New Release – Lying Awake by Transmission Suite

Transmission Suite are a four-piece indie / electronic band from central Scotland, comprising of Ronnie Marshall (lyrics, drum machine and keyboards), Lewis Mcmillan (guitar), Alan Aitchison (bass guitar) and Andrew Rainey (keyboards and drum machine). The band has been described as a mixture of 80s Electronic, 90s Baggy and Dream Pop. This is the result of a melting pot of styles that creates an up-to-date version of electronic led music with guitars from the decades past and takes it right into the present. Their sound has an electronic dreamy vibe akin to that of bands such as New Order and OMD, but with the anthemic / uplifting qualities of the likes of Echo & the Bunnymen and The Stone Roses.

Transmission Suite are releasing a new single ‘Lying Awake’ on 17th November. Pre-save the song here.

What’s your favourite memory of writing and /or recording?

“The process of recording and mixing this track was different to what we’ve done before. The last three singles were recorded over the course of a weekend session. The mixing process that followed was long and drawn out with a lot of back and forth over email which eventually led to us going back into the studio to complete them one by one.”

“This time round, we booked a weekend session and focused solely on this track. All of the recording and the bulk of the mixing was completed within that session. It allowed us to really explore some new ideas and build up layers within the track.”

“We stripped the drums back to the basics (kick, snare, closed hats) and then started building up layers of interest, such as open hats and drum fills. We used a set of shakers that were lying about the studio and fed these through an old flanger unit to create movement.”

“Originally, it was the snare drum that was creating the fills at the song’s transition moments, but we liked the idea of having different types of fills throughout the song and really fancied using some big electronic tom sounds. We sat and listened through a tonne of samples until we found the base sound we were looking for and then pitched these toms up quite a bit to get that ‘popping’ sound we had envisaged. Then of course, as we normally like to, we threw a load of reverb over them – just for good measure.”

Is there a story behind the cover artwork?

“Like our previous tracks, we made the cover art ourselves. It’s always a really collaborative process in terms of finding the initial idea and then building on the concept. We’ve tried to keep a loose theme running through the covers of the singles we’ve released this year. We’d like to think if you sat them all side-by-side and removed the band name, you would be able to tell they are from the same artist. The main image on this one is related to a lyric within the track.”

When did you write it?

“The track was written towards the back end of 2022. It started with the synth arpeggio that opens the track and we just built it up from there through the process of jamming. Having the drum machine allows us to put things together really quickly and we then develop these ideas over time until we have something close to the final product going into recording sessions.”

“The lyrics for this one have been around since about 2014 – way before this project even began. Sometimes it just takes the right song to be the right fit. Once we put the two together and made some adjustments to the phrasing and the overall structure of the song, it became an obvious choice for our next release.”

“It’s funny how things can change, because during the earlier versions of the track, we never really saw it as a single. But, as we tweaked it over time and then started playing it live, we found it became a bit of a favourite. That’s also the beauty of playing live – you learn so much about the songs you didn’t realise before.”

What are you hoping to achieve with this release?

“This is now our fourth release. It kind of makes sense for this track to close the year out for us as it sits so well alongside the other three songs we’ve released in 2023. We do have a variety of weapons in our arsenal, but this one sits nicely in the ‘Synthwave’ bracket and really complements the previous releases.”

“The hope now is that having four tracks out gives us a good block of music that can open some more doors in terms of live shows. We recently supported 80’s legends ‘A Flock of Seagulls’ in Glasgow and went down really well with their crowd. ‘Lying Awake’ was definitely a track that stood out in our set that night.”

“If you were hearing the four tracks together for the first time, it gives you a really good idea what we are about. Coming in at 4 minutes and 13 seconds, ‘Lying Awake’ is our shortest track to date, so hopefully a bit more radio friendly. It would be great to get some national radio play with this one.”