Son I Voted Yes (part one)

Son I Voted Yes (part one)

"Son, I just wrote this, I thought you might like to know

That I chose to vote Yes 'cause a Yes vote provided hope.

What the future is holding, no-one can rightly know.

I was tired of the same old script, and what's next only time will show."

We're in Edinburgh's Usher Hall on the night of September 14, just a few days before Scotland's historic independence referendum. Polls have been shifting on a daily basis but, in this venue at least, the desire for a Yes victory is 100% positive. Nestling among the more famous acts performing tonight - a list that includes Franz Ferdinand, Mogwai and Frightened Rabbit - are six local musicians who form the hip-hop ensemble Stanley Odd.

To say that this is the biggest hometown gig of the band's career is no exaggeration. To say that the majority of the crowd has never heard their music before is also undoubtedly true. And yet, by the time Stanley Odd reach the end of the final number in their three-song set, the entire place is singing along to the chorus. Son I Voted Yes has instantly been adopted as an alternative national anthem …

"It was a bit overwhelming but amazing to be part of," admits Dave Hook, the rapper who goes by the Stanley Odd name of Solareye, when we meet several weeks later in a coffee shop in Bruntsfield, just around the corner from his day job in the music department of Napier University.

"We would not have been on that bill had we not been writing about the topic, since everyone else was there because of their profile and because of the number of people who were interested in what they had to say."

But I'd argue that, more than just about anyone else on the Scottish music scene, Stanley Odd deserved to be on the Usher Hall bill. They'd dabbled in politics on a couple of tracks on their second album, Reject, which was placed at No 4 on the Sunday Herald's Top 50 Scottish Albums of 2012. But that night in September, Son I Voted Yes perfectly caught the mood of the moment as it laid out all the right reasons - moral, social, personal - for putting an X in the top box of the ballot paper.

"The song came about because I knew I was writing an album in July which wouldn't be released until November," Hook explains. "But how could I not talk about the independence referendum? And how could I still make it relevant? So I tried to write an honest wee story and explain some of the reasons to my son, for when he's older, why I voted Yes."

Son I Voted Yes (part two)

"This isn't about the colour of your skin/Or where you were born or who you call kin.

It's about pure and simple geography/And caring for everyone responsibly.

It's about people facing poverty with immunity/And building and supporting our communities.

Too many people want off the path we're following/It's time to change how we do politics."

This time I'm driving in my car, exactly a week after Scotland chose to remain in the United Kingdom. My seven-year-old daughter, who saw Stanley Odd at this summer's Solas Festival, knows I've got an advance copy of their latest album, A Thing Brand New, which won't be released until November 10, and asks if I'll put it on the stereo. When Solareye starts talking about creating a country that looks beyond skin colour when numbering its citizens, I can feel the tears coming and have to pull over to the side of the road …

Back in the Bruntsfield café, I tell Dave Hook that A Thing Brand New acts like a diary of 2014: not only do several of the songs directly examine the independence debate, others make reference to data surveillance, drone strikes, kidnapped Nigerian schoolgirls, austerity cuts and Margaret Thatcher's legacy. It also touches on impending fatherhood (Hook's son celebrated his first birthday a few days after the independence vote).

Hook's not the only band member who became a parent this year: singer Veronika Electronika (let's stick with stage names for all but our current interviewee) had a baby boy about seven months ago. She and Hook formed Stanley Odd in 2009, first performing with a DJ, then, when the latter couldn't make a gig at 24 hours' notice, calling in live musicians to form a band - they now feature T Lo on keyboards, Samson The Snake on drums, AdMack on bass and Scruff Lee on guitar. Debut album Oddio came out on Circular Records in 2010; the band refined their style and identity across a series of EPs in 2011 then released Reject in 2012.

"To a certain extent, because we're a live band, we don't necessarily fit into what's stereotypically seen to be a hip-hop outfit," Hook admits. "And, initially, the live band thing certainly opened a lot of doors to us that weren't necessarily open to hip-hop in Scotland five years ago. We were allowed on bills that would never have put on hip-hop acts, and that gave us the opportunity to get in front of audiences that weren't necessarily hip-hop gig-goers. In terms of developing an audience, it really helped us."

Subsequently the band have played Celtic Connections with a classical string chamber ensemble, been commissioned to write a song about Nelson Mandela for Aye Write!, accepted another commission about Scotland's role in the slave trade for the Empire Café during the Glasgow Commonwealth Games and, this September, played the Lake Of Stars festival in Malawi.

During all of this, the music that Stanley Odd make has strengthened, just as Solareye's lyrics have sharpened. The new album contains licks from a blues slide guitar (current single Pastime), emotionally trenchant string arrangements (domestic epic Draw Yir Own Conclusions), drums that feel like a carpet-bomb barrage (soapbox diatribe Knock Knock) and, on Put Your Roots Down, a soulful melodic hook that's as good as anything in the urban genre from the past five years - and by that I include the likes of Emeli Sande's Read All About It. Indeed, the balance between Solareye's flow of words and Veronika's tuneful counterpoint is the absolute core of what Stanley Odd do.

"I love straight-up hip-hop and, as someone who's a huge fan of lyrics, I can listen to hours and hours of non-stop relentless rants," Hook says. "But I see it when we play live: if we don't make it musical enough or don't add variety into what we're doing, we lose people's interest. So in terms of building that into the songs, I think what Veronika does cannot be overestimated. She's like the antidote, basically, to the ranting. She manages to pull it back from becoming too intense and, at the same time, when it really works, to highlight everything I've just said and say it in a more succinct way."

Son I Voted Yes (part three)

"Responsibility in independence/Leading by example with the messages we're sending,

Character traits we want for our own kids one day/So why wouldn't we want them for our country?"

Now we're in Brussels during the schools' October break. Because my brother-in-law and his Danish wife have worked for the EU for about 20 years, I'm keen to know what they, from a more international perspective, make of Stanley Odd's political stance. He just thinks it's strange to hear hip-hop delivered in an uncompromising Scottish accent, but she lets loose a brief ironic laugh when Solareye notes: "In 1979 people voted to control their own reality/But it didn't happen on a technicality"…

In the Bruntsfield café again, and Dave Hook needs to be on his way soon ("These days I'm known for spitting mad rhymes," he raps in Pastime, "as long as I'm home before my baby's bath time"). First, though, we acknowledge that, in a year when there were things that had to be said, Scottish hip-hop stepped up to the plate and delivered - not just with Stanley Odd, but with Hector Bizerk, Loki, Bang Dirty and, in their own way, SAY and Mercury Award winners Young Fathers.

"I feel lucky to come from a hip-hop background where struggle and social commentary are core to the genre," Hook insists. "Obviously there are negative aspects to that, which are blown up to become the main features of pop-capitalist hip-hop, where it's about gun culture and aggression. But at a more central level, hip-hop has always been about telling stories about where you're from and giving a voice to issues that aren't necessarily voiced.

Some of the songs on A Thing Brand New, he says, came about because what was happening in the world was simply impossible to ignore.

"The music for Knock Knock existed for a year and a half, and was rewritten three times on three completely different topics. The final content was written in a few days, just walking about, when Palestine and Israel were going ballistic again. You start to look at the wider picture and ask: how do you fix such a broken thing? Where do you even start?

"This year, in Scotland, we've done so much reflecting. As Scots, we've probably never analysed ourselves and our culture and our society so much in decades. It's been one of the most exciting, energising, amazing times to be alive in Scotland. All the positivity that came with the possibility of real effective change, not just for us but for the United Kingdom as well. So the big question is: where do we go from here?"

Son I Voted Yes (part four)

"In a time of recession, food banks and destitution/Worldwide turmoil with very little resolution,

Violence and terror as press wizards cast their best illusions/We were part of a peaceful revolution."

A Thing Brand New is released tomorrow on A Modern Way Recordings. Stanley Odd play The Lemon Tree in Aberdeen on November 15, Liquid Room in Edinburgh on November 21, Ironworks in Inverness on November 28, and The Garage in Glasgow on December 13