Celtic Connections, Kacy and Clayton, Hannah Read, Kokoroko, Ryan Bingham, Pictish Trail, Rozi Plain, Avi Kaplan

Throughout his career Pictish Trail – aka Johnny Lynch – has resolutely furrowed his own path, steadily creating a unique catalogue of recordings and performances through his own labels (Lost Map / Fence Records) while eschewing the blueprint of the predictable singer-songwriter in favour of something untidily intriguing. Born out of a compulsion to make infectious, melody driven music from a treasure trove of secret sounds, Pictish Trail’s spectral songs are filtered through a sun-warped pop lens, where heart-pumping guitar shriek-outs collide with sampled gurgles and fractured lyrics figure-skate over sine-waves of glacial synth.

The music of Rozi Plain has always felt like a freeze-frame. A colourful and graceful snapshot of the world, paused, suspended in time, and then gently toyed with, like stepping out of the linear world as we know it. There have been three records over the past decade, each one just like this, alluring and beguiling in the delicate nature through which they exist. Her brand new album, ‘What A Boost’, carries the same sense of exquisite elegance but is an altogether different, and distinctive, journey. One, in fact, that was inspired and informed by just that: of travel and passage, of the unique inspiration found in different and differing people and places, refined during a year spent touring the world playing bass in This Is The Kit.