Out Lines

A group finding inspiration and beauty in the stories of the residents of Glasgow's Easterhouse suburb, Out Lines features the Twilight Sad's James Graham, singer/songwriter Kathryn Joseph, and producer Marcus Mackay. The project began as the brainchild of Alun Woodward, a former member of the Delgados, co-chief of Chemikal Underground Records, and music programmer of Platform, an arts complex that is part of the Easterhouse community center The Bridge. Woodward invited Graham to participate in the 2016 Outskirts Festival, Platform's annual celebration of multi-disciplinary artistic expression. In turn, Graham recruited Joseph (whose 2015 album Bones You Have Thrown Me and Blood I've Spilled won the Scottish Album of the Year) and Mackay to collaborate with him. He and Joseph then interviewed locals about their lives in Easterhouse, an area colloquially known as Conflat that suffers from underemployment, crime, and substance abuse. The pair then translated their conversations into songs that Out Lines performed at the Outskirts Festival in April 2016. The trio was so inspired by the creative process that they recorded the project's songs in Mackay's Diving Bell Lounge studio. The results were Conflats, which Chemikal Underground released in October 2017.
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