Released March 18th 2022, on Fire Records, ISLAND FAMILY is my fifth full-album as Pictish Trail. It's the third record i've worked on with producer Rob Jones, and is probably the most i've played on any album since my first few home-recorded LPs.

At the start of 2021, I was freaking out. I'd not been able to write any songs throughout 2020, my brain was immersed in child-care. When New Year hit, i decided to decamp to St Franny's Bothan for a week, to try and hoover some music from my brain. I recorded demos on my 8-track machine, playing just bass guitar, drum machine, casio keyboard and sampler - and then took these recordings down to Rob's place in Aldershot.

The album is about reconnecting with nature, and trying to find some sense of belonging.

THUMB WORLD came out in February 2020 on Fire Records. I recorded it with my good pal Rob Jones. It’s an album about the way in which our lives are controlled by our thumbs, constantly facing a screen, anxiously swiping through the days. Although, really, it’s more about trying to escape all of that. Amazing artwork by Swatpaz.

I didn't have much of a chance to tour this album - as the corona virus pandemic hit just as it came out. I went out on the road supporting one of my all-time heroes, Steve Mason, towards the end of 2019, though - performing a bunch of songs from this album as a two-piece with my friend Suse.

You can have a listen, and purchase a copy on vinyl, over at my shop.

In September 2016 I released the album FUTURE ECHOES. It was produced by Adem Ilhan and Rob Jones. I’d recorded with Adem before, we had been in an electro-pop group called Silver Columns. More about that later.

FUTURE ECHOES is a sort of pop album about coming to terms with death, self-doubt and things ending. Artwork collages by my good friend John Muir, aka Humdrum Jetset. Fire Records reissued the album with a bonus disc of alternate-versions and live tracks, for Record Store Day in 2018. You can buy that, or the regular LP/CD, from the shop.

I’d started using the name ‘The Pictish Trail’ in 2002, and spent 6 years making CD-R only mini-albums, and playing as part of the Fence Records collective, in Fife. The first ‘proper’ album I recorded was SECRET SOUNDZ VOL.1, which was self-released through Fence Records, in 2008. This album was mostly self-produced, although some of the tracks (the best sounding ones) were produced by the Manchester-based psychedelic band, The Earlies. Despite being pretty lo-fi, it got a load of really nice reviews, some radio play, and it sent me out on the road - touring my own headline shows, supporting friends around the world, and playing lots of festivals.

The first album kept me so busy, it was another 5 years before the unimaginatively titled follow-up SECRET SOUNDZ VOL.2 came out, in 2013. This album was produced by the very talented multi-instrumentalist, Stephen Black (aka Sweet Baboo). The lovely folks at Moshi Moshi Records in London decided to put the two albums together as a deluxe set on vinyl, even more unimaginatively titled SECRET SOUNDZ VOL.1 & 2, and that came out in 2014. I don’t have any more of those on vinyl at the mo, but there’s still some copies of the CD over in my shop.

This was a collaborative project with my friend Adem Ilhan. Adem is a really accomplished singer-songwriter, composer and musician. He also played in the experimental / post-rock group Fridge. We both share a love of electronic pop music, and so over the course of 2008-2009 we made an album. It was called YES AND DANCE, and it was released in 2010 by Moshi Moshi Records.

We toured the album extensively throughout 2010, supporting Underworld, Soulwax, playing Glastonbury - our last gig being New Years Day 2011, in Edinburgh. Adem and I worked together again on the Pictish Trail album Future Echoes, but there hasn’t been any Silver Columns stuff since. I really loved this project, and i’m dead proud of the album. Some amazing remixes out there, too - by Caribou, Time & Space Machine, Joe Goddard and Optimo.

Quite a busy year for me, 2010. In addition to all the Silver Columns stuff, I created a Pictish Trail album called IN ROOMS. It’s a collection of 50 songs, each of which are 30 seconds in length. It was part of a project devised by the stand-up comic Josie Long, called ‘100 Days To Make Me A Better Person’. I decided to write a song every day. Except I only managed 50. And they are all very, very short. Still, it was a fun exercise, and I performed a selection of these songs while on tour with Josie Long and James Acaster later that year. Having participated in this project, I feel like a much better person.

I made this album on vinyl, and it sold out pretty quick. You can watch an animated video of me performing some of the songs, though.