gengahr - red sun titals - liberator

Over the last few years we’ve all been forced to pause and reflect. With life returning – but not as we know it – we all experienced that sense of starting over and asking ourselves if things could ever be quite like they were before. Acclaimed London indie four-piece Gengahr have been through the wringer, too – taking stock and making peace with everything they have been through. Now they’re back, with a career-best fourth album and a new lease of life. 

The new album Red Sun Titans is the sound of a band reborn – harnessing the energy and inspiration of their past but with a bold and fiercely independent vision for the future. It’s an album “caught in between two worlds,” as frontman Felix Bushe puts it – a colourful celebration where you’ve come from, and dreaming of where you could go from here. 

Having formed Gengahr at school with his pals bassist Hugh Schulte, drummer Danny Ward, and guitarist John Victor, Bushe returned to the wide-eyed youthful wonderlust of when they met. Driven by a similar energy and sense of fun as their 2015 debut ‘A Dream Outside’ – “with no end goal and just four friends doing what they love,” as Bushe puts it – the horizon of their fourth album would be the fresh start Gengahr needed after some serious self-analysis. Red Sun Titans would take the band right back to the drawing board. 

“It was a nice opportunity to revisit where the origins of our creativity came from,” remembers Bushe of the writing of Red Sun Titans. “A lot of the imagery and backdrop to the songs is set in these very primitive memories of watching cartoons as a child, of watching films by weird directors like Jodorowsky, listening to The Beatles in the car on the way to school and not really realising how surreal and otherworldly it was at the time, or dipping our toes in a slightly more psychedelic world. That’s what led me into deciding that music was what I wanted to do.”

Produced and mixed by Matt Glasbey (Ed Sheeran, alt-J, Coldplay, Rag'n'Bone Man, P!nk) with executive production by Charlie Andrew (Wolf Alice, London Grammar, Bloc Party, and all three alt-J albums) – a duo who helped “keep the big picture in mind, put oxygen in the room and let things exist” – new album Red Sun Titans is the ambitious, unrestrained and widescreen statement Gengahr have always threatened to make. 

Drawing on the sounds, scale and optimism of the ‘90s indie they grew up on (“a golden era for music,” says Bushe), Red Sun Titans makes for a psychedelic and invigorating trip. Kaleidoscopic opener ‘Alkali’ takes you right to the heart of the matter as the band shred through an ode to sleepless nights. “That’s about being slumped on a sofa at 4am and still enjoying that presence and moment,” says Bushe. 

The playful pop of ‘A Ladder’ follows that thread of what Bushe describes as “being intoxicated, lost in love and with a sense of escapism”. There’s a subtle funk to the album’s title track as Bushe flirts with dancing “two steps from the edge”. “It’s an important song and it captures that sense of childhood abandon which gets lost in adult life,” he reveals. 

He continues: “There are two sides to the album: one is that naive counterpart where you want to exist as a child forever and don’t want to exist with the drudgery of adult life, then the other songs on the album – like ‘In My Way’, ‘Collapse’ and ‘Napoleon’ – are about checking your ego and coming to terms with great loss, what you’re doing with your time and if it’s worth it. The album sits at that crossroads where you can still see the past, but you’re trying your best to embrace the future.”

Now with nothing in their way and a renewed compulsion, Gengahr 2.0 now have the vision to match the scale of their sound. When you boldly go right back to the start, the road is long, unending and unknown. Success however, comes in their ability to exist and do only what they can.

“Many people probably feel like we haven’t reached our potential,” Bushe concludes. “Sometimes I question whether we’re lucky or the most unlucky band. We’ve sat alongside a lot of acts that have done better and we’ve also seen a lot of our friends in bands that had to disband and do other things because it wasn’t possible to carry on anymore. 

“The last two records came with a lot of baggage,” admits Bushe. “‘Where Wildness Grows’ [2018] was our second record so the pressure felt fairly immense – combined with the fact that my mum passed away while we were making that record. The album had a sense of purpose, but not one that felt entirely coherent as I probably wasn’t in my right mind for a lot of that process.”

When the time came for 2020’s optimistically-titled ‘Sanctuary’, life hadn’t got much easier for Bushe. “The woman in my life who had supported me throughout my mum’s illness and passing then lost her visa so had to leave the country. I was left in another difficult position. Throughout those two records, I was on a mission. This one was very different.”

The album arrived just a couple of months before the world was put on hold. With no “overbearing feature in life to write about” and nothing but time, the pause of lockdown led to a more reflective outlook from Bushe. “I was at a crossroads where you had to really draw back and ask, ‘Why am I doing this?’ You had to find the purpose again and that really brought me back round to the beginning.”

With that in mind, the band’s perspective shifted back to the fighting spirit they first started out with. “We’re embracing the idea that we are the underdogs now,” adds Bushe. “We’ve stayed together, we’ve stayed friends, we still enjoy making music, we’ve navigated ourselves to this point and there’s a lot to cherish in that. 

“We’ve done this for a long time and it’s always been a struggle, but also a labour of love. We’re just happy to be making what we consider to be great music – that’s what drives us forward now.”