{"title":"The Pictish Trail","description":"\u003cp\u003eJohnny 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.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"thumb-world","title":"Thumb World","description":"\u003cp\u003eBold, weird, wild, wired, sonically luxurious yet never losing touch with its DIY-‘til-I-die roots, \u003ci\u003eThumb World \u003c\/i\u003eis a voyage to the outer rings of Pictish Trail’s mind at its darkest, funniest and most inventive – a plugged-in, fuzzed-out, fucked-up contemplation on, as he puts it, “life repeating and gradually degrading, the inevitable cyclical nature of things, and the sense of their ultimately being no escape.” Expect alien abductions, thumping beats, Trump-haired pigs, paternal panic, astronaut sex, bad acid trips, worse hangovers, lashings of distortion and a lot of anthropomorphic thumbs. “Our opposable thumbs are the things that separate us from most other animals on Earth,” Pictish explains, of the fat digit symbolism, “they are also the things that we use to swipe on screens, to separate ourselves from our normal lives, but which in turn trap us within an artificial reality.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eProduced and mixed by Rob Jones, featuring string arrangements from Kim Moore and drumming from Alex Thomas (Squarepusher, Anna Calvi, Air), Thumb World is Pictish Trail’s most collaborative album to date. An audio-visual dialogue with Swatpaz, AKA Scottish artist Davey Ferguson – the man behind the Turbo Fantasy series and an entire episode of cult TV phenomenon Adventure Time – furnished Johnny with not just a graphic aesthetic for the album, but even helped him to shape the sound of the finished record. “I sent Davey a work-in-progress mix of the album,” Johnny says, “he came back with sketches in which he had reimagined Thumb World as an 80’s arcade game. Some of the songs are centered around specific visual images, inspired by Davey’s sketches.” Four years in the making, Thumb World is the much-anticipated follow-up to his critically acclaimed Scottish Album of the Year Award public vote winner \u003ci\u003eFuture Echoes\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Fire Records","offers":[{"title":"Black | LP","offer_id":50437658542411,"sku":"1077180","price":22.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"Pink | LP","offer_id":50437659165003,"sku":"1077181","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"CD","offer_id":50437657526603,"sku":"1077179","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/aa85f029-dd9c-45f2-a84a-fc1010b6f723_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726933508"},{"product_id":"island-family","title":"Island Family","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eIsland Family\u003c\/em\u003e is the fifth album from Isle-of-Eigg dwelling electro-acoustic psych-pop wonder \u003cstrong\u003ePictish Trail\u003c\/strong\u003e, 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eIsland Family\u003c\/em\u003e 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eReleased 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), ‘\u003cem\u003eIsland Family\u003c\/em\u003e’ 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eA purgative surrender to nature’s whim driven by a clattering machine drumbeat rolled in a puddle of filthy dirty fuzz, ‘\u003cem\u003eNatural Successor\u003c\/em\u003e’ is five-and-a-half-minutes of cathartic churning bass.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e‘\u003cem\u003eIn The Land of The Dead\u003c\/em\u003e’ 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 ‘\u003cem\u003eIt Came Back\u003c\/em\u003e’, 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e‘\u003cem\u003eMelody Something\u003c\/em\u003e’ 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 ‘\u003cem\u003eRemote Control\u003c\/em\u003e’ is a channel hopping cabin-fever-dream flipping from warped boyband ballad to deep-fried fuzz pop.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Fire Records","offers":[{"title":"Black | LP","offer_id":50481652990283,"sku":"1137020","price":22.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"Green | LP","offer_id":50481654202699,"sku":"1137021","price":22.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"CD","offer_id":50481653580107,"sku":"1137018","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/6123f04c-b078-4fa6-b962-dd5b71bb7c3e_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727542805"},{"product_id":"future-echoes-1","title":"Future Echoes","description":"\u003cp\u003eReissue on Fire of \u003ci\u003eFuture Echoes\u003c\/i\u003e - the 2016 album from Pictish Trail, AKA Scottish singer-songwriter Johnny Lynch. 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 \u003ci\u003eYes And Dance\u003c\/i\u003e via London taste-makers Moshi Moshi. \u003ci\u003eFuture Echoes\u003c\/i\u003e features additional production and mixing from Rob Jones (Sweet Baboo, Slow Club) and drumming from Alex Thomas (Fridge, Squarepusher, Air, Bat For Lashes) and was mastered by Guy Davie at Electric Mastering. Born out of a compulsion to make infectious, melody driven music from a treasure trove of secret sounds, Pictish Trail’s spectral songs are filtered through a sun-warped pop lens, where heart-pumping guitar shriek-outs collide with sampled gurgles and fractured lyrics figure-skate over sine-waves of glacial synth. A very personal musing on mortality, the death of friendships and the finality of things, \u003ci\u003eFuture Echoes\u003c\/i\u003e represents the most confident, cohesive and pop-savvy collection of music Pictish Trail has written to date. \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Fire Records","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":50496798884171,"sku":"1024300","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/9fb44a67-e0e1-4efb-8633-c9f140f55e0c_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727724139"},{"product_id":"future-echoes","title":"Future Echoes","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThis is a Record Store Day 2018 item. It will be available to purchase from our stores from 8am 21st April. Remaining stock will be available to purchase from this page at 00.01 28th April.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eFuture Echoes\u003c\/i\u003e is the latest album from Pictish Trail, AKA Scottish singer-songwriter Johnny Lynch. These spectral songs are filtered through a sun-warped pop lens, where heart-pumping guitar shriek-outs collide with sampled gurgles and fractured lyrics figure-skate over sine-waves of glacial synth. \u003ci\u003eFuture Echoes\u003c\/i\u003e represents the most confident, cohesive and pop-savvy collection of music Pictish Trail has written to date. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e2LP - Limited edition ‘cosmic’ Coloured Double LP with disc of extras. 1000 copies.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Fire Records","offers":[{"title":"LP | x2","offer_id":50497515422027,"sku":"1030502","price":32.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/598b1cae-48ff-4f1e-abe0-1aabc80d0df0_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727728393"},{"product_id":"whos-comin-in","title":"Whos Comin In?","description":"\u003cp\u003e2017 proved a huge year for Pictish Trail which ended in Johnny Lynchannouncing he’d signed to Fire Records alongside Jane Weaver, Death And Vanilla, Noveller, Hater and Modern Studies. Seeing in the new year supporting Belle And Sebastian on tour across Europe and following a sold-out show at this year’s Celtic Connections, Pictish Trail releases \u003ci\u003eWho’s Comin’ In \u003c\/i\u003eon black disco sleeve 12” vinyl. Taken from \u003ci\u003eFuture Echoes, Who’s Comin’ In\u003c\/i\u003e gets remixed by Joe Goddard (Hot Chip, The 2 Bears). Here blissed out celestial tones stretch this gorgeous track into an eight-minutedance floor banger that has a ‘trip-hop subtleness bridged with a Caribou feel’ (Clash). The 12” also includes a remix of the same track from KT Tunstell. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Fire Records","offers":[{"title":"12\"","offer_id":50497593901387,"sku":"1034421","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/e50f9f2f-7897-41ee-b8c4-d41a863f6603_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727728793"},{"product_id":"secret-soundz-volume-1-and-2","title":"Secret Soundz Volume 1 and 2","description":"\u003cp\u003eJohnny Lynch, aka The Pictish Trail, is something of a conundrum. On first impressions, he's a self-deprecating hairy hobo whose on-stage banter could give many comedians a run for their money. But once he begins to sing, Lynch's extraordinary vocals reveal hidden depths that can subdue the most rowdy of audiences into a blissfully hypnotised silence. Having recently signed to Moshi Moshi Records, Lynch sees his gloriously eclectic and critically acclaimed albums 'Secret Soundz Volumes 1 and 2' getting a full release. The double album is available on limited gatefold 12\" vinyl and gatefold CD. Lynch's eloquent songs are as wildly varied as his selection of brightly coloured bobble hats. His distinctive voice has been accompanied by everything from acoustic guitar to a full-on four piece metal band to throbbing dance beats and samples, and often during the course of the same gig. With two albums, numerous mini-albums, EPs, and singles under his belt as The Pictish Trail, Lynch has also moonlighted as one half of demented dance-pop duo Silver Columns with Adem (Fridge) for their 2010 album Yes and Dance. It's this innovative, genre-defying approach that's seen him mentioned in the same breath as his heroes Beck, The Beta Band and Hot Chip.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Moshi Moshi Records","offers":[{"title":"CD | x2","offer_id":50509812662603,"sku":"374692","price":11.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/b3a4eaa3-6668-4094-9d33-f26afe5b8f9c_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727868496"}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/collections\/test_2b417e76_thumbnail_4096_5910ade8-698c-4fbc-b52f-2b8218368ba4.jpg?v=1726933466","url":"https:\/\/shop.roughtrade.com\/collections\/the-pictish-trail.oembed","provider":"Rough Trade","version":"1.0","type":"link"}