I’m a fan of Euan McCall’s work, especially under his Jorum Studio label, but I’ve found it hard to write about Pyschoterratica III. When I try, I lose myself in a kaleidoscope of memories that shift and change like the hypnotic light of fast clouds over unknown water. And then they resurface in dreams of rain-soaked adventures, of riding on seashores, bare feet in icy rivers, scrambling over the debris of glaciers on moors, reading under a table.

It’s got under my skin.

Pyschoterratica III doesn’t feel made, but grown. Evolved, eroded, worn into the right shape like the bare nap of velvet grass stretched over the bones of the land.

Some quarter-century ago I spent a month on a small sea-battered island. The water came from the lighthouse loch and everything tasted of peat. Every morning I wrapped myself in a blanket and scrambled out onto the lichen-embroidered rocks to drink peat-soaked coffee and listen to the bark of the seals. If the sun came out, I’d lie on the sheep-nibbled grass, picking paint off my pencil; my computer had been eaten alive by the salted wind, and I was writing a book in longhand. But mostly I lay on the ground and watched the light change, wondering how long it would take to grow into the tendrils and hair-fine roots that bound the earth together and swallowed all its secrets while the wind whisked away every sound but itself. I bathed in tea-coloured water in the long summer evening light, poaching gently in the rough-scraped enamel bath by the fireplace. I fell asleep in peat-smoked air as the last embers of that fire smouldered, under the sagging damp plaster ceiling of the keeper’s cottage.

This is not the centrally-heated, plush and powdered luxury of glinting jewels, slithering silks and exotic animals. It’s the luxury of finding one more tannin-drenched cup of tea in the pot by the stove, of carefully darned moth holes and mended claw pulls in your grandfather’s heavy fishing jersey worn while a storm rattles the loose sash windows.

There’s a profound, joyful calm in Psychoterratica III. An ambered gold glow of light in the deep dark water of that lighthouse loch. A place of safety at the edge of the world.

Originally posted 5 April 2020. Edited December 2025 to add: this was later re-released as Monolith as part of the time collection.