Imaginary Creatures album release ‘Danse Macabre’

Lyricist David Scott started off many years ago originally writing fiction and by using his creative writing skills he discovered that he could write lyrics which started seriously from 1995 to 2000 where  he had a fertile period writing many lyrics for his own amusement. This culminated several years later and gave him the inspiration to write his first album under the name Imaginary Creaturesentitled The Butterfly’s Dream.

The first album was a fantastic learning curve, it fired David up which gave him the ambition and confidence to start writing the follow up Danse Macabre. These albums would never have come to fruit if Offbeat producer Iain McKinna had not been involved, he worked David’s ideas into an end product and contributes his own musical ideas and influences to the music.

David says, “Well, I really enjoy my time working at Offbeat. Iain and Kirsty are great to work with, and we usually manage to have a good laugh as well as getting quality work done. What could be better?”

David adds. “When I came into Offbeat I had no idea how to make an album, so that was very much a learning experience for me. So now with that experience under my belt (and with Iain also having the experience of what it is I am trying to do) we have been able to make this one a bit more cohesive. The first one had some good stuff on it but it was a bit uneven, it seemed like a random collection of tracks. This is more like a proper album!”

David has a unique style of writing about topics which he feels very strongly about that evoke a response from the profound to the trivial,”It tends to be story’s or abstract ideas, as there are plenty of issues in the world so there is no shortage of material”

And not being a musician doesn’t stop him expressing own musical ideas. He spends time listening to all his favourite albums giving him the many ideas to add into his tracks with an array of influences. This album is so exciting as Iain and David have managed to get some amazingly talented players on it. Like Drummer Ted McKenna of SAHB whos spectacular drumming  throughout has given the whole album the right energy and  weight to really showcase David’s very talented writing skills, with the addition of Iain’s production skills and who happens to also be playing Bass, Guitars & Lead Vocals on this 70s influenced Rock album. Guitarist Keith More and Blue Oyster Cult’s Joe Bouchard both have contributed spectacular guitar parts, and sax players John Burgess & Kenny Tomlinson have added performances to two tracks a piece.

David says “I started seriously writing lyrics in the mid 90s. That’s not counting the stuff I did as a teenager, which thankfully no-one will ever see! I had also written a fair amount of fiction, so I came to it with experience in creative writing when I started. Then from 1995 to about 2000 I had a very fertile period where I wrote tons and tons of lyrics. I just wrote for my own amusement, at that time I had no idea of actually doing anything with them. Then when I decided I wanted to start recording some of this stuff, I had a ready-made back catalogue that was fairly substantial, and it seemed to me that a good proportion of them still stood up with little or no re-working. So about half of the first album and all of the second come from that slush pile.
Not being a musician myself, I don’t have any musical ideas of my own, everything I do comes from stuff I have listened to. When I was a teenager, all these great albums were coming out by people like Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin that are now great classics, but then they were brand new, and it was a very exciting time. So I have loads of influences that come through. On the new album, one track has a sort of cool jazzy vibe, one is a heavy slow blues, there is a jumping little rock’n’roll number, I’ve even attempted a Supertramp-style prog opus led by classical piano and strings”.

I asked David how he managed to get Joe Bouchard on this record, “I just asked him! About three years ago, when I was looking for a way to make something happen, I emailed him and sent him some lyrics. He was quite encouraging about the material and in fact ended up using one of them as the basis of a track entitled “Everybody Goes Insane” on the last Blue Coupe album, ‘Million Miles More’. So I got a writing credit on that album, which was nice. So we kept in touch, and when I was preparing this album there was a rocky track that I wanted a slide guitar lead for. So I asked Joe if he would do it and he said yes. I’ve always been a huge Blue Oyster Cult fan, so having Joe play on one of my songs is amazing to me”.

Producer Iain also enjoys working on David’s albums. “It’s fairly specialised working with a lyricist and interpreting ideas which are in peoples head, which I’m doing more and more of these days”, says Iain.”When things work out it’s a real buzz. David is always very clear on his brief which makes things easier. Of course, I add my own influences to the tracks, like on the excellent song Babylon on which things really came together early on in the project. At that point I felt this album was going to be great”.