Having first met in 1991, music photographer Steve Gullick and James Johnston, founder of Gallon Drunk, began blurring the boundaries between audio and visual in 2004 when they formed their own band,’…bender’. They’ve maintained the habit ever since, with Gullick subsequently founding Tenebrous Liar and Johnston pursuing a career, alongside his work with PJ Harvey and a tenure in Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, as an acclaimed visual artist and painter.
After working together on an art show in late 2019, the idea of making music again immediately resurfaced. Without any firm strategy, Johnston and Gullick began recording, unprompted, drawing upon a shared love of noise, folk, and classical. After the first tracks began to evolve, however, they knew they’d unearthed something compelling and fresh, not to mention unexpectedly mysterious. This became WE TRAVEL TIME.
The result is a deceptively crafted album that slowly reveals – and, more importantly, embraces – beauty in its cracks. Piano, voice, violin and guitar create a drifting haze, with the focus on these acoustic elements forging an imagined soundtrack. . . Ambient sounds – birds, rain, cars, clocks, distant voices – also drift in and out, melting into the music’s fabric via windows left open during the early 2020 heatwave. WE TRAVEL TIME, nonetheless, resists definition, remaining enigmatically timeless.
Further emphasising the album’s unique voice, the spirit of intimate collaboration carries right through to WE TRAVEL TIME’s artwork, as well as an animated video for ‘Stormy Sea’. Both blend Gullick’s film and photography with Johnston’s art, and a special limited edition of the album will also include a book of Johnston’s illustrations, used in Gullick’s ‘Stormy Sea’ video.
WE TRAVEL TIME is released on 26 February, 2021 via God Unknown Records. Preorder here on Bandcamp
