A purgative surrender to nature’s whim driven by a clattering machine drumbeat and rolled in a puddle of filthy dirty fuzz, ‘Natural Successor’ is the riotous single from isle of Eigg based Scottish psychedelic electronic-pop ogre Johnny Lynch AKA Pictish Trail. Pictish Trail’s previous album Thumb World came out in February 2020, just as the pandemic was about to take hold. A year of touring in support of the record was subsequently cancelled; Johnny was locked down on Eigg (population approx. 100) and thrown into a spell of writer’s block and creative lethargy. “When everything stopped,” he says, “so too did my capacity to think clearly.” Shaken awake by the bells of 2021, Johnny booked some studio time and, to prepare, locked himself away for a week in St Franny’s Bothan, a small cabin on Eigg, with only a bass guitar, fuzz pedals, a drum machine and a sampler for company (and some tea). “Going into the bothy, the intention had been to write about connecting with my surroundings, feeling ‘at one’ with the island,” says Johnny. “With ‘Natural Successor’, I quickly discovered it was more about the desire to surrender to nature’s whim. Letting nature take charge. I was imagining all the different natural disasters joining forces, and wreaking havoc on mankind. “I’d been reading about earthquakes caused by fracking, man’s responsibility for global warming, oil fires, etc. All these Manufactured Disasters. Then, throughout the pandemic, seeing all the horrible stuff that we do to one another, the fault lines we’ve created in society that separate us. Whether it’s a pandemic, or the destructive effects of climate change, there are definitely some days where I think we deserve the revenge the planet is taking upon us. “Not quite sure that ‘Natural Successor’ eloquently captures all this, mind you... but it was a cathartic experience playing a big dumb riff over and over again. Would recommend.”