Hailing from Scotland, Midnight Ambulance is a two-piece alternative rock band consisting of members Amelia and Fraser. The two met nine years ago when performing with their respective bands on the Edinburgh music scene. At the start of 2020, they reconnected and discussed collaborating.
Amelia has been songwriting since age 10 and has worked around the world including Chile, Mexico, and France. Wherever she went, Amelia would write songs and poetry. She finds inspiration in poets such as Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral. Her playing favors unusual rhythmic placements and was influenced by her time working in Chile and her love of Scottish traditional music. During the pandemic lockdown, Amelia was based in Paris working for an international creative agency. Confined to her flat, she made her own creative space with a travel guitar, microphone, electronic drum kit, and some home-made soundproofing.
Fraser has worked in various bands as a session/function musician, teacher, and songwriter in the last ten years. But he has also worked as a tour manager and backline technician in the past four years for international artists such as Fatherson (including Lewis Capaldi’s EU tour), Idlewild, and Skegss. He built a writing studio at his rural, seaside Scottish home after he decided to return to writing and playing his own music when the pandemic brought the music industry to a halt.
In March 2020, Amelia was living in Paris and Fraser in Scotland. During the lockdown, the need to be creative led Amelia and Fraser to write together and they started collaborating via video call. What began as a creative focus turned into a supportive space and cathartic outlet. The two quickly formed a strong songwriting partnership, writing 70 plus songs by July 2020. After eight months of writing together, Amelia returned to Scotland where she and Fraser had the opportunity to finally jam live and decided to form Midnight Ambulance.
‘Black Gloves’ is their first studio release with more to follow later in 2021. They have also filmed a live session of the single to be released at the end of February.
I recently interviewed Amelia and Fraser of Midnight Ambulance about their debut single, their band name, collaborating remotely during the pandemic lockdown, world travels, their production process, and more.
Congratulations on your debut single, Black Gloves.
What would you like for listeners to come away with after hearing your song?
Amelia & Fraser: Whatever they like! We never write with an agenda or audience in mind… we write music that we enjoy playing and what we’re into. Though of course, it’s such a pleasure to hear if the song has resonated with someone.
What is the theme and/or story behind Black Gloves?
Amelia: I wrote Black Gloves in my final week of isolation, after two weeks of quarantine on my return to Scotland from Paris. The song is about the conflicting experience of isolation and dependency during lockdown — the desire to be alone, not knowing how to really communicate with people during this strange time, but also the need for comfort from others which couldn’t be filled because of the nature of the pandemic (affecting everyone on the planet). We wanted to capture this conflict of contrasting emotions in the instrumentation as well as the lyrics — a lighter floral vocal over a dark and sinister instrumental arrangement.
Tell us the meaning of the band’s name and why you decided to form the band.
Fraser: Amelia and I started working together during the first lockdown of 2020. I had just finished building a small writing studio back in my hometown Scotland, which at the time had no internet. Because of that, we developed a routine that we would stay up well into the night writing (that’s where the ‘Midnight’ element comes from), and during the day I would demo the songs, then that night we would go over them again. Writing together was a really cathartic, supportive process that kinda saved us both, which is how we came up with ‘Ambulance’.
In March 2020 when you both were in lockdown in different countries, you wrote over 70 songs together via video calls by June 2020. Tell us about your songwriting process during that time and how you wrote so prolifically.
Amelia: I think the prolificity maybe came from a need for control and an overspill of emotions during lockdown. I tend to write a lot when I’m stressed. Songwriting also offered a positive, cathartic, creative outlet and was a safe space we made for each other. We developed a really close and supportive friendship during that time which is what got us through those long days.
Explain your production process.
Fraser: First we would demo at my writing studio to see how the track was sitting. We then went through to record with Paul Winton at North Road Studios. I’ve known Paul for years and he’s a really talented producer and has great ideas, which is why working with him was an easy choice.
Tell us more about the live session of Black Gloves that you filmed and are releasing at the end of February. Where was it filmed? Did you self-produce it? What’s unique about it?
Amelia & Fraser: We are very excited to release this session video. Because gigs weren’t (and still aren’t) possible, this was the closest we got to capturing the emotion and excitement of a show. It was loads of fun and we were very lucky as Covid restrictions tightened up the day after we finished shooting. It was shot at a garage in North Berwick. We had an amazing team that Fraser knew from his work as a Tour Manager/Backline Tech, who helped pull it together. Danger Kill Productions did the filming (Gareth Goodlad who runs it has a fantastic eye and we knew he’d capture the song’s moody energy); Solas Lighting (Stephen Keenan) and SjS Audio (Steven Selby) sorted all production, and without their dedication and talent we couldn’t have pulled it off. We also had two awesome session musicians, Drew Gray and Rowan Wood, on keys and bass. It was fantastic to get in a room and make a lot of noise.
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, what have been the biggest challenges in your music career? How did you overcome it?
Amelia: Funnily enough, before Midnight Ambulance I left the music scene for a few years. I had a band during high school and used to gig around Edinburgh (that’s how I originally met Fraser), but then I went to University and though I always kept songwriting, it was much more casual. Fraser and I discussed collaborating at the start of 2020 as I really wanted to get going again, and when the pandemic suddenly hit, we decided to begin writing.
Fraser: The biggest challenge for me was that even though I was working in music (backline technician/tour manager) it was difficult to find time for my own music. The live music sector came to an abrupt stop due to the pandemic and, though devastating, this allowed me to focus on writing again.
You take your inspiration from poetry, particularly from Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral who uses metaphor to depict acute personal experience. How do you integrate that into your songwriting?
Amelia: I fell in love with Mistral during my year abroad in Chile (I studied Spanish and French) and ended up writing my dissertation on her. She’s incredibly inspiring in her poetry but also led a really interesting life (worth googling!). I love her use of nature and broader metaphors to describe her own experiences and emotions. I enjoy experimenting with this in my own writing, using a landscape to represent a specific feeling. For me, I think what’s nice about that is that the lyrics can then mean very different things to different people, depending on their own experiences and interpretations.
Building on the last question, have you ever used your own poetry for songs? What parallels do you see between poetry and songwriting?
Amelia: Definitely. Sometimes I would write a poem and then send it to Fraser to add music to. On other occasions, though, I find it’s more natural to find what the story wants to say through that relationship between the music, the rhythm and the words — it sort of all falls together and influences each other — so I would either play guitar and write or jam with Fraser. Fraser is very expressive with music and says a lot through his playing, and so another way we would collaborate is that he would play guitar and I would write what I thought he was saying to me, sort of like a conversation.
I think poetry is a very challenging art form as you have nothing to hide behind, so I am always in awe of poets’ skill and use of expression.
Before the pandemic, you traveled around the world working in countries like Chile, Mexico, and France. What type of work were you doing and how did these experiences influence and/or inspire your music?
Amelia: I was working in a range of different roles, such as a teacher, in hospitality, and then in PR for an international creative agency. I think travelling influenced me more than the work itself — that and the people I met along the way. It was amazing to see the world through their eyes.
How do you think the indie music industry can be more supportive of indie women artists?
Amelia: I think the most important thing is education about what the inequalities are, how they manifest, where they exist, and who they most affect, and then being mindful to be inclusive and diverse across the board — from the way we talk about artists to how we promote them. One of the most powerful changemakers is culture so hopefully, if we continue challenging prejudice and negative stereotypes, and ensure we have a welcoming environment, the rest will follow.
What does it mean to you personally to be an indie music woman artist?
Amelia: I’m so delighted to be featured on this blog! I’ve become a fan of many new artists thanks to its features and interviews, such as GRAE. As a female artist, I’m very mindful of what I want to put into the world (via lyrics, presentation, etc.) and hope to help change it for the better!
In the studio or on stage, what is your favorite microphone or instrument? Why?
Amelia: I recorded Black Gloves on an SM7B microphone and I really liked how it responded.
As far as drums are concerned, I’m falling in love with darker, unique, or strange cymbals. I recently bought the 25th anniversary Istanbul 20.5 ride cymbal which has so much personality. I’m very excited to incorporate it into future recordings.
I’d never used much Yamaha kit before, but I’ve been playing a lot of it recently by chance, and it just sounds amazing. I ended up buying a brass Yamaha snare after looking for a wooden one for months. It was love at first…rudiment.
Fraser: As a guitar tech, I’ve had a lot of time to experiment with different kits. I’m into more vintage, strange stuff that doesn’t really work and sounds different every time you plug it in. They have this really unruly nature that’s loads of fun to play with.
What projects do you have planned for 2021?
We’ll be releasing our session video in the next few weeks. After that, we just want to get back in the studio! We’re loving playing and writing together so we’ll just see where it goes.
Thank you, Amelia and Fraser, for the opportunity to interview you.
Connect with Midnight Ambulance on their Spotify Artist Page | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook
Listen to their debut single, Black Gloves: