's a bit of everything, so maybe we appeal to no one
00:39
or a lot of people.
00:40
We'll see, we'll see how we go.
00:42
Transmit passes the granny test, right?
00:45
So your granny knows what Transmit is,
00:48
but she doesn't really know what like Why Not or Truck Fest is.
00:52
I remember telling my family I was playing Truck Fest,
00:54
which is an amazing festival, an amazing time,
00:56
and they thought I was playing the genuine,
00:58
you know the one where they do the big trucks,
01:00
and I was like, no, it's a proper venue.
01:02
Transmit replaced Tea in the Park,
01:05
and Tea in the Park was our Glastonbury,
01:07
so therefore everybody in Scotland knows what Transmit is,
01:10
and it is like the mecca for any act or artist
01:14
who wants to go and play at a decent festival in Scotland.
01:16
And it's been, what, five years I think as a band,
01:19
and this is our first year playing it together,
01:20
which will be amazing.
01:22
So we're so looking forward to it,
01:23
and most importantly as people's grannies know what it is.
01:27
So Glasgow is our home crowd.
01:30
We kind of sit in between Edinburgh and Glasgow,
01:34
but Glasgow is very much where we've played the majority of our gigs.
01:37
And I don't know why, but like one of our best gigs was around the corner at St. Luke's.
01:42
And again, there's such an affinity to this specific part of Glasgow.
01:46
But I don't know if it's necessarily the, I think it's the vibe of the city.
01:51
Edinburgh is very, it's beautiful, it's picturesque, but it's quite sleepy.
01:57
Like it's not, I mean, like see if it was like Tuesday morning at like one, two in the morning,
02:01
you can get a bit of grub in Glasgow.
02:04
And I think that lends itself to music, because the music scene sort of,
02:08
I don't want to say dingy, but you get what I mean, that vibe of some underground club
02:14
where you can go and watch live music just embodies Glasgow.
02:18
And I think everybody's more receptive to it.
02:20
The Scottish crowds, usually in Glasgow, the crowds are amazing.
02:24
And I think people are just up and out for a good time.
02:27
So for us, we've always gelled naturally with Glasgow.
02:30
One day we'd love to headline the Barras.
02:32
But genuinely any big show we've done has been in Glasgow.
02:35
And I don't think it's a coincidence.
02:37
I think it's just for whatever reason, we seem to like it.
02:40
And they seem to like us.
02:41
So long may it continue.
02:43
We're hopefully going to be moving past EPs into like album territory.
02:49
We've been in the process of writing an album,
02:53
which has been eye-opening, fascinating and really cool.
02:56
But I think we want to try and tour towards the end of this year.
02:59
Try and capitalise on a bit of the success and doing things like playing Transmit.
03:04
Gets you a bit of momentum.
03:06
So we want to try and strike where the iron's hot.
03:08
So we've basically got a tour towards the end of the year.
03:12
And I'm saying hopefully, because I've never wrote an album before.
03:15
So I don't know how long it takes to get fully over the line.
03:18
But hopefully we can start teasing out some of our next steps.
03:21
And I'm looking forward for people to hear what we've been cooking up.
03:24
But yeah, fingers crossed it is a wee bit of a trajectory starter.
03:29
We'll see.
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