Name: Island Family
Brand: The Pictish Trail

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

FIRELP656

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Colour

Black

Colour details

Discogs ID

Format multiplier

Download code

Download code: Yes

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format detail

Format Music GB

Limited edition

Release date

2022-03-18

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier GB

Cargo

Tax rate GB

Standard:20

UPC / Barcode

809236165619

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Total Cap

1 / Extended format: No / LP / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No / black

FIRELP656G

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Green

Extended format: Yes

809236165671

{"blocks": [{"data": {"text": "809236165671"}, "type": "paragraph"}]}

1 / Extended format: Yes / LP / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No / green

FIRECD656

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Download code: No

Capacity Wallet.

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809236165626

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1 / CD / Extended format: No / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No

Artist

The Pictish Trail

Genre GB

Indie Pop / Shoegaze

Label GB

Fire Records

Vinyl variants, bonus material and signed editions exclusively available from Rough Trade.

Fire Records is an independent record label headquartered in London, England, UK. Founded in the mid 80s, Fire Records has been a prominent force in the music industry for decades. They have released early records from Pulp, Teenage Fanclub, Spacemen 3, Blue Aeroplanes, and many other influential artists. In the early 90s, the label was home to notable acts such as Neutral Milk Hotel, The Lemonheads, Built to Spill, and Urge Overkill.With a rich history of discovering talent and nurturing their careers, Fire Records remains dedicated to supporting groundbreaking musicians across various genres. Their diverse roster showcases both established names and emerging talents who push boundaries and challenge conventions.

Johnny Lynch is a Scottish musician who performs under the pseudonym The Pictish Trail.  Johnny Lynch started performing under the moniker The Pictish Trail in 2002, recording his first album on his computer and releasing it on his own label, Fence Records in 2003.

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<i>Island Family</i> 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, <i>Island Family</i> 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.