Every so often, you'll be lucky enough to come across a band that, despite being at the very early stages of their musical career, clearly have something that separates them from the masses. Edinburgh-based two-piece Dead Artist Club are one such example of this, having recently impressed a panel of music and media industry professionals at an Off The Record event in Dundee, where their demo was played in front of an audience during a live feedback session. With a single on the way, we catch up with Lauren Black and Lorne Black to hear their story so far.

On how they came together

Lorne: I found Lauren's Instagram account and I saw she was a really great singer. I had a cheap home studio to record music and thought it would be worth asking her if she was interested in hearing a few songs of my own. She wrote lyrics and melodies that made the music stand out more for me. Oddly enough we have the same name! Lauren Black and Lorne Black. We hashed out some ideas for the first few songs and thought it would be cool to form a real band.

On their current sound

Lorne: I know for the both of us that writing music and hearing a new song come together is definitely much more than a hobby. It really is all we want to do. So writing naturally always means your sound evolves over time. We are more or less at the very beginning of the songwriting journey for this band so who knows what else we will make. We feel our newer releases have grabbed more attention than our previous work; everything is much tighter for radio and easy to listen to without losing our distinct style of grunge-pop.

On their new single

Lauren: Our new single 'Bad Dreams' is about the crazy nightmares I had a lot this year, which involved these really scary flashing images of monsters and loved ones. So we thought it would be a cool idea to use stop motion for the video (which was a nightmare to film!). We walked a few miles from 12am until 7am finding the right shots for the video in the wind and rain. It looked way better in the video and added more to the theme of being sick, cold, wet and tired! Then we used some trippy effects to make it more like a dream state. The lyrics are basically a story describing this in a kind of old fashioned storytelling style.

Lorne: The music was really just a nifty bass line I had for a couple of weeks before recording again. Lauren wrote some really powerful lyrics and amazing catchy pop melodies. We knew that the song was a bit more special to us than other music waiting to be finished. So we decided that this should be our first single to push.

On their influences

Lorne: Honestly, I take inspiration from old blues musicians, BB King being a huge deal for me. I love musicians who you can really tell put all the effort into the music, making everything count. It just makes it sound way better! But being a huge fan of music in general, I think about music in all styles. As a band, we really analyse everything, fashion especially, from other artists we admire.

Lauren: For me, watching artists like Queen or Prince perform live really inspires me to play to live audiences. I love seeing how these artists engage with a crowd with such a unique presence and style as well as showing such skill in their songwriting.

On the future and what's next

Lauren: I think the future looks pretty good! It's early but we both feel this band has something worth pursuing most definitely. Hopefully soon, we'll be able to start playing all over the UK and maybe even further afield.

Lorne: I'm really looking forward to what's ahead for the band. As for now though, we are looking to record a studio EP and maybe gig and tour the UK very soon. We have a decent online audience but it's mostly people outwith the UK. All in all, we feel really good about Dead Artist Club and want to keep working hard to achieve highly as a band.

Follow Dead Artist Club at instagram.com/deadartistclub and soundcloud.com/dead-artist-club-official to find out more.