A music blog, record label, video channel and podcast show based in Edinburgh.  With lots of gin and swearing.

If you want to submit music to the blog or the label, please don't send me a message on Soundcloud itself as I do not check them.  A Soundcloud link is great, but please email the link to toad at songbytoad.com.

Hello, I am Meursault, I hope you are well.

All songs & illustrations by Neil Pennycook

Current album `Trophic Asynchrony' released via Song by Toad records on Yellow and Orange 12" Vinyl and DL/Streaming on July 9th 2021:

https://songbytoadrecords.bandcamp.com/album/trophic-asynchrony

Contact Adam:  
aw.staff82[at]gmail[dot]com

Adam Stafford is a musician, film director and photographer from Falkirk, Central Scotland. 

His solo albums include the Paul Savage-Produced Build a Harbour Immediately(2011), Imaginary Walls Collapse (2013, nominated for a Scottish Album of the Year Award), Taser Revelations (2016), the Photobook/LP Reverse Drift (2017) and double LP Fire Behind The Curtain (2018, voted Clash Magazine's 20 Best Scottish albums of the 21st Century).

Stafford is known for his intense live performances which incorporate pop melodics, shamanic shambling, post-punk, avant-garde and a capela experimentalism to dizzying effect.

About //

Prehistoric Friends is the solo project of multi-instrumentalist Liam Chapman (Miaoux Miaoux, Supermoon) with live violist Nichola Kerr. They hide in Glasgow, create organ and viola driven atmospheric/dream-pop and have whimsical stage-chatter.

Debut album set for release on 23/10/2015.

Perhaps for fans of Youth Lagoon, Throw Me The Statue, Bon Iver, Fleetwood Mac.


Biography //

What is 'Prehistoric Friends'?
Well, it all began when I (Liam Chapman) started to write atmospheric instrumental music in my room, in a farmhouse, in the countryside, up a hill, in Yetts o' Muckhart, Central Scotland. I focused on writing honest music based on surroundings, mood and certain atmospheres or situations I pick up upon around a period of time. I think the silly amount of instruments that I have collected over the years is mainly to blame for the sound/s I create, particularly my Yamahas/Casiotones and trusty Technics Organ. 
As for the name “Prehistoric Friends”, I believe that it’s right to preserve tradition and remember where we have come from and what has happened in the past. With the world constantly moving forwards and developing so quickly, I worry that these ‘relics’ will be forgotten and become extinct. It’s important to carry forward and keep a record of old ways, manners, stories and history whilst we are here to prevent this from happening.

Making music described as “glitter bursting from every chorus” and combining “the ominous glimmer of synth-wave with the maximalist fun of Carly Rae Jepsen’s ’80s throwbacks”, Carla J Easton is a pop songwriter with a back catalogue that would make most people envious.

From the Myspace-occupying Futuristic Retro Champions, through scrappy pop upstarts TeenCanteen and a record under the name ETTE, to the  the solo albums Impossible Stuff (shortlisted for the 2019 SAY Award and produced by Arcade Fire cohort Howard Bilerman) and WEIRDO , Carla J Easton writes essential indie pop. 

Sitting proudly alongside The Vaselines (who she plays keys for on tour), BMX Bandits (who have covered her songs) and Belle and Sebastian, with whom she co-wrote the track “Best Friend” she is considered alongside the best Scottish music  has had to offer over the past few decades.

WEIRDO is a record that Bandcamp  described as “all volume needles buried in the red, glitter bursting from every chorus.” The Line of Best Fit praised its “maximalist” tendencies while hinting that Scotland has found its own answer to the pop titans Carly Rae Jepsen and Taylor Swift and Pitchfork called it “bubblegum pop [with] the scrappy glamour of a homemade theatrical production”. Finding her voice, Carla J Easton is in the position now where she is consistently releasing music that’s talked about in terms of albums of the year garlands in Scotland, and beyond.

-Andrew Hannah, Bright Dead Things 2020

Aaron Bernardo is following