The second We Walk The Earth album, The Drowned World, is both a prequel and a follow-up to debut album The Ice Storm.
We Walk The Earth was founded in 2020 by guitarist, composer, musicologist and producer J.M. Gagen. The project is an exploration of dark, inner geographies and the processes that form us, and ultimately is an exercise in catharsis.
Written between 2020 and 2024 The Drowned World continues the themes found on We Walk The Earth's debut album The Ice Storm (Nov 2022, Lights And Lines), expanding on ideas and carrying the music forward into the present day. The album has a guitar-focussed production that builds around a band structure, also utilising drums, bass, vocals, horns and old-school keys (piano, organ and mellotron, primarily).
Having lost his partner, Ami Wilson (AKA Kassia Flux) to cancer during the first lockdown in 2020, Gagen decided to do what he knows best; write, perform and produce music. Over the next 18 months he created two albums as We Walk The Earth, a project he originally designated as a "blues/rock/alt-country band, that could be taken to the live arena with a minimal line-up."
Both albums are described as `dark geographies' due to the use of themed metaphors (rivers, oceans, astronomical phenomena, mountains and deserts all feature), which Gagen uses to process and emote states and situations related to death, bereavement and isolation.
When considering the dark nature of the subject matter, Gagen says that "though the songs are all rooted in a very negative experience, I have tried my best to make something beautiful out of it. It felt like it was the best way to process it all in a positive way. Hopefully that comes across."
