By Anna Battista
Apart from playing in The Pearlfishers, David's main activity nowadays is working with other Scottish bands and producing records by different artists at the recording studio in the East Kilbride Arts Centre. David seems to be the right person to ask about Glasgow-based bands and the local music scene, "Probably around the mid or late '90s a lot of Glasgow bands were still very fringe," he explains, "but now we can say that, what I would call, 'the Pastels access', that is a sort of gentle sensibility in music, has taken over. The instantly recognisable Glasgow-based bands now are Belle & Sebastian and Franz Ferdinand and, on a more fringe level, BMX Bandits or The Pearlfishers who are making music which is informed by the Beatles and Beach Boys, but has its own quirky sides. Glasgow music raises its head above the parapet because it is informed by classical music on one hand, and by Celtic warmth and by a kind of quirkiness on the other. This mixture is unique on the planet and has fired the enthusiasm of people all over the world. The Pearlfishers don't sell massive amounts of records, but we do sell in almost every corner of the globe and that's because Glasgow music in general has got a sort of oddness that people from different parts of the world like."David worked with many Scottish bands and there are a few local artists he particularly loves, one of them is Douglas T. Stewart from BMX Bandits, "Douglas and I are as close as brothers and we are also very close musically. We mentioned the Glasgow scene earlier on, and, well, to be honest, I was a bit outside it, but Douglas is the guy who brought me into it. All the artists I worked with are different: I love Stephen Pastel, he is a true artist. We worked together on a co-production capacity on the Maher Shalal Hash Baz album 'Blues du Jour'. There was definitely a relationship built on that record between Stephen and I which I greatly enjoyed. Katrina Mitchell is also one of my favourite singers on the planet, she is among the artists I loved working with: I really enjoyed the moment when Stephen, Katrina and I were sitting back and listening while we were working on the Maher Shalal Hash Baz record. At the time, I thought 'These are the golden days and nothing will ever be better than this', it was a great feeling. Among the other local artists I like, there are Norman Blake, because he's very talented, has got such a beautiful musicality and he's always funny, and Bill Wells, who I think is fabulous. I have known him since 1985, when he was in Falkirk. I remember telling Bill, to get rid of the jazz people who were working with him at the time because they were too snobby and totally up themselves. I always felt his place was in the indie kind of world. That's another great thing about the Scottish music scene: Bill is a guy who loves '70s singers and songwriters, yet, he still fits quite well with Arab Strap, Belle & Sebastian and so on. I also worked with a lot of artists who aren't necessarily part of the Glasgow bands axis: recently I worked for example with Tom Clelland, who is one of the greatest songwriters on the planet."