Kings Place and Eat Your Own Ears are proud to present a very special label night for Scottish imprint Lost Map Records, featuring a headline set from label boss Johnny Lynch’s psychedelic outfit Pictish Trail, and support from new collaborative duo Afterlands (featuring members of The Phantom Band and Strike The Colours).

Throughout his career Pictish Trail has resolutely furrowed his own path, steadily creating a unique catalogue of recordings & performances, while eschewing the blueprint of the predictable singer-songwriter in favour of something untidily intriguing.

Island Family is the fifth album from Isle-of-Eigg dwelling electro-acoustic psych-pop artist Johnny Lynch aka Pictish Trail. A strange, unpredictable, sardonic and yet deeply personal record inspired by all from Fever Ray to The Flaming Lips, Liars, Mercury Rev and Beck, Island Family is Pictish Trail’s contrarian view of arcadia; a search for the euphoric in the bucolic.

Secret Soundz Vol.1 & 2, his critically acclaimed first pair of albums, were gloriously eclectic slices of lo-fi folk-pop later revived as a deluxe double-vinyl by Moshi Moshi. Future Echoes, was released to further acclaim in 2016, winning the public vote for Scottish Album of the Year (SAY Award) in 2017, and reissued as a deluxe edition on Record Store Day in 2018 by London-based taste-makers, Fire Records. In 2020 Johnny released his 4th LP, Thumb World, a voyage to the outer rings of Pictish Trail’s mind at its darkest, funniest & most inventive – described by Clash as ‘his most dazzling, most exceptional yet’.

When not putting out his own music as Pictish Trail, Johnny Lynch is a fulcrum of the British independent music community. Through his label Lost Map, he champions a diverse and idiosyncratic array of extraordinary talent, helping to elevate the likes of Rozi Plain, Alabaster dePlume, Bas Jan, Callum Easter and Free Love.

This event will last approximately 2 hours, including an interval. 

About Afterlands:

Born as a way of staving off madness during lockdown and patiently nurtured into one of the most exciting projects either of its architects have turned their hands to, Afterlands is Rick Anthony (The Phantom Band / Rick Redbeard) and David McAulay (Strike the Colours).

Rick and Davey first met in 2009 during recording sessions at Chem19 studios near Glasgow, where Davey worked as an engineer. The Phantom Band, the cult motorik indie-rock collective fronted by Rick, were then in the process of making their second album The Wants. The two came to know one another much better a few years later while both studying for a Masters, by which time Rick had begun releasing solo records under the moniker Rick Redbeard, beginning with 2013’s No Selfish Heart. Davey was moving into soundtrack work which included Virginia Heath’s highly acclaimed From Scotland With Love (2014) and would later include a David Attenborough documentary for the BBC. The pair’s first collaboration was writing music for Cindy Jansen’s 2021 documentary Prince of Muck.

When the pandemic descended in 2020, the two began exchanging ideas remotely ‘as a way of keeping in touch and keeping busy through what was obviously just a really weird time.’ Quickly the contours of what would become Afterlands began to emerge.

Rick’s idiosyncratic alt-folk songs with a feeling craggy, ancient and heavy as mountains found their perfect foil wrapped up in Davey’s lush and lovingly detailed soundscapes, their spellbinding debut album We Are Animals In The Night started to take shape, and will be released via Lost Map Records on May 10, 2024.