A gently majestic DIY chamber pop song about internal maps of memories and time, ‘Tiny Marks’ is the latest single for Lost Map Records by Gordon McIntyre, a cult hero on the Edinburgh and Scottish underground music scene for more than 20 years. Available to stream and share on digital platforms now, it’s released as part of Lost Map’s PostMap Club subscription service. It’s taken from Gordon’s gorgeous forthcoming debut solo album Even With The Support Of Others which will be released on Lost Map on eco-friendly vinyl and digital platforms on July 15, 2022. 

As singer and songwriter with Edinburgh indie-pop band Ballboy – who were much venerated by the late John Peel in the early 00s, featuring several times on his Festive Fifty charts and performing multiple sessions for his BBC Radio 1 show – Gordon McIntyre has released four full length albums and a string of singles and EPs. In 2008 McIntyre co-created the Traverse Theatre Company production Midsummer [a play with songs] together with David Greig. Following a critically acclaimed run in Edinburgh that year, it has since gone on to be performed around the world. 

Even With The Support Of Others grew out of a commission from Elizabeth Newman, artistic director of the Pitlochry Festival Theatre, after she asked Gordon to write some songs for their lockdown project Shades of Tay. “More specifically,” says Gordon, “it grew out of the conversation around this where we talked for a couple of hours about the natural world, natural landscapes and internal landscapes. We talked about cities and countrysides and bridges and rivers. She asked for ‘as many songs as you see fit’ and so I sent her four and then continued to build the album around them.” 

About ‘Tiny Marks’, Gordon writes:

“For me ‘Tiny Marks’ is about the internal maps of memories and time and how little things persist to become big and important things. I’ve written the album to some degree from the point of view of a city dweller trying to work out how the wilder natural landscape works. I think I got a little bit obsessed with the tiny marks that are left inside us by people and things. They might hurt, but we hold them very dear to us and wouldn’t want to let them go.”

TRACKLISTING

1. Tiny Marks
2. I Crave Rivers I Crave Seas
3. I Watch The Owls Play
4. Goldfinch
5. Measure The Days
6. Red Horses Racing
7. Only Dogs Watching
8. Lean Into Me
9. In The Halls Of The Transplant Ward
10. Where The River Meets The Sea