We often listen to new records online and there are musicians out there who are actually making an effort to make records, in spite of quarantine, lockdowns, and general crises in the music industry. Recently for me, that has been James Johnston’s and Steve Gullick’s We Travel Time, out on vinyl and CD
After the concert of New York-based singer Lydia Lunch and Big Sexy Noise, somewhat before Covid19 lockdowns, I was impressed with the raw-spontaneous elements of the band and I was impressed with James Johnston. And yet, James Johnston was one of the guitar players for Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and P.J.Harvey (among other bands) for a while. We Travel Time record happened during the most recent lockdown in the UK and is the result of bobble Covid 19 lockdown duet connection (Johnston and Gullick) painter/musician James Johnston (Gallon Drunk, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds) team up with music photographer Steve Gullick (Tenebrous Liar, Mark Lanegan/Soulsavers). But the genesis of We Travel Time happened while they worked together on an art show in late 2019 and started spontaneously improvising. All songs sound very different like each song was made in a different period and in a totally different mood.-“Speaking for myself, and particularly with music and painting, what comes out comes out. You don’t really need to push it if you’re open enough to let things happen. Everything gets fed through and comes out in some odd mangled way as the result, often finding its own meaning when it’s done, or at least you then recognize why you did it or what was lurking in the back of your mind. You need to free yourself up in order to let some kind of poetry of accident happen, that’s what you then need to steer towards a finished piece. Poetry of accident is what i’m hoping for every day when I go into the studio, something that doesn’t look like your own hand, that’s what I find really exciting, ” clarified Johnston. For example, a song from the We Travel Time record, the First Light is a classical piece featuring a piano/violin and gives the association with waves and the sea. Then, a Blue Rider features vocals accompanied with instrumentation. Seven Seas maybe can be seen as a post-rock song, Poised To Fall takes on an alternative way etc… All this stripped to a particular kind of fragility, but somewhat, the beautiful one. The album feels like an upbeat experimental note, melancholy, ambient record.
There is no way to do not associate this record with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and let’s say Ghosteen, which is, of course, no great surprise. The general feeling for the We Travel Time record is moody and atmospherics, and independent. It came from their heart and from the head as the reflection of the general and gloomy musician mood, as a lockdown side-effect.
What I noticed is this. It is very difficult to determine a genre, without generalizing, just as it is hard to determine a source noise level, which is associated with different genres. Music is a dynamic art, and as such, new musical sub-genres are being created all of the time and if we could call a new genre melancholy this would be it. Maybe if we are talking from the general aspect of (sub)genre, I would call We Travel Time a real-time, indie, alternative record and I am noticing reducing, minimal, and controlling variation of the noise level. But if we, as media examine the influence of music genre against entertainment, maybe we could call it an alternative method of noise emission criteria. And if we talk about variability, I could say that one single receptor is not enough, the record definitely needs to be heard by others. With all this melancholy quality,it sounds very cinematic, like it was meant to be a soundtrack for the film and of course sounds very personal. It feels like the listener was really there, present in the studio when it happened.