Mechanical Smile

There has been a bit of a buzz within the Ayrshire scene at the moment and it all surrounds one band from Kilmarnock. That band being Mechanical Smile. Made up of Dawn Marshall, Garry Irving, Nic Pilmer and Murray Baxter, they describe themselves and their sound as;

“'Two guys, two girls from Ayrshire, combining rock, pop and grunge, creating a melodic and pulsating sound that will blow you away!'

The band have had a busy 2011 so far with a line up change in January and a mini German tour in June after winning the University of the West of Scotland exchange competition. The tour was made up of three dates in Plettenberg, including the main stage of the Immecke (Irock) Open-Air Festival. Mechanical Smile has also been extensively playing gigs within their home town of Kilmarnock, across Ayrshire and within Glasgow promoting their new EP “Sleep and Silence”. Add to these accomplishments their track “Leap of Faith” being chosen personally by Craig McGee (Warner Chappell Scottish Scout / BBC Radio 1 A&R Zone) to be played by Ally McCrae on his BBC introducing show within the A&R zone segment. This accomplishment was then added to even more by McCrae expressing his positive review of the track as ‘Huge’ – all this while they were still in Germany on tour.

The interesting thing about Mechanical smile is their unique selling point of having a female lead, something not that common within a certainly male dominated local music scene.  Marshall however takes this in her stride and shows everyone she can certainly possess the same -if not a higher- level of stage presence and musical passion as her male counterparts.  When you speak to the band about their music and their opinion on their local scene you can see the band “family” dynamic being very much present within Mechanical Smile. The band is extremely supportive of one another including their individual musical influences and ideas.  This in turn leads to their unique and somewhat mixed up style of music where you can hear all the different musical and personal influences throughout the songs.  An opinion agreed with by the band;

“The fact not many rock bands are female fronted that can also play guitar and write songs make us unique but now also there are two girls in the band makes it quite unique. Two guys and two girls that play music that is fresh and new. Not many people find easy comparisons to our sound. The good thing about our band is we all have very different musical tastes and influences, and for some strange reason we don’t really draw on specific  bands for influences when writing songs although bands we all like are Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins and Silversun Pickups.”

On the subject of the local unsigned scene Baxter commented;

“There are so many unsigned bands out there that are amazing, but I feel the smaller towns could do much more for these bands, as there isn’t really a music scene unless you are in Glasgow, and it’s hard to break into the ‘in crowd’ in Glasgow.  It’s all about who you know, which is hard for new bands etc.”

 Sleep And Silence EP by mechanicalsmile 

The band has also played what is seen as the “holy grail” of venues to most unsigned bands this being the legendary King Tuts.  They played as part of ‘The Harder they Fall’ tour with London bands Hopeless Heroic and Fearless Vampire Killers, where I found out from talking to Baxter that they were in fact moved up the bill due to their large amount of pre sales. This impressive fate has now led to them being invited back to play on 5^th October supporting support Young Legionnaire which is sure to be a most victorious King Tuts return for the band.

Mechanical Smile are due to release their new single 'Take Me To The Otherside' on August 15th via iTunes, Amazon Play.com and many other credible online music stores. The track will also be available to stream for free on Spotify, and the brand new music video, produced by Joshua Aaron Porter will be available to view on Youtube. A video which they invited all their fans and friends to be part of.

If this past year has been anything to go by, Mechanical Smile has got an amazing rest of 2011 and a perhaps even most amazing 2012 coming their way. I could not personally think of a more deserving or hard working band for it to happen to.