Pictish Trail - Island Family (Deluxe Edition) '2023

Tracks list

Island Family is the fifth album from Isle-of-Eigg dwelling electro-acoustic
psych-pop wonder Pictish Trail, AKA Johnny Lynch. 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, bound up in sometimes conflicting ideas and feelings around nature and
environment, sincerity and artifice, escapism and belonging. It’s an
album about how no man can remain an island, however hard he might try.

Released by Fire Records, with support from Johnny’s own label Lost Map,
and produced by long-term collaborator Rob Jones (The Voluntary Butler Scheme,
The Gene Dudley Group), ‘Island Family’ opens with its title track,
a song of death, ghosts and the ties that bind, fusing abrasive electronic beats
with a tongue-in-cheek fireside folk refrain and the haunted ice cream van
melody of a digitally reincarnated traditional Scottish jig. A purgative
surrender to nature’s whim driven by a clattering machine drumbeat rolled
in a puddle of filthy dirty fuzz, ‘Natural Successor’ is
five-and-a-half-minutes of cathartic churning bass.

‘In The Land of The Dead’ is an eight-bit glitch-core reflection on
island party excesses spasming into existential dread and regret, suitably
accompanied by a funereal mariachi band. It’s followed by the epic
‘It Came Back’, the understated verses and arms-aloft falsetto
chorus of which are accompanied by a tense, foreboding bass-driven electro hip
hop instrumental with (spoiler) a brain-shattering industrial-metal meltdown.
’Melody Something’ is the album’s purest moment, a
cautiously uplifting solar-powered-ballad about losing track of time in the
cycle of the seasons, and the gap between memory and reality. Shapeshifting
closer ‘Remote Control’ is a channel hopping cabin-fever-dream
flipping from warped boyband ballad to deep-fried fuzz pop.

"One of my favourite artists" Lauren Laverne, BBC 6 Music

"Scottish polymath's fulsome fifth goes from blissful to beat-driven…
Endlessly inventive” Uncut

“Ultra-abrasive electronic pop” CLASH

An album of splendid contrasts from a similarly mercurial setting”
Electronic Sound

The expanded edition is now available on streaming services. Scottish electronic
maestro Makeness delivers a suitably punishing earthquake of a remix for
’Natural Successor’ while electro-pop ensemble Superorganism
create a mind-melting rework of ‘Remote Control’, with a confident
nod to French Touch. MF Tomlinson takes ‘The River It Runs Inside Of
Me’ on a blissed-out psychedelic trip, while London duo uh conjure their
unique sonic magic for a glitched and sun warped version of ‘Island
Family’. All rounded off with Django Django’s motorik stomper of a
remix, taking ‘Natural Successor’ and transforming it into a spaced
out opus. 

Tracklist:
1/2.01 - Pictish Trail - Island Family (4:27) 
1/2.02 - Pictish Trail - Natural Successor (5:26) 
1/2.03 - Pictish Trail - The River It Runs Inside of Me (3:16) 
1/2.04 - Pictish Trail - In the Land of the Dead (3:22) 
1/2.05 - Pictish Trail - It Came Back (4:06) 
1/2.06 - Pictish Trail - Thistle (2:58) 
1/2.07 - Pictish Trail - Melody Something (3:45) 
1/2.08 - Pictish Trail - Nuclear Sunflower Swamp (3:54) 
1/2.09 - Pictish Trail - Green Mountain (3:51) 
1/2.10 - Pictish Trail - Remote Control (4:01) 
2/2.11 - Pictish Trail - Natural Successor (Makeness Remix) (6:13) 
2/2.12 - Pictish Trail - Natural Successor (Django Django's Fazed and Confused
Remix) (4:32) 
2/2.13 - Pictish Trail - Remote Control (Superorganism Remix) (3:20) 
2/2.14 - Pictish Trail - The River It Runs Inside of Me (MF Tomlinson Remix)
(5:22) 
2/2.15 - Pictish Trail - Island Family (uh Remix) (4:29) 
2/2.16 - Pictish Trail - Natural Successor (Edit) (3:33) 

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