Six Of The Best: Cameron Scott

North-East melancholic music-maker Cameron Scott releases his latest six-track EP, Ascent From Nothingness. The tracks were originally discarded from last year’s album release Spiral Into Nothingness and pulled together to commemorate the release. It features three instrumental tracks and three songs, including a duet with artist Samantha Brockett.

Here, Cameron tells us about some of his biggest influences via a six of the best…

Blade Runner Soundtrack by Vangelis 
I grew up on soundtracks really, before I was interested in contemporary  music. I was always searching up the scores from my favourite movie scenes or video  games. Above all, Vangelis’ soundtrack to Blade Runner is my favourite. Vangelis  injects colour into the film and completes the world building that Ridley Scott and  the VFX team started – the soundscape Vangelis creates is as integral to the film as  the plot itself. This was a great influence on the crafting of my songs as it taught me  to create an instrumental soundscape that evokes the same emotion or essence of  the lyrics, yet without their presence. It’s a simple lesson to be learnt in songwriting  but the residual effect from this influence is a cinematic style rooted in all of my  music, no matter the genre.  

Memory  
Memory is all I ever bang on about so it’s the biggest ongoing influence on my  writing. It isn’t necessarily a conscious choice to do so since I’ve always had nostalgic  tendencies, rather I realise that it has become a therapeutic way of learning from the  past. My writing is given deep thought to convey not just the memory but explore  

the reasons for attitude, behavior, and the emotions I felt at the time – it’s helped  me come to many peaceful conclusions although some memories remain deep mines  I still return to.  

The Shower  
This is where most of my ideas for lyrics or melody come to me because I’m daydreaming and humming along to myself whilst muscle memory autopilot takes over. An artist should never take the shower for granted – yes cleanliness is important, but it is also a sacred source of inspiration. I’m not as chronic as Aaron  Sorkin who apparently has up to 8 showers a day to help writer’s block – what a  prune. 

The Little Prince  
My Dad used to read me this book a lot when I was little and at the time, I  understood it as it was superficially presented – a tender children’s story of a pilot’s encounter with the solitary inhabitant (the little prince) of a small planet in outer space. When I delved into it again in my adulthood, I realised its existential subtext that focuses on the absurdity of consciousness, as well as loneliness in a consumerist western world; all in the face of nihilism. It’s an inspiration for the artist’s endeavour to comment on the human condition. Plus it can be read within 2 hours, so I return to it quite often.  

The Smiths  
Say what you will about Morrissey, but his lyrics are the greatest I have ever read. Moz tackles kitchen-sink realism with a cynical humour, typical of any northerner but does so with such beautiful poetry and a voice filled with passion,  which in turn is reflected in the majestic soundscapes Johnny Marr creates – a match made in heaven. The Smiths were a constant influence in my teens because of their  relatability with the emotional turmoil that afflicts us all as we mature from children to adults. The Smiths’ uniquely English take on the human condition is unparalleled and is something I constantly strive for in my music. Plus, Morrissey effectively taught me how to sing as I regularly belted my heart out to Louder Than Bombs in my solitary drives here and there.  

John Cooper Clarke  
My dad took me to my first ever gig to see John Cooper Clarke when I was 13  – I suspect it was an attempt to broaden my cultural horizons and try my interest in  the art of poetry. Whilst we were waiting in the foyer, Clarke arrived and loitered in  the lobby waiting for his manager and my dad asked to take a photo of me with  

Clarke after the pair of us fumbled over stringing a sentence together. He kindly agreed, although the photo turned out blurry for my dad was shaking with excitement and I was shuffled in next to him starstruck. The show was life-changing quite literally, and his poetry moved me in its dark humour and relation to the lives led by those in the towns I grew up in. That was my first exposure to the power of words, and shortly after I was listening to the similarly influenced Arctic Monkeys and bought a guitar with the intent of moving someone else with words of my  own in the format of song. If I hadn’t attended that gig I wouldn’t have been so bothered in contemporary music, and if I wasn’t so bothered in that, then I wouldn’t have had the privilege of telling you readers what my biggest 6 influences are – so thank you John Cooper Clarke and thank you Dad for the tickets.