On 22 March 2025, Idiogram will release their debut album, ‘Reunion of Broken Parts’. Judging from the three singles released thus far, it will be an enticing proposition. An instrumental band, they create tracks that are prog-like in their complexity but also have great fluency and emotional development. Our curiosity piqued, we wanted to know more about them and here are their answers to our questions
Who are you?
We’re Idiogram, an instrumental quartet from coastal Scotland. We don’t really feel particularly at home in any genre but it’s fair to say our music has audible influences from prog, post-rock, electronic and ambient. There is a good measure of contemporary classical in the mix too and the occasional nod to nu-jazz.
Who’s in the band and what do they play?
Lesley plays piano and synths, Ali plays bass, (other!) Ali plays guitar and Keith plays drums. We all have at least one extra layer of live processing, effects and samples so there’s a lot going on. It’s a bit visually deceptive at times: “where exactly is that noise coming from?!”
How long have you been doing what you’re doing now?
About seven or eight years in one form or another. We’ve had the odd interruption with “events” (from the global to the personal), but we’ve never wanted to rush things out just for the sake of it.
Tell us about the writing and recording of your new album Reunion of Broken Parts
The bulk of the album was written in a farmhouse in East Lothian. Having a space where we could workshop ideas ‘off the clock’ was really key to bringing a lot of the material together. We recorded the album with Graeme Young over a couple of weeks at Chamber Studio in Edinburgh. There was a mutual desire in those sessions to make “a record”, rather than just a 100% faithful representation of our live sound. Of course, then the challenge becomes how much of that to try and recreate in a live setting!
How do you go about putting together your songs? There are a lot of different parts and developments but there is a flow to the songs which suggests that it entails a lot of work.
Writing is a really interesting process for us. Normally one person will bring a thread of an idea, then we’ll all contribute to building and moulding it. We’re all naturally really curious people so we love to explore ideas and sounds, play with them and twist them. There’s a little bit of a mad scientist element to it!
We have this core philosophy of collaboration – all ideas are welcome. We often joke that our band motto is “yes, and…”, so consequently we end up with something that belongs entirely to us as a collective, never an individual. None of our music would even be close to existing without the unique input of each member.
We also do quite a lot of staring blankly at each other in dank rehearsal rooms whilst compulsively eating biscuits. That bit’s great too, because the heavy tension when none of us know what way it is going to go is just rammed full of possibilities.
Was it your initial intention to form an instrumental band?
Absolutely! That was the only real agenda when we formed this band – no one had any material written; there was just a broad ball-park of things which we loved that we wanted to explore and those things all happened to be sonic rather than lyrical. In some form or another all of us prefer expressing ourselves through music rather than words – the possibilities feel more infinite and nuanced. This also leaves more room for people to find their own meaning and connection in the music. Someone finding something that speaks to them within our music is all that we could hope for.
What is the process for naming your songs? While the likes of Hyperaccumulator and Twilight Sleep could suggest a mood, Butcher’s Parcel sounds far more enigmatic.
We find naming songs pretty hard! Sometimes they’re words where we find something interesting in their meaning: for example, Twilight Sleep was named about half-way through composition after Lesley fell down a YouTube rabbithole at 2am. Others, such as Butcher’s Parcel, are taken from things like literature. The most ridiculous name, though, is Lady Coats – that came from an AI generated advert which inexplicably deeply amused us but had this strange sort of uncomfortable undertone. Ultimately we land on names that we feel are consonant with the tracks in some way – however that consonance might only apply to our understanding!
What’s the best advice you’ve been given in your musical career so far?
Don’t make the music that you think other people want to hear, make music that is authentic to you. It doesn’t have to be done in any specific way, there are truly no rules, and anyone who tells you otherwise is either wrong or a liar.
What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned as a musician?
You’ve got to get out of your own way. That, and dropping your ego and embracing community and collaboration; music shouldn’t be a competition.
Is being a musician your full-time job, if not, how easy/tricky is it to juggle work and band life?
Ali (bass) and Lesley (guitar) both work as freelance community musicians, but absolutely no-one is paying them to write 8 minute instrumental misadventures! Ali (guitar) and Keith both work in unrelated fields. It’s incredibly hard to juggle work, family, and band time, and we’re often sending messages to each other in the small hours. That’s one of the reasons we’ve taken the long road from conception to album: we’re fitting this around our other responsibilities and, if we’re being totally transparent, we couldn’t afford to be putting the album out the way we are without honouring those other commitments… on a financial or emotional level!
Do you think there are any obvious influences in your music?
This is a really interesting question for us because everyone who hears it picks out completely different (and often wildly opposing) influences… sometimes ones that we’ve never even heard of! Perhaps the most identifiable (to us, at least) would be the influence of Minimalism – Reich, Part, Glass; bands like 65daysofstatic and Boards of Canada would get a look in there too.
Are there any not so obvious influences in your music that might surprise your listeners?
Probably too many to list! We all come at this band from slightly different musical backgrounds, so you might hear elements of Squarepusher, DJ Shadow, Aphex Twin, Radiohead in the Kid A era, Fugazi, Sonic Youth, Low, Cardiacs, Porcupine Tree, or GoGo Penguin. There isn’t much we won’t listen to.
Apart from yourself of course, which other band/artist would you recommend our readers check out?
We definitely recommend checking out our two album launch supports. SLY DIG spans a couple of genres but with electronica and synths firmly at the core. Matilda Brown’s sound is cinematic in style and inspired by the outdoors. On first glance it might not seem like it, but there are a surprising amount of shared points. We can’t wait to hear them both live at the launch gig.
Tell us about the defining moment where you thought ‘Yes, I want to be a musician’.
This is different for each of us so we’ll offer it to you that way.
Lesley: I can’t remember ever not wanting to be a musician. My first real memory of it is from when I was maybe 6 or 7 and my mum retrieved or acquired an old keyboard from somewhere and taught me how to play Do-Re-Mi from the Sound of Music. That was it, I was absolutely hooked and I never once wavered.
Ali (bass): I think I nearly bounced off music early due to a slightly stern recorder teacher. My reason for sticking with clarinet and later bass is the same but inverted – good teachers. If I had to pick a single moment it would be the inaugural practice of Misled Youth, my first band in high school. As we fumbled our way through Rage covers I got that first taste of a conversation you can have without speaking at all.
Ali (guitar): I don’t remember a specific moment, music and sound have always been part of my life in some form. I remember being fascinated with a piano at my grandparent’s house when I was small, that joy of randomly pressing keys and it making a noise.
Keith: I always had music around when I was wee from my parents, in the car or at home, but in truth the actual inclination to pick up a pair of sticks came relatively late for me – when I was about 18 or 19 in my undergrad at uni. One housemate played a particular drum-heavy album at a medium-to-high volume for a solid month and I caught the bug. It was that or go mad.
What’s your favourite gig venue as a gig goer?
Gig venues can be strange places with an aura that’s quite unconnected to the actual sound of the place. The Glasgow Barrowlands is probably our top pick. It’s hard to say exactly what happens in that unlit room with sticky floors and sweaty bodies but it is something magical. The Cluny in Byker, Newcastle is a close second, it’s a wonderful musical cave.
Who, in your wildest dreams would you like to collaborate with/be produced by and why?
We love collaboration and something we’re really interested in is collaborating with artists from different mediums and creating dialogues and connections. But from a musical perspective? Lesley would love to work with Flood, he has worked on so many incredible and interesting sounding records, she’d love to hear what he would do with our music.
Best place for people to find out what you are up to?
For our sins, we’re most active on Instagram (@idiogramband). You can join our mailing list from our website www.idiogr.am and you can find us on bandcamp too.
