SAVAGE MANSION LIVE:
THU, FEB 15 @ SUMMERHALL, EDINBURGH
SAT, FEB 17 @ RUM SHACK, GLASGOW

STREAM 'Present Tense' / PRE-ORDER ALBUM: https://li.sten.to/savagemansion-presenttense

A dark true-life tale wrapped in a dissonant jangle that imagines Richard Thompson playing the Velvet Underground, ‘Present Tense’ is the latest new track from Glasgow-based slanted indie-rock five-piece Savage Mansion. Released as part of Lost Map’s PostMap Club subscription service in the month of December (b/w ‘Night School’), it’s the latest taste of the band’s forthcoming fourth album The Shakes, which will be released on limited-edition 12” vinyl and digital services on February 16, 2024. It’s Savage Mansion’s most exciting record yet – a set of 11 songs which better than ever capture the explosive live energy of a band whose best gig is always their next gig, rooted in a deep well of emotion, and the rigorously thought-through reasoning of writers thoroughly in love with their influences.
 
“This is a band favourite,” says Craig about ‘Present Tense’. “I didn’t think much of it at the time, but the minute Andy and I started playing it together it felt like a keeper. It’s about my high school English teacher who had an affair with a kid. It was messy and horrible, and registering it as a 13/14-year-old you didn’t really take it in properly. I remember bringing it up at the pub and everyone had a similar story, at least one. The themes of the record are varied but I suppose it’s reckoning with the animal inside us. This is the extremity of that thematic idea. That sort of impulse… I don’t have to cast judgement on it. What is there to say? Some things are inexcusable.”

The Shakes

Pre-Order THE SHAKES

Savage Mansion - 'Present Tense'

A meditation on ageing drawing inspiration from the poetry of Dave Berman and the esoteric pop of Arthur Russell, ‘There Goes My Habit’ is the addictive new track from Glasgow-based slanted indie-rock five-piece Savage Mansion. 

'There Goes My Habit' is streaming now and included as an exclusive postcard single as part of October's delivery of our #postmap club.

http://www.lostmap.com/club

Join PostMap Club

Savage Mansion - 'There Goes My Habit'

Two White Cranes - 'City Streets'

‘It’s You’ is the brand-new track by queer pop producer Susan Bear (FKA Good Dog), a much respected and sought-after stalwart of the Scottish music scene and a lynchpin of Lost Map Records. The standalone single marks a new direction for Suse after two well-received albums, by leaning further into her electronic side – still melancholy, tape-y vibes, but this time upping the energy, taking influence from club and dance music. “‘It’s You’ is about going on a mad nostalgia trip,” says Suse, “and your brain tricking yourself into thinking the past is always better than the present.” It comes with a video visualiser by Glasgow 3D artist/designer and DJ VAJ.Power, and is backed with an exclusive remix by award-winning avant-garde musician Lara Jones.  
 
Whether as bassist, keyboardist, guitarist, producer, songwriter, sound-designer, or something in between, Suse has variously worked with Lost Map artists including Tuff Love, Pictish Trail and Martha Ffion, as well as The Pastels, Tracyanne & Danny, Malcolm Middleton, Poster Paints, Karine Polwart, Amandah Wilkinson (Bossy Love), Goodnight Louisa and on a variety of theatre projects. Her debut solo album Creature was released in 2020 and featured the Spotify and Apple Music playlisted song ‘Floating’ (“Gentle, dreamy mood music” – The Scotsman). It was followed in 2022 by the album Alter, which received support from BBC 6 Music’s Radcliffe & Maconie and Amy Lamé and BBC Radio Scotland’s Vic Galloway and Roddy Hart. More new music from Susan Bear will follow in 2024.

Susan Bear - 'It's You'

Stillness EP

Firestations - 'Stillness' (Sulk Rooms Remix)

Victoria Hume - 'Bad Lover'

Afterlands - 'I Woke To The Sound Of The Wind'

Susan Bear - 'It's You' (Kinbote Remix)

Dub Series w/ Kairogen & Niamh Jobson - Radio Buena Vida 05.04.24

Dub Series w/ Kairogen & Niamh Jobson - Radio Buena Vida 03.05.24

Firestations – Many White Horses

'Many White Horses' is a collection of sea-soaked acoustic songs and instrumentals, interwoven with field recordings and lyrics drawn from the immediate surroundings of a sailing expedition, all brought together with warm, textured production. It marks Mike Cranny’s first solo endeavour, playing a variety of instruments and self-producing, albeit one enriched by Laura Copsey’s contributions on flugelhorn, flute and vocals.

The album was conceived and largely written at the beginning of August 2024 on a sailing yacht (Sail Britain’s “Merlin”) in the Inner Hebrides. This was the location for a week-long art residency with seven fellow artist-explorers all keen to capture something of the essence of being at sea and viewing the land from the sea. The voyage, through high winds and waves, took in the mysterious Isle of Rum and the coastline around Arisaig, before Mike and Laura continued the journey for a further week; travelling around the Ardnamurchan peninsula, across the Isles of Mull and Ulva to end up off-grid on the remote Isle of Gometra. 

While the music, with its focus on quietly hypnotic, hushed acoustic instrumentation, may at first appear something of a departure from the last five-piece band Firestations album ‘Thick Terrain’, it remains closely related and recognisable by Mike’s song writing style. It also occupies a similar space to the ‘Sunken Versions’ – quieter and slower songs (featuring on the ‘Automatic Tendencies’ EP series in particular) that focus on the more meditative, stripped back side of the band.

The title track ‘Many White Horses’ was the first song to be written, making use of an aging sea-warped boat guitar that Mike discovered could only be played in an open tuning, with a capo higher up the fret board. Mike says: “The limitations of this guitar proved to be a gateway to other songs – the chord progressions and melodies had to be simple to avoid tuning nightmares, and where I might have ordinarily decided that a song was too straightforward, on the boat I didn’t have a choice but to persevere with simple song ideas. It turns out that limitations can be liberating”. The first single from the album ‘A Weight Starts To Lift’ was written a bit later and shows Mike exploring the possibilities of the open tuning “maybe the trickiest fingerpicking I’ve ever attempted”. 

The communal living conditions on the boat and the camaraderie developed through the everyday routine, and in other artist’s processes, made for a fertile environment. Laura, as expedition leader, provided a series of creative prompts, shaped by archipelago poetics. Moments and provocations that filtered into lyrics and rhythms included a collaboration with a square meter of earth, seeking out an audience on a micro scale, and reading laminated sheets of poetry in the sea. Field recordings and found instruments also give the compositions a strong sense of place and carry the listener across rough seas and onto remote islands.



Biography

Firestations (Lost Map Records) span genres from shoegaze to alt-pop and harmony-driven psychedelia. Their second album, The Year Dot, released in 2018, was followed by sonic collage album Dream Home in 2020 and the Automatic Tendencies EP project in 2020-21. The latter took the form of three EPs over a six-month period, each including alternative “sunken” versions by the band as well as covers and remixes of the band’s tracks by other artists. Thick Terrain, released in 2023, saw Firestations return to album format with ten tracks ranging from hypnotic sci-fi landscapes to addictive dream-pop jangles, exploring ideas around identity, conflict, progress and sanity. Bandmembers are Mike Cranny, Laura Copsey, Martin Thompson (aka Bit Cloudy), Tom Hargreaves and Neil Walsh.

Firestations - Silversands

ISLE OF EIGG. MUSIC, MUSIC, PARTY TIMES, MUSIC, PARTY.

Amy May Ellis, BAS JAN, Alabaster dePlume, Firestations, Josie Long, Tuff Love, Insect Heroes, Rozi Plain, Kid Canaveral, Seamus Fogarty, Randolph’s Leap, eagleowl, Monoganon, Victoria Hume, Ichi & Pictish Trail.

Firestations - Silversands

Lost Map

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