Dictator on playing TRNSMT and what the festival means to Scottish people

National World - LocalTV

We speak to Dictator, a band gearing to play the BBC Introducing stage at TRNSMT 2025 on Glasgow Green.

Transcript

00:00Most importantly is people's grannies know what it is.

00:03Hi, I'm Michael from Dictator.

00:05We are a band from West Lothian, but we live everywhere,

00:08and we are playing Transmit this year.

00:11Every band you probably speak to says we can't be defined,

00:13which is not true, we can be defined.

00:16Quirky indie pop is what we'll go for,

00:18but what we have struggled with over the years

00:21is defining what we sound like, right?

00:23So it's like, we try and go a bit like Gorillaz,

00:25a bit like Alt-J, a bit like Glass Animals,

00:28and it's very hard to say this is what we sound like.

00:30So quirky indie pop kind of fits,

00:33but I reckon if you listen, there's a bit of hip hop in there,

00:35there's a bit of everything, so maybe we appeal to no one

00:39or a lot of people.

00:40We'll see, we'll see how we go.

00:42Transmit passes the granny test, right?

00:45So your granny knows what Transmit is,

00:48but she doesn't really know what like Why Not or Truck Fest is.

00:52I remember telling my family I was playing Truck Fest,

00:54which is an amazing festival, an amazing time,

00:56and they thought I was playing the genuine,

00:58you know the one where they do the big trucks,

01:00and I was like, no, it's a proper venue.

01:02Transmit replaced Tea in the Park,

01:05and Tea in the Park was our Glastonbury,

01:07so therefore everybody in Scotland knows what Transmit is,

01:10and it is like the mecca for any act or artist

01:14who wants to go and play at a decent festival in Scotland.

01:16And it's been, what, five years I think as a band,

01:19and this is our first year playing it together,

01:20which will be amazing.

01:22So we're so looking forward to it,

01:23and most importantly as people's grannies know what it is.

01:27So Glasgow is our home crowd.

01:30We kind of sit in between Edinburgh and Glasgow,

01:34but Glasgow is very much where we've played the majority of our gigs.

01:37And I don't know why, but like one of our best gigs was around the corner at St. Luke's.

01:42And again, there's such an affinity to this specific part of Glasgow.

01:46But I don't know if it's necessarily the, I think it's the vibe of the city.

01:51Edinburgh is very, it's beautiful, it's picturesque, but it's quite sleepy.

01:57Like it's not, I mean, like see if it was like Tuesday morning at like one, two in the morning,

02:01you can get a bit of grub in Glasgow.

02:04And I think that lends itself to music, because the music scene sort of,

02:08I don't want to say dingy, but you get what I mean, that vibe of some underground club

02:14where you can go and watch live music just embodies Glasgow.

02:18And I think everybody's more receptive to it.

02:20The Scottish crowds, usually in Glasgow, the crowds are amazing.

02:24And I think people are just up and out for a good time.

02:27So for us, we've always gelled naturally with Glasgow.

02:30One day we'd love to headline the Barras.

02:32But genuinely any big show we've done has been in Glasgow.

02:35And I don't think it's a coincidence.

02:37I think it's just for whatever reason, we seem to like it.

02:40And they seem to like us.

02:41So long may it continue.

02:43We're hopefully going to be moving past EPs into like album territory.

02:49We've been in the process of writing an album,

02:53which has been eye-opening, fascinating and really cool.

02:56But I think we want to try and tour towards the end of this year.

02:59Try and capitalise on a bit of the success and doing things like playing Transmit.

03:04Gets you a bit of momentum.

03:06So we want to try and strike where the iron's hot.

03:08So we've basically got a tour towards the end of the year.

03:12And I'm saying hopefully, because I've never wrote an album before.

03:15So I don't know how long it takes to get fully over the line.

03:18But hopefully we can start teasing out some of our next steps.

03:21And I'm looking forward for people to hear what we've been cooking up.

03:24But yeah, fingers crossed it is a wee bit of a trajectory starter.

03:29We'll see.

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