Get immersed in James Johnston and Steve Gullick's haunting album trailer for Everybody's Sunset

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Faust collaborator James Johnston and teams up with photographer Steve Gullick for the epic Everybody's Sunset

Steve Gullick and James Johnston sitting in a white room with red monkey masks on
(Image credit: Press)

Photographer Steve Gullick and musician-artist James Johnston (Faust/Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds) have teamed up on the cinematic post-rock album, Everybody's Sunset – out on November 18 via God Unknown Records. 

The creative pair first met in 1991 and formed the band ....Bender in 2004, but it wasn't until late 2019 that they decided to begin work on more experimental music. Everybody's Sunset is the second album released under their own names and follows on from 2021's We Travel Time. A keen fan of krautrock, prog readers might also know Johnston from his work with Faust on 2011's Something Dirty.

Everybody's Sunset sees the duo use violin, organ, guitar, banjo, autoharp, harmonica, piano, synthesisers and more to maximum effect across 10 tracks of experimental post-rock. 

“A lot of the record is about tension,” says Johnston. “Eno and Tavener are things I was listening to; we were pushing away from songs.”

But it's the album's near-10-minute title track, which closes the album, that really brings together their avant-garde influences.  

“This track, that’s the centre of the record, was cut together, cut apart, ending up almost unrecognisable from where it started and then goes off on a complete tangent,” explains Johnston. 

“Even though we record fast, to keep a live feel, we really spent time on this album reassembling and disassembling a lot of the tracks. The fractured, wistful song has a kind of damaged psychedelic yearning we both love on Big Star's 3rd, or at least that’s what we were going for, which goes into a totally spacey and almost Wagnerian synth and string freak-out, or a Popol Vuh Herzog soundtrack.  We were definitely both listening to side two of Low and Heroes at the time too and wanted to give the music a chance to stretch out, go somewhere unexpected.”

Pre-order Everybody's Sunset via Bandcamp and stream the album trailer below. 

Tracklisting

1 The Moon & The Stars
2 Shimmer
3 A Fear Of Everything
4 Save Our Souls
5 Ice Moon
6 The Town That Couldn't Sleep
7 Medieval Death Song
8 A Greater Silence
9 Who I Who
10 Everybody's Sunset

Natasha Scharf
Natasha Scharf
Deputy Editor, Prog

Contributing to Prog since the very first issue, writer and broadcaster Natasha Scharf was the magazine’s News Editor before she took up her current role of Deputy Editor, and has interviewed some of the best-known acts in the progressive music world from ELP, Yes and Marillion to Nightwish, Dream Theater and TesseracT. Starting young, she set up her first music fanzine in the late 80s and became a regular contributor to local newspapers and magazines over the next decade. The 00s would see her running the dark music magazine, Meltdown, as well as contributing to Metal Hammer, Classic Rock, Terrorizer and Artrocker. Author of music subculture books The Art Of Gothic and Worldwide Gothic, she’s since written album sleeve notes for Cherry Red, and also co-wrote Tarja Turunen’s memoirs, Singing In My Blood. Beyond the written word, Natasha has spent several decades as a club DJ, spinning tunes at aftershow parties for Metallica, Motörhead and Nine Inch Nails. She’s currently the only member of the Prog team to have appeared on the magazine’s cover.