An ambitious, inspiring and thought-provoking record unlike anything Lost Map has released before, Radical Abundance is the new album of absorbing atmospheric alt-folk songs from singer-songwriter Victoria Hume, all about the dying days of capitalism and what might emerge next. Made with support from Creative Scotland, it’s inspired by the book Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World by Jason Hickel and based around interviews with Hickel as well as other activists and agitators seeking to steer the world away from a failing economic system that undermines all of our wellbeing. Radical Abundance is due for release on January 19, 2024 on limited-edition CD with handmade zine and digital platforms. The first single, the softly keening and mysterious ‘Oblivious Structures’ is available now as part of Lost Map’s PostMap Club subscription service and via digital platforms.

“This is about mycelial networks,” explains Victoria, of ‘Oblivious Structures’, “which symbolise the interrelatedness of nature, the cycle of life and death, but also reflect the nature of social movements, networks that exist despite and around and through existing power structures. It’s based partly on Jason Hickel’s writing and partly on my conversation with Daisy Moss, a freelance artist who also created the designs for the album and singles under her artist name anarchxart. She works with both badvertising, ‘a campaign to stop adverts and sponsorships fuelling the climate emergency’, and Rhyze, an Edinburgh-based collective who grow mushrooms on urban waste streams that would otherwise end up in landfills.”

Currently based in Edinburgh, Victoria Hume was born in Brighton, raised in Dorset, studied in Oxford and spent several years working in London before relocating to Johannesburg in 2013, where she lived for nearly a decade. She self-released her debut album Limbs & Digits in 2009 and its follow-up Landing in 2012. The latter was championed by BBC 6 Music’s Lauren Laverne as “really beautiful”.

Victoria joined Lost Map in 2015 after her music was passed to label director Johnny Lynch via a mutual friend and collaborator, acclaimed singer-songwriter and producer Adem (Ilhan). She released her debut EP Closing in 2016 to acclaim from among others 6 Music’s Marc Riley, who invited Victoria on his show for a memorable live session. Adem had worked with Victoria on her 2013 project Delirium, a cycle of songs themed around the complex hallucinations patients have been known to experience during hospital-based intensive care. Outside of music, Victoria works as an arts manager in health and medicine and as a researcher, and her musical and professional lives often intertwine with remarkable results.

Never more so than on Radical Abundance, which sees Victoria evolve from thinking about health and wellbeing to thinking about the structures that underpin them. “The one that I keep bumping into is the economy,” she explains. “The unhealthiness of our economy, if you like, and the way that that has been driving climate change. And how it’s something we find very difficult to talk about as a society.” Through Jason Hickel’s book, Victoria came to learn all about Degrowth which, to quote the author, is all about “planned downscaling of energy and resource use to bring the economy back into balance with the living world in a safe, just and equitable way”. This led to a series of conversations – with Jason himself, and with four people working to apply these principles in different ways across Scotland: Daisy Moss (freelance artist, anarchxart); Bryan Smith (Transform Community Development, Dundee); Victoria McQuillan (Scottish Library & Information Council); and Shona McIntosh (Scottish Green Party Councillor for East Lothian).

“Once I started speaking to people, the same thing happened as always happens with this kind of work,” says Victoria. “People say really amazing, interesting things that fires off ideas – analogies and metaphors. Those are what form the basis of the songs, really.” In some cases, Victoria uses audio quotes to structure songs – Bryan and Jason loan their voices to the mesmerically looping ‘Borrowers’, for example. But in most cases the relationship is looser than that, and sees complex, sometimes contradictory ideas, distilled and re-conveyed in allegorical lyrics and the emotive language of alt-folk, jazz and ambient music.

Shrouded in mournfully shrieking violins and containing apocalyptic allusions to “a great funnel in the sky / that sucks up nature and time”, ‘Steady State’ is a gentle song about checking uncontrolled acceleration of economic growth – an idea mirrored in the unhurried pace of the music. Accentuating the grossness in gross domestic product, the Gillian Welch-esque ‘Bad Lover’ imagines the brutalising, extractive, divisive nature of capitalism as an abusive lover, promising the world but breaking everything good. Deceptively upbeat closer ‘Barbarians’ frames the stark choice which faces us all if we don’t correct course as a society: continue a descent into barbarism which already permits a government responsible for endless unchecked harms, or find a new way based in wellbeing, fairness, and equity between people and nature.

Radical Abundance was written by Victoria Hume and arranged, performed and recorded by Victoria (voice, acoustic guitar, piano, synth) together with regular collaborators Chris Letcher (guitars, synth, piano), Quinta (violin, synth, piano), and Andy Hamill (double bass, bass guitar). It was mixed by Chris Letcher and mastered by Ross McGowan, with design by anarchxart. It was funded by Creative Scotland.

Further information on the interviewees for this project can be found at:

• Jason Hickel: jasonhickel.org/less-is-more
• anarchxart: anarchxart.myportfolio.com / @anarchxart
• Rhyze: rhyzemushrooms.scot/
• Badvertising: badverts.org/
• Transform Community Development: transformcommunity.org.uk/
• Lend & Mend at the Scottish Library & Information Council: scottishlibraries.org/projects/lend-mend/ • East Lothian Greens: greens.scot/eastlothian