exystence club

UK alt-folk group Stornoway release new album Beyonder. The band – from their name alone – have long had a debt to Scottish islands, to the experience of life on the fringes. New album ‘Beyonder’ takes this to an extreme, with the group’s Brian Briggs citing a revelatory experience on St Kilda as the root of their LP. The record contains a photo taken on St Kilda at its artwork. The most Westerly point of the British Isles, St Kilda’s human population abandoned the island in the 1930s, requesting to be evacuated to the mainland. An evocative and moving part of the country, the album helped unlock the album Brian Briggs has been “trying to write my whole life”.
He comments: Lying in bed in a stone blackhouse in St Kilda, being deafened…

Lauded on release as Stornoway’s most expansive and confident work, Bonxie remains a hymn to connection, ecology, and the beauty of life. This expanded edition includes previously unreleased B-side tracks from the original recording sessions, as well as some of their well-known unplucked versions of tracks on the album.
Bonxie is Stornoway’s boldest and most outward-looking record, an album infused with a sense of wonder for the natural world and humanity’s place within it.
Produced by Gil Norton (Pixies, Foo Fighters, Echo & The Bunnymen), with a contribution from Craig Potter (Elbow), the songs are studded with field recordings of birds (20 species appear across the album), weaving them into melodies…