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. ~ Heather Phares