Rick and Davey first met in 2009 during recording sessions at Chem19 studios near Glasgow, where Davey worked as an engineer. The Phantom Band, the cult motorik indie-rock collective fronted by Rick, were then in the process of making their second album The Wants. The two came to know one another much better a few years later while both studying for a Masters, by which time Rick had begun releasing solo records under the moniker Rick Redbeard, beginning with 2013’s No Selfish Heart. Davey was moving into soundtrack work which included Virginia Heath’s highly acclaimed From Scotland With Love (2014) and would later include a David Attenborough documentary for the BBC. The pair’s first collaboration was writing music for Cindy Jansen’s 2021 documentary Prince of Muck. “It soon became apparent that it was a partnership that we felt could produce some interesting and worthwhile work,” says Rick.

When the pandemic descended in 2020, the two began exchanging ideas remotely “as a way of keeping in touch and keeping busy through what was obviously just a really weird time.” Quickly the contours of what would become Afterlands began to emerge. “Davey would send me instrumental tracks,” remembers Rick, “that I would then spend a few weeks writing a song around; eventually sending him some roughly recorded ideas back that often had kids shouting in the background or whatever domestic noise was going on. On the other hand, I would send him a rough one-minute voice note of a sketchy idea and within a couple of hours he would send me back a fully arranged and orchestrated track as if plucked from thin air.”