Bathgate songwriter releases moving new single offering hope to those struggling with loneliness and self doubt
A rising pop singer from West Lothian has released a new single to coincide with Mental Health Awareness Week.
Fraser McLean, 22, a singer-songwriter from Bathgate who plays a number of instruments, has dedicated the last year-and-a-half to writing and recording his own material.
Fraser has plans to release three new singles and an EP in 2025 showcasing his latest work.
Having released his debut single All That You Wanted in February of this year, he didn't wait about and just eight weeks later the follow-up was made available.
The new single, The World Is Not Done With You Yet, was released on May 9 prior to the start of Mental Health Awareness Week, which takes place from May 12 to 18.
A deeply moving song about mental health struggles, self-doubt, and the resilience required to keep pushing forward. It poignantly captures the weight of overthinking, loneliness, and the haunting sense of uncertainty.
With the chorus of Fraser's latest release acting as a powerful reminder that even in moments of despair, your personal story is far from finished – there is still hope and purpose on the horizon.
Fraser took inspiration for the lyrics and music from the experiences of those around him.
'In recent years, mental health has played a significant role in my life, deeply affecting my friends and family in ways that hit close to home,' Fraser admitted.
'This song reflects that experience. While I've written about mental health before, this time, I wanted to take a more positive approach – focusing on perseverance and the strength to keep moving forward.'
With a minimalistic arrangement that places the focus squarely on the lyrics and raw emotion, the song weaves Fraser's soft yet compelling vocals with delicate string melodies, creating what he describes as a 'sense of gradual intensity, while preserving the intimate and heartfelt nature of the piece'.
With heartfelt lyrics, dynamic stage presence, and ever-evolving sound, Fraser is quickly emerging as a standout talent.
This may only be the Bathgate musician's second release but he's already made some notable live performances, backed by his band, including at Belladrum Tartan Heart Festival, Party at the Palace, and Kendal Calling.
Fraser is inspired by superstar Lewis Capaldi, who grew up not far from him, as well as other artists such as Sam Tompkins, Benson Boone, and James Arthur.
He's already shared a stage with Callum Beattie, Wrest, Kid Rain, Samuel Jack and Keir Gibson.
His passion for music ignited when he was 14 years old and he recently graduated with an Honours degree in Music.
You can find Fraser McLean on social media, search: frasermcleanofficial
The World Is Not Done With You Yet is available on Spotify, Apple Music and Soundcloud.
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The Guardian
a day ago
- The Guardian
‘I've long struggled with my identity in pop': Ethel Cain on fandom, first loves, and being inspired by David Lynch
Something strange happened to Hayden Anhedönia in January. The 27-year-old artist known professionally as Ethel Cain was finishing off her upcoming album Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You when she had to go to court. 'I got into some traffic trouble,' she says coyly in her soft southern lilt. The plan was to drive from the courthouse in her home city of Tallahassee, Florida, to Toronto to wrap the album with her longtime collaborator Matthew Tomasi. 'Listen,' she continues, leaning forward into her webcam – a glint behind the eyes, conspiratorial tone in the voice. 'I don't know what happened in that courthouse, but I walked out of there having been put on probation. I couldn't go to Canada. I couldn't go anywhere.' As a result, Tomasi flew down to Tallahassee. They holed up in Anhedönia's tiny home studio and didn't leave until it was done. When they weren't working, they watched Twin Peaks for the first time. 'Every day it was wake up, work, Twin Peaks, work, Twin Peaks, work …' They binged the whole thing in two weeks. Anhedönia even hunted down the synths that composer Angelo Badalamenti used on the soundtrack and sprinkled them on a few of her own tracks. One night they finished working, watched the final episode, and went to bed. She woke up to the news that David Lynch had passed away. 'I was really happy that I finished the show while he was still alive,' she says. The synths 'felt kind of like an homage. A way to keep David and Angelo and Laura [Palmer] alive in some small way.' Lynch's work stages epic battles between darkness and light, pitting the purity of the individual against the corruption of the world; small-town life versus primordial forces of evil. The same battle plays out on Willoughby Tucker, which tells the story of what Anhedönia describes as 'a deeply traumatised love story between two kids who are in love, but the world weighs on them'. It's also present in her debut album, 2022's Preacher's Daughter, a southern gothic tale of a teenage girl named Ethel Cain who flees the confines of her religious upbringing only to be murdered and cannibalised by her boyfriend. The grisly subject matter made for unlikely breakthrough material, but Preacher's Daughter ended up becoming one of 2022's most critically lauded pop breakouts. In the space of a few months, Anhedönia jumped from collaborating with niche SoundCloud rappers to being featured in Forbes' 30 Under 30 and fronting campaigns for Givenchy, Marc Jacobs and Miu Miu. When Preacher's Daughter was rereleased on vinyl this April, it broke into the Top 10 in the UK, Australia, the Netherlands and the US, where Anhedönia made history as the first publicly trans musician to reach the Top 10 of the Billboard albums chart. As far as ascents to fame go, Anhedönia's was a baptism of fire. She has attracted the kind of invasive, obsessive fandom typically reserved for A-list pop stars. Owing to her sharp cultural commentary and eviscerating political takes – in a viral post after Trump's election, she wrote 'If you voted for Trump, I hope that peace never finds you' – her social media accounts are routinely trawled for 'problematic' content, and her criticism of the US healthcare system has been discussed on Fox News. Speaking to the Guardian in July 2023, Anhedönia expressed a desire 'to have a much smaller fanbase'. 'I've long struggled with my identity in pop,' she reasons now. 'I love pop music, but my issue for a while was the way fandoms operate.' Having seen the violence and trauma of Preacher's Daughter spun into flippant memes, she had feared that any future release would be similarly received. 'I've since made my peace with that. At the end of the day, you make what you make and you put it out and people can do what they want with it.' A recent firestorm over screenshots of things posted when she was 19, however, shows how merciless the spotlight can be. A slew of comments, including the use of racial slurs and rape jokes, were dug up from a 'shameful' period during which she tried to be as 'inflammatory and controversial as possible', as she phrased it in a lengthy apology. 'That was my account and those were my words', she wrote, adding that she was now 'truly sorry from the bottom of my heart'. But she hit back at further online speculation that she was 'pedophile, a zoophile, or a porn-addicted incest fetishist'. She had been, she wrote, the target of a 'transphobic/otherwise targeted smear campaign' that had also led to her personal accounts being hacked and family doxed and harrassed. Anhedönia holds several positions that can be hard to reconcile. She's a trans woman who grew up in the conservative southern Baptist community in the Florida panhandle, and still has a deep love affair with the area. She looks like one of the ethereal sisters from The Virgin Suicides, and talks like a girl next door refilling your coffee at a roadside diner, peppering her musings on existentialism and Eraserhead with homely expressions of geez and whatnot. She has experienced sexual trauma and assault, while her music often leans – in her words – 'into sadomasochism' and 'the taboo'. Those nuances are often not acknowledged. 'A lot of people don't know how to interface with media that contains negativity or perversion or sexuality or immorality,' she says. 'It's not the first instinct to engage with these things critically – but when you see a bad character on screen, the movie shouldn't hold your hand and say: Hey, that's the bad guy. That's your job.' In January, Anhedönia released Perverts – an experimental departure from Preacher's Daughter, let alone standard pop fare. Billed as a standalone project, the hour-and-a-half sprawl of ambient, drone and slowcore compositions roots around themes of shame, guilt and pleasure. There are no hooks, no choruses and barely any lyrics. Rather, its unsettling blend of industrial murmurs and desolate spoken word reflects Anhedönia's experience of wandering 'the Great Dark' – her term for a brief but 'scary' winter when she was struggling to adjust to life after coming off tour. Some listeners found it a challenging listen; others considered its references to madness and masturbation alienating. But it successfully reasserted the wide spectrum of Anhedönia's music, which switches from soaring heartland pop-rock to sprawling abstract noise. 'Now that the other end of the Ethel Cain spectrum has been established, I feel like I have a full range,' Anhedönia says. Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion The second instalment of the Preacher's trilogy, Willoughby Tucker serves as the prequel to Preacher's Daughter, and has a similar structure – a pop-oriented first half full of youthful optimism, which plunges into slow burning instrumentals and thundering power ballads as the hammer of reality comes down. Beginning in the summer of 1986, it finds Ethel Cain as an insecure teenager 'trying to navigate her first love in a broken world and a broken town'. It wasn't the plan to go back in time. Anhedönia intended to move forward, on to more 'mature' things, but something kept nagging at her. 'That Ethel's entire story began with the love that she had for this boy … It felt like it needed telling. And come hell or high water, it was going to get told. It was practically seeping out of me.' Finishing the album was 'honestly really sad, especially knowing where Preacher's Daughter goes. Sometimes it's hard for me to listen to. I tell myself it's all fictional, but sometimes I'll catch a lyric and it'll resonate exactly with how I'm feeling. And I remember that it's coming from me.' Part of the difficulty in making Willoughby Tucker was the fact that Anhedönia had, at 27, recently entered into her first ever relationship. As she worked on this album, all her own 16-year-old anxieties came back. 'Love was always my final frontier,' she says. 'I never explored it. I never processed anything. I never progressed past the idea of love that I had as a teenager.' There were times when she was crying every day, begging for the album to be finished. She's glad of the process now. 'I see Ethel Cain as a piece of me that I separate from myself and discard, so that I can make good decisions in life,' she says. 'If Preacher's Daughter was my learning experience of what not to do with trauma and healing, Willoughby Tucker has been my experience of what not to do in love.' In the real world, bleak as it is, Anhedönia is determined to live well. Smiling between two long curtains of mousey brown hair, she reels off a list of reasons to get up in the morning: 'A great breakfast, a beautiful sunrise, paying for someone's groceries if they can't.' And then there is love – in her view the most 'high-risk, high-reward' feeling in the world. A few days before we speak, she 'hard launched' her new relationship, sharing a video of her new boyfriend lifting her up on a truck parked on a dirt road, and kissing her. 'Ethel Cain lived and died loving and praying to be loved back,' Anhedönia says. 'The entire Preacher's trilogy is centred around love. Love lost, love gained, love perverted, love stolen. Love is everything to us. It doesn't matter what you love or who you love, but that you love something – and that love is what propels you forward every day. For better or worse, I think that is a beautiful thing.' Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You is released on 8 August.
Daily Record
a day ago
- Daily Record
Scots mentalist Fraser Penman stuns Still Game's Isa and Tam with mind-bending stunt ahead of Fringe show
The Fringe performer - known as PENMAN: The Imaginator - used the rare art of Hellstromism (or muscle-reading) to perform the jaw-dropping Hide-and-Seek stunt. Scotland's answer to Derren Brown wowed Still Game stars Isa and Tam with mind-bending 'Hide-and-Seek' stunt ahead of his Edinburgh Fringe show. Visually impaired Albino mentalist Fraser Penman delivered an unforgettable twist on the classic game at the capital's Dynamic Earth this week. The acclaimed East Kilbride performer used an astonishing feat of mind reading and psychological skill to locate a personal item hidden deep within the centre's tropical rainforest by Still Game actors Jane McCarry and Mark Cox. The Fringe performer - known as PENMAN: The Imaginator - used the rare art of Hellstromism (or muscle-reading) to perform the jaw-dropping stunt. Without sight, but with heightened senses, Fraser placed his hand lightly on Jane's shoulder and guided her through Dynamic Earths immersive galleries. He then homed in on the hidden item – H.G. Wells novel 'The Invisible Man' - using subtle psychological techniques. Fraser made a final connection with the popular TV actors before pinpointing the exact hiding place of the novel, secretly hidden beneath the rainforest canopy. In a dramatic finale, Fraser unveiled an envelope with a note inside correctly predicting the name of the book, leaving those who witnessed the moment in awe. Blending ancient play, Hide-and-Seek was first documented by Greek writer Julius Pollux in the 2nd century - with cutting-edge mentalism, the stunt offered a glimpse of what audiences can expect from Fraser's debut Edinburgh Festival Fringe show, PENMAN: The Imaginator - YOU, at the Gilded Balloon. Fraser, 30, lives with the most extreme form of Oculocutaneous Albinism, meaning he is visually impaired. His Fringe act fuses mind reading, hypnosis, and comedy, inspired by his journey to transform a childhood coping mechanism into a remarkable skill. Fraser, who describes himself as a 'Psychological influencer', said: 'I grew up just like other children across the country playing Hide-and-Seek, But I played it differently, as I was born with a severe visual impairment, which meant I had to learn to sense things another way. "And that's what today's stunt at Dynamic Earth was all about, learning to sense differently. To imagine differently and be able to influence people's thoughts. 'Using a little-known technique called Hellstromism, also known as muscle reading, I didn't just read where Tam and Isa went to in Dynamic Earth, I also gently influenced where they would go, before they even knew. 'By simply touching both their shoulders again and using the same psychological methods, I was able to go deeper into their mind to find the exact spot in the rainforest area where they had hidden the book. 'With so many different attractions, Dynamic Earth was the ideal venue for a fun game of Hide-and-Seek with a twist. Today's stunt was a taste of YOU, my live theatre show premiering at this year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe. "A show about breaking beliefs, finding inner superpowers and discovering just how extraordinary your own mind can be." Jane McCarry chose the novel, The Invisible Man, as the 'hidden item' as it's very personal to her, having been given to her mum in 1941. She said: 'I thought choosing the book, The Invisible Man, was very appropriate for the stunt with Fraser. I have always had a fascination with magic and I want to believe it's real, so it was amazing to be up close and see Fraser in action. "I can't imagine for a second how he knew where the item was and then guessed that it was the book I had brought with me.' Mark Cox added: 'The whole stunt was mind-boggling and baffling, Fraser blew me away with his performance. I have no idea how he managed to find the item and predict in advance what the personal item was. I'm still scratching my head how he did it.' Suzie Holligan, visitor experience and events director at Dynamic Earth, said: 'It was a real pleasure to host Fraser for this one-of-a-kind experience. Dynamic Earth is all about inspiring curiosity and encouraging people to see the world differently, and Fraser's incredible skills brought that to life in such a unique way. 'We're proud to be an official Edinburgh Festival Fringe venue, providing a spectacular setting where science meets storytelling. We're thrilled to have been part of this special event and wish him all the best for a fantastic Fringe debut.' Fraser has previously hypnotised pop star Callum Beattie, some of Scotland's top TikTok social media influencers and renowned Scottish comedian Gary Faulds. With more than 2.5 million views on TikTok, he is determined to change the perception of those with Albinism and hopes his Fringe stage show will act as an inspiration for people with the condition. Fraser added: 'When I was training to be a primary teacher in my 20's I was inspired by Derren Brown's storytelling and showmanship, I must have watched a DVD about hypnosis a thousand times. "Once I read a few books and looked into the neuroscience behind it I realised that I had the ability to hypnotise someone almost instantly. It was like having a superpower, I was blown away. 'I had a difficult childhood growing up with Albinism, so having this gift has allowed me to turn around my life and chase my dreams of one day having my own residency at Vegas. 'Many people with Albinism are confined to the house wearing dark glasses but I'm determined to change that perception. I want to inspire others that if you can see it in your imagination anything is possible, or even when you don't believe in yourself you can still believe in your dream. "After being bullied at school I was determined to change my mindset, and it ended up saving my life. For the past six years, Fraser has been holding down two jobs while honing his craft with performances at venues around the UK. His new Fringe show is the first time it will be performed before audiences in Scotland. Fraser will be appearing at the Gilded Balloon between July 30 and August 24. Article continues below
Times
2 days ago
- Times
Why Moby is working with a Russian teen — Music brings us together
Over a four-decade career in which he took ambient music and sampling to the mainstream, at one point seemingly soundtracking every advert on television, Moby has worked with the bona fide greats. 'Ridiculously well-known people, like Ozzy Osbourne, Britney Spears and Michael Jackson,' the DJ, producer, songwriter and professional vegan says — and that's without mentioning his friend David Bowie. Next up? Dmitry Volynkin. Dmitry who? Also known as Øneheart, the Russian producer has just turned 19, and already has a song, Snowfall, with 970 million Spotify streams — making it perhaps the most successful ambient track to date. The kid was born seven years after the release of Moby's behemoth album, Play. Moby is 59. They are an unlikely pairing, yet this week are releasing a single, Lagrange Point — a gorgeous swell of synth that also features a musician called Leadwave, aka Volynkin's dad. To find out how this happened I jump on a Zoom call with Moby and Volynkin. It is audio only: Moby says that, after he watched the first series of the tech thriller Mr Robot (2015), he disabled his cameras and I don't think he's joking. • Moby: 'I read The Sunday Times and wake up 15 times a night' 'It is nice meet you,' Volynkin says to Moby. 'Nice to meet you too,' Moby replies. Hang on — you have made a song together, but not met? 'No, but there are thousands of miles between us, not to mention 10 time zones,' says Moby, who lives in Los Angeles, while Volynkin is in Moscow. 'So there has just been a lot of file sharing.' Against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine and tensions between Trump and Putin, it is a tricky time for a Russian to collaborate with an American. Russian artists such as the opera star Anna Netrebko have been banned from performing in the US, while its musicians have been excluded from the Eurovision Song Contest. Russian artists who oppose the war have been exiled by Putin, while Spotify has removed pro-war Russian artists from its platform. Moby is happy to explain why he is reaching out across the divide. 'I don't want to be in any way glib or dismissive,' he begins, 'but politics are not people. I have toured for years, going from Lebanon to Israel, and guess what? The people generally do the same thing. They're having meals, going to work and sleeping and stressing about their health. They don't have the time to hate. Geopolitical divisions in no way reflect the reality of most lives. 'And for the most part, politicians just make things worse. In terms of AI, looking at the current state of politics, I almost feel we'd be better off with robot politicians, especially in the United States. So Americans are not Trump, Russians are not Putin, Israelis are not Netanyahu. Politicians are not people — they are pernicious, corrupting anomalies, and music reminds people globally that we are not reflected by them.' Volynkin, understandably, is rather less vocal. After all, he lives in a country at war. 'Well, there are always some problems,' he says. 'But I prefer to think we are just all here for the music. Since I started growing a fanbase, I've been getting hate when people realise where I am from and that's really a hard topic for me to discuss. Politics is for politicians. I'm just making music.' • The best albums of 2025 so far Lagrange Point, which also features the Russian ambient artists Dean Korso and Reidenshi, came about when Volynkin and his father were fiddling about on tracks, the old man sharing his Moby vinyl collection. His son asked: 'What if we reached out to Moby?' That, in itself, is not so strange, but why did Moby say yes? 'I was in LA and the [radio] station KCRW was playing Snowfall,' he says. 'It took me aback. Where are the drums? Where are the vocals? But, clearly, it's a beautiful piece of music, and afterwards the DJ talked about the phenomenon, and how it found this bafflingly huge audience. It's probably the only time in the history of KCRW that they have played quiet, ambient music at two in the afternoon.' Yet as lush as Snowfall is, it is pretty weird, I say, that it has reached such a global audience. That number of streams is Lady Gaga and Beyoncé territory, not that of some Russian teenager. 'But it's the idea of music as refuge,' Moby says. 'We live in a world with a constant onslaught of demanding data and information, two-minute-long songs as loud as they can be. It's almost like if you want to get people's attention, you should do the opposite. Instead of shoving it down throats, be quiet instead. Humans are stressed and scared, and need that moment of calm.' Moby says the real boon of Snowfall is that it is a hit that no algorithm could have predicted. 'Look, AI is pretty good at convention,' he says. 'At looking at pop music and deconstructing it. But the history of music is full of counterintuitive surprise and if, a couple of years ago, you'd given a prompt to some magical AI songwriting platform and said, 'OK, generate a piece of music that, in the current musical climate, is going to generate a billion streams' — well, it would not have created a delicate piece of ambient music. AI is good at taking one plus one and getting two, whereas humans take one plus one and get 15 million. The end result is so much more than the sum of its parts.' • Read more music reviews, interviews and guides on what to listen to next Volynkin was born in the small town of Kirsanov and remembers, at just six, listening to Russian rock music with his father. Then he discovered electronic music and installed software to make it on his grandfather's computer. 'I was experimenting, starting from dubstep and house,' he says. He uses ChatGPT to help him to write Instagram posts, but when it comes to music, he stays away from the available tools. 'We've all heard of this AI band, the Velvet Sundown,' he says, 'who are growing really fast. It sounds horrible.' And how much of Volynkin's mother country seeps into his gorgeous, highly emotive soundscapes? 'In Russia, there are a lot of people who make sad songs,' he says, adding that he wants to focus on beauty. Assuming the Moby single brings Volynkin an even larger audience, who would he pick to collaborate with next? 'Charli XCX,' he says. 'I fell in love with Brat and her discography is amazing.' I wouldn't rule it out.
