Lost Map Records are excited to announce the extraordinary debut album by Edinburgh - based singer of other worldly rhythm and blues songs Callum Easter. Here Or Nowhere will be released as a vinyl LP and via all
major digital services on April 5, 2019, and represents the most complete and definitive statement yet from an
artist who has built a strong local reputation emerging from the creative heat of the Leith studio that spawned Mercury Prize - winning act Young Fathers – with whom Callum plays keys and lap steel live and has toured with
as support.
Callum’s debut Post Map postcard double A - side single ‘Here or Nowhere’/ ‘Back Beat’ was released in
November, and received radio support from the likes of BBC 6 Music’s Marc Riley and
Gide on Coe and BBC Radio Scotland’s Vic Galloway.
After walking away from a promising career as a professional footballer, Dunbar born Callum took up the piano at
the relatively late age of 21 and is entirely self - taught from scratch as a musician – “I didn’t even understand how to ‘count in’ for a good few years, ” he admits. After cutting his teeth playing with Owen Morris - produced indie -
rock band The Stagger Rats for a number of years until 2013, he subsequently began experimenting with solo writing and performing before going on to release two mini - albums under his own name – 2016’s Get Don’t Want and 2017’s Delete Forever, both via Soul Punk Records, which is run by Young Fathers’ former producer/manager
Tim Brinkhurst (AKA Tim London).
Callum has earned critical acclaim from titles including The Scotsman, The Skinny, Clash and The Herald – who named ‘Back Beat’ one of the 100 best songs from Scotland in 2018. Callum Easter’s dark poetic vision find its
most compelling form yet on Here Or Nowhere – a sparse, stark, deeply personal and by turns hopeful, menacing and despairing clutch of intuitively retro -futuristic songs united, as he explains, by “a feeling that the world is fucked up and a belief that people can fix it together. ”It’s entirely written, per formed, recorded and even mastered by the artist himself between his flat and his studio, save for backing vocals from Sisters Jacqui and Pauline Cuff (Soho/Leith Congregational Choir), as captured by Tim London.
Performed on an intricate and unusual psychedelic thrift - store assembly of instrumentation including electric guitar, Elka Panther organ, piano, blues harp and accordion, all warped, manipulated, distended and recontexualised via a variety of effects boxes, samplers and sequencers, Here Or Nowhere’s sound palette is strange and thoroughly satisfying.
