The Trail leads to Leeds

Johnny Lynch, aka Pictish Trail and is heading over from the Isle of Eigg for a rare live date in Leeds next month.
Johnny Lynch, aka, Pictish Trail, gigging in Leeds. Picture: Beth ChalmersJohnny Lynch, aka, Pictish Trail, gigging in Leeds. Picture: Beth Chalmers
Johnny Lynch, aka, Pictish Trail, gigging in Leeds. Picture: Beth Chalmers

The Lost Map Records founder can be found at the Brudenell Social Club on Friday, April 14 and, accompanied by his friends James Yorkston and Dan Willson, aka Withered Hand, he will bring critically acclaimed new album ‘Future Echoes’ to life.

Released in September on Lost Map Records, with distribution courtesy of Caroline International, ‘Future Echoes’ earned rave reviews from MOJO, Uncut, Clash and The Scotsman among others.

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A very personal musing on mortality, the death of friendships and the finality of things, the album represents the most confident, cohesive and pop-savvy collection of music Pictish Trail has written to date.

It’s his third long player and includes latest single ‘After Life’, a twisted polyrhythmic psychedelic disco opus reflecting on reincarnation and life lived on repeat with a chorus sung in a Jimmy Somerville-worthy falsetto.

Something of a sonic hermit, Pictish Trail has spent large parts of the past few years tucked away in his caravan on the Hebridean Isle of Eigg, feverishly working on the follow-up to ‘Secret Soundz Vol 1&2’, his critically-acclaimed double album of DIY electronic folk-tinged croft pop, released in 2014.

‘Future Echoes’ is the mesmerising result. Written in remote seclusion but recorded in the bustling heart of London, it reunites Pictish Trail with Adem Ilhan, who produces the majority of the record. Johnny and Adem previously wrote music together in 2010 under the name Silver Columns, releasing the hugely well received album ‘Yes And Dance’ via London taste-makers Moshi Moshi.

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Throughout his career Pictish Trail has resolutely furrowed his own path, steadily creating a unique catalogue of recordings and performances through his own labels (Lost Map / Fence Records) while eschewing the blueprint of the predictable singer-songwriter in favour of something untidily intriguing. Check the music and the man out at the Brudenell.

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