It’s funny how little things can get the brain engaged.

A few Saturdays ago an email popped up in my inbox from Sebastian Dangerfield. At the time, I was half fannying about on my laptop and half watching some dreadful Championship football match, so it didn’t take much for the mind to wander when I thought I’d been contacted by someone actually called Sebastian Dangerfield.

Who was this mysterious character? I suddenly had visions of a dapper, tweed-wearing crime fighter who was a crack shot having been raised on a country estate, massacring wildlife on a daily basis. Posh totty would fall at his feet and moustachioed sheep rustlers would fear his arrival.

My easily distracted brain was just constructing a deeper back story when something – perhaps a sclaffed goal in the football, perhaps a three-year-old shouting “PLAY WITH ME DADDY!!!” in my ear – brought me back to reality.

It turned out that Sebastian Dangerfield was actually a band (in my inbox – shock!!!), and a rather good one at that.

After overcoming my disappointment that the rural grouse murdering hero was a mere figment of my overactive imagination, I decided that the email I’d got was actually much better.

For their part, the band didn’t wholly knock the old-fashioned detective notion on the head either. For starters, check out the band photo below. Musically too, there’s a sense of something rather pastoral about them.

It’s melodic guitar-based stuff, for sure, with a hint of *wait for it* indie folk about it, but latest EP The Sound of Old Machines is top-notch and standout tune You Played Your Part, Singer! rocks out plenty too.

Naturally a quick word with guitar and banjo man Dave was in order.

So who the hell are you?
 
Dave, Stu, Jim and J-Baggs. Or David, Stuart, Jamie and Jason to our mothers. All hail from Edinburgh with the exception of Jim who pledges his allegiance to West Calder.
 
Describe your sound in ten words or less!
 
Americana folk pop – something like that? Never really been planned!
 

What’s with the name? Makes me think of TV docs or that guy from the Guillemots!
 
Our friend Sam once told me about an old mate of his who, in order to attract the ladies, would introduce himself as Sebastian Dangerfield at parties. So I thought, “I wonder if that works” and “great name!” and remembered it up until the time we needed to name the band. Afterwards I realised fake Sebastian had borrowed the name from the main character in a novel by J.P. Donleavy called ‘The Ginger Man’. Then I realised original Sebastian is a drunk wife-beater.
 
Oops! How did you guys come together as a band?
 
Stu recorded a solo album four or five years ago and decided he wanted a band to play it with him live. So I joined him as his friend’s brother, Jim joined as my old mate from uni, and J-Baggs joined as a mysterious handsome stranger from Gumtree. Stu’s solo stuff gradually got phased out as we started off playing rockin’ indie tunes, before swiveling towards a more country direction and settling now somewhere in between.
 
What’s inspired the latest EP, which, unless I’m very much mistaken, has been a long time coming?
 
We were just inspired by the need to get a set of good quality recordings together to try to push the band on a bit. Everything we’d put out previously was self-recorded, so this time we blew our budget into tatters to try to make sure the EP sounded as close as we could get it to as good as it could sound. The last EP we released physically was ‘My Feet Left the Ground Once’ in September 2009, which was followed by the Arkansas EP at the end of the same year. So I suppose this one was a while coming.
 
There appears to be quite a few indie/pop/folk acts kicking around Edinburgh at the moment. Any sense from you that there’s a ‘scene’? Or just a happy coincidence that there happens to be a bunch of similarly minded acts out there?
 
I think all it really takes to form a “scene” is for a few bands to like each other, organise gigs and invite each other to play at them. In that sense there probably are a few scenes going on just now in folky circles – not that we’re really part of any big ones!
 
When you say ‘old machines’, what are we talking about – betamax recorders? sodastreams???
 
I’m not sure. Old factory machines I think. I didn’t write it though. Could be Minidisc players!