Geographic are proud to present the expanded soundtrack to Graham Eatough’s award-winning stage adaptation of David Keenan’s 2017 cult novel, This is Memorial Device. Subtitled “an hallucinated oral history of the post-punk scene in Airdrie, Coatbridge and environs 1978-1986”, This is Memorial Device tracked the joys and sorrows, triumphs and defeats, of a clutch of musicians and hangers-on centred around the band Memorial Device, as the small town of Airdrie, Scotland, is transformed into a place of endless opportunity and impossible magic by their collective belief in the power of art.

“If you grew up in Glasgow you would probably be surprised to learn that such a vivid, adjacent world existed there, but it did,” Stephen Pastel reflects. “There’s a love in the book, an unreasonableness, and at its epicentre a brilliant original group called Memorial Device.”

This is Memorial Device: Music from the Stage Play, written by Stephen and Gavin Thomson (formerly of Glasgow band Findo Gask and The Pastels’ resident soundman), comes across as a third iteration of the book, establishing a whole new angle on the myth of Memorial Device through reworked home recordings from the era and expanded versions of music originally scored for the theatre production that won a prestigious Fringe First award when it was staged in Edinburgh in 2023. Additionally, it features original readings from the book by Paul Higgins (The Thick of It/Line of Duty et al), who played the lead character Ross Raymond, alongside the rest of the cast of the original production.

Filled with “teenage jams (Stephen) had made all those years ago” and new sounds that were helped shaped by Katrina Mitchell, John Hogarty and Tom Crossley of The Pastels and set alongside contemporary recordings that are thick with small town romance and melancholy, This Is Memorial Device: Music from the Stage Play is a wonderful and fruitful collaborative work of art but crucially, also a standalone listen. It tells the story of the group in episodic flashbacks that run from single-note Industrial scale drone works through caveman punk, lush, cinematic instrumentals, bare spoken word, and a final expanded reckoning of the last recording of Memorial Device vocalist,