Another concert postponed thanks to the times we live in. But better late than never, Justin Sullivan is at Batschkapp this coming Friday, 17th September, promoting his second solo album, ‘Surrounded’.
18 years after Justin’s first solo album, ‘Navigating by the Stars’, ‘Surrounded’ is a collection of 16 new songs written during lockdown. And in true Sullivan style, this songwriter tells stories of landscapes, the world and his perception. Justin has the ability to make intelligent parallels and observations about history and the current developments in the world.
“The stories of polar (and in particular Antarctic) adventurers at the beginning of the 20th Century have long been a fascination,” Sullivan explains regarding the new single ‘Amundsen’. On my first solo record, [the song] ‘Ocean Rising’ is, in part, the story of Ernest Shackleton’s epic voyage from Elephant Island to South Georgia. The final race to reach the South Pole between Robert Scott and Roald Amundsen is another fascinating tale. Being raised in England, Scott and his ‘noble, tragic’ failure is a story written large in national mythology but the other man, a truly remarkable explorer, is rarely acknowledged. The battle over who gets to tell which version of a story is very relevant in these times of ‘culture wars,’ but the song is more a simple study of the man himself. I hope I have done him justice.
Under the circumstances, it wasn’t particularly surprising that this was the moment to make another solo record and the songs came thick and fast in the first few weeks of the lockdown,” Sullivan shares about the album. “There is not so much about ‘what’s happening in the world.’ As with ‘Navigating by the Stars’, which was written in the aftermath of 9/11, I wanted to write about other things — some well-known stories, some less well-known, a few autobiographical, and more a landscape of the imagination than social comment. I’m grateful for all the many musical contributions I received from friends that helped create all the different atmospheres and places; it’s a long album, but it seems that all the songs belonged together in one collection. I hope people enjoy it.”
Justin recorded most songs on the record at home and included fellow musicians Tom Moth (Florence and the Machine and brother of New Model Army bassist Ceri Monger) on harp, Jon Thorpe (Lamb) on bass amongst the other members of NMA. Sullivan’s composer friends Shir-Ran Yinon, Henning Nügel and Tobias Unterberg also feature on this album of genius storytelling. Surrounded was mixed by Lee Smith at Greenmount Studios in Leeds.
Justin’s first solo album ‘Navigating by the Stars’ has been unavailable to buy for years; when the CD was released in 2003, The Independent said it had “the warm organic quality of Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks”. Not sure Justin will want to be compared to Van Morrison other than musically, but lucky for his fans, the album is being re-released with the current release of ‘Surrounded’. Whether you buy the bos set, the CDs or vinyls (!) individually or download digitally, drop in to Batschkapp to see the songs performed live.
To get you in the mood, watch the video to the single ‘Amundsen’ here https://youtu.be/n_YZd6N978c
See you on Friday!
https://batschkapp.tickets.de/en/tour/1003830-justin_sullivan_solo
