Exploring the Sonic World of Comrie SF: Edinburgh’s Idiosyncratic Dance Music Maverick

Comrie SF is redefining electronic music with his unique blend of found sounds and unconventional beats. Growing up in Edinburgh and influenced by the city’s dark, gothic streets, Comrie’s music is a crackling, fluorescent journey through a world shaped by internet-addled ADHD. With a background in contemporary playwriting and comedy, this multi-talented artist is crafting not just tracks but entire worlds, weaving interconnected lore, visuals, and performances into his creations.

As the founder of Fountain Sound, a recording studio that was a finalist for the Creative Startup Award at the Creative Edinburgh Awards 2023, Comrie SF is a rising force in the underground music scene.

Carmen - Time to Move 

There is a hint of menace to this jaunty pop song. It’s a lurching zombie in glittery spandex. It’s cocaine-laced apple juice. It’s a flickering fluorescent light in a horror movie. I love playing this in sets, it’s just such a well-oiled dancefloor mechanism, I don’t understand how an occasional panned left cowbell makes me want to flip out so much. This pop shininess to the point of malevolence is something I really enjoy, and have tried to encapsulate with some of my own music. I can’t wait to be lowered into the grave to this song.

Sam Gellaitry - KEED

I started to begin taking music more seriously over lockdown, and went on Facebook Marketplace in hopes of procuring a new keyboard. A message to an ‘s gellaitry’ led to the surreal situation of Sam Gellaitry sitting in my living room. One of my favourite producers. Let me be clear: the only other person I saw for a year and a half was Sam Gellaitry. I found him on Soundcloud as a teenager, and loved his blend of genre, and almost orchestral melodic approach. This song is so confident in its playfulness and sliding synths, and features a fusion of electronic with hip-hop which is a rich vein in my own work. 

Jpegmafia - Untitled

This song taught me to break Ableton as much as I could. I think the bassline is a fart? It’s awful. Peggy’s ability to combine all these disparate janky sounds into something cohesive boggles my mind, and has pushed me to find as weird a sample as possible when producing. I got an iPad far too young, and the internet’s distortion of my brain has rendered my taste baffling. It’s lovely to hear music from someone who has experienced this too. Peggy loves a simile, and the thick layering of sound and reference feels like surfing the dark web in a rubber dingy. Big inspiration.   

Fountain water stock sound effect [HD]

All my music is set in an alternate world called ‘Fountain’. My house growing up was built on top of a well, which is very bad luck in Celtic folklore. I became very interested in water as something soothing and baptismal, but also harbouring danger: a feeling throughout my visuals and worldbuilding. All my tracks have this stock sound effect reverbed and low pass filtered somewhere in the mix, it’s a nice little bed to plonk all the other elements upon. Oh also check out Young Fathers, they’re also from Edinburgh. 

Burial - Etched Headplate

This is my cheese in the fridge at midnight song. An old reliable that provides comfort in a time of need. It has soundtracked me happy, sad, forlorn, miffed, studying, relaxing, in love, out of love, beside love. It’s a very flexible palette - something about that odd leaping bassline, surrounded gently coalescing vocal snippets and synth tendrils feels so safe, and human (yes I am an insufferable Burial fan). Dance music can easily become plodding loops (as my drafts folder will tell you), Burial is a lovely reminder that electronic music can feel so organic and alive, shifting from feeling to feeling: every Burial track has a 0.1 millisecond sound that will break my heart and this is packed with them (yes I am an insufferable Burial fan).