A 30-legged musical juggernaut, Fat-Suit are no ordinary orchestra. As well as stress-testing stages throughout Scotland, they are stretching the boundaries between regular indie and ‘alternative’ music, and what we will call for the sake of argument “jazz”.
Dorian and Scott from the band took their turn on ‘spokesperson’ duties…

Who?

Fat-Suit are a collective currently primarily made up of • Mark Scobbie – Drums • Martyn Hodge – Percussion • Matt Arnott – Percussion • Angus Tikka – Bass • Craig McMahon – Synth/Keys • Jonny Liebeck – Keys • Dorian Cloudsley – Guitar • Andrew Cowan -Guitar • Scott Murphy – Sax • Alex Sharples – Trumpet • Murray McFarlane – Trumpet • Alister More – Trombone • Liam Shortall – Trombone • Laura Wilkie – Violin • Mhairi Marwick – Violin • but we do augment with extra keys, strings and percussion on occasion!

When?

The band formed about 21 months ago and played their first gig at the start of April 2013 in Mono in Glasgow. We then recorded ‘Kambr’ in July of that year and embarked on our first Scottish tour in December 2013. Following 6 months of more gigs up and down the country we recorded album number 2 ‘Jugaad’ in June of this year and have just released it on Equinox Records as of a couple of weeks ago!

Where?

Fat-Suit came out of Glasgow but where we’re from individually ranges from Inverness to India and Fochabers to Finland! Most of us are from the central belt of Scotland though. The band have played all over Scotland as well as in Holland, The Czech Republic, Poland, Ukraine and Hungary (we managed to do a crazy European Tour in August/September this year where we played 13 gigs in about 15 days while driving 4,000 miles… Ukraine, despite technically being a war zone was amazing and we can’t wait to go back!). More details about our Euro adventure can seen here.

What?

Ambitious (carting 14 people around the continent is no mean feat for a fusion group signed with an in-house label!). Fun (despite possible prejudices about jazz we don’t take ourselves too seriously and genuinely enjoy playing the music wherever we are). Loud (having 5 amplified instruments on stage as well as 4 brass and 2 drummers isn’t that quiet a thing). Genre-bending (our set totally blurs the lines between folk, jazz, fusion, dub step, pop, samba and loads more without clearly defining itself to any one style). Fundamentally-flawed (again, there’s 14 people in the band…it shouldn’t work!).

Why?

This music is some of the most fun music any of us have ever played and has given us an array of incredible opportunities already: being able to have released 2 albums worldwide, one of which being a CD/DVD (our most recent one ‘Jugaad’ broke the top 50 of the iTunes Jazz Chart); toured in a selection of countries in Eastern Europe; played live on BBC Radio Scotland for BBC Introducing (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02f06ld) as well as all of the gigs we’ve done in the past year and half has been amazing. Most of the band make their living playing music and that tends to be through playing weddings/functions, teaching etc and this group offers us an amazing creative outlet. If we can make our full living doing this sort of thing one day that would be incredible but we’re not banking on it! So if you need a wedding band….

The band will be producing a video for every track from ‘Jugaad’ – see their Youtube channel – while physical copies of the CD/DVD are available now
The album gets its launch next February, 17th at Glasgow’s CCA.

More at fat-suit.bandcamp.com