GUNSHIP: The Soundtrack Behind My Paintings and My Words

Music & Musicians

There are musicians I listen to because I like them, musicians I put on because I am in a particular mood, and then there are the rare ones who somehow become part of the furniture of creativity.

GUNSHIP have become that for me.

If I am sitting at my computer writing my book, there is a very good chance that GUNSHIP will be playing through YouTube Music. If I am painting, much the same applies. They have become one of those bands I can listen to for hours without reaching the point where my brain suddenly says, *Right, that’s enough of that.*

Considering how easily distracted I can be, that is quite an achievement.

Their music seems to occupy exactly the right amount of space. It is powerful enough to create an atmosphere, but it does not constantly demand that I stop what I am doing and pay attention to it. Instead, it builds a world around whatever I happen to be creating.

And GUNSHIP are exceptionally good at building worlds.

So, Who Are GUNSHIP?

GUNSHIP are a British synthwave band consisting of Alex Westaway, Dan Haigh and Alex Gingell. Westaway and Haigh were already known as members of the alternative rock band Fightstar before creating GUNSHIP, with Gingell subsequently joining them. The project emerged in 2014 and their self titled debut album, *GUNSHIP*, followed in 2015.

Their music sits broadly within synthwave, a genre heavily influenced by the electronic music, film scores, games and popular culture of the 1980s.

That description, however, does not quite do GUNSHIP justice.

There are certainly synthesisers. Lots of them. There is enough neon soaked retro futurism to illuminate a small town. There are echoes of VHS tapes, arcade machines, science fiction, horror films, cyberpunk cities and the sort of imaginary 1980s future in which everybody apparently drove through Los Angeles at midnight while being pursued by something extremely dangerous.

But GUNSHIP do more than imitate the past.

Their music takes those influences and builds something much larger around them. Rock, electronic music, pop, cinematic scores and darker industrial elements wander in and out. The result can feel nostalgic and futuristic at precisely the same time.

That contradiction is probably part of the attraction.

Perhaps it makes sense that I listen to GUNSHIP while painting because their music is extraordinarily visual.

I do not simply hear it. I see it.

There are streets in it. Colours. Darkness. Rain on glass. Empty roads. Neon signs. Cities at three in the morning. Strange rooms. Fast cars. People making extremely questionable decisions.

Sometimes there are wolves. Admittedly, the wolves might be my fault.

When I am writing fiction, particularly the darker parts of my current book series, music can help me remain inside the world I am creating. Silence gives the everyday world too much opportunity to creep back in. Put the right music on, however, and there is suddenly a barrier between me and everything outside the story. GUNSHIP are particularly good at providing that barrier.

There is an emotional darkness running through much of their music without it becoming relentlessly bleak. There is energy, danger, melancholy, romance and occasionally something almost euphoric. For fiction involving obsession, violence, supernatural creatures, rather complicated relationships and people who frequently make spectacularly bad life choices, it works remarkably well.

The band’s aesthetic is deliberately steeped in 1980s culture. Their influences include the films, television, video games and soundtracks of that period, and they use vintage analogue synthesisers and retro electronic equipment as part of creating their sound.

Yet this is where I think GUNSHIP become more interesting than simple nostalgia. They are not attempting to reproduce an old record. They are taking the *idea* of that era’s future and continuing it.

It is the future imagined by people who had enormous computers, cassette tapes and absolutely no idea that within a few decades we would all be carrying tiny computers in our pockets and using them primarily to argue with strangers and watch videos of dogs.

GUNSHIP’s world is the future the 1980s thought we might have.

It is darker, prettier and considerably more neon.

Their visual work reinforces that identity. One of the band’s best known early tracks, **Tech Noir**, was accompanied by a claymation video created with filmmaker Lee Hardcastle, with legendary filmmaker and composer John Carpenter involved in the project. Carpenter’s presence feels particularly appropriate given how profoundly his own electronic scores influenced the musical language from which synthwave eventually developed.

Their debut album, *GUNSHIP*, arrived in 2015 and established the sound and aesthetic that would become their signature.

Three years later came *Dark All Day* in 2018, an album that expanded both the scale of the music and the number of collaborators involved. Guests included Tim Cappello, Kat Von D, Stella Le Page and Wil Wheaton, while science fiction author Richard K. Morgan contributed spoken vocals. The album reached number one on the UK Dance Albums Chart and Billboard’s Heatseekers Albums chart.

Then came *Unicorn* in September 2023.

If the first two records established the GUNSHIP universe, *Unicorn* threw open the doors and invited half the neighbourhood inside.

Its fourteen tracks feature an extraordinary collection of collaborators, including John Carpenter, Gavin Rossdale of Bush, Dave Lombardo of Slayer, Carpenter Brut, Milkie Way of Wargasm, Tim Cappello, HEALTH, composer Tyler Bates, Lights, Power Glove, Charlie Simpson, Britta Phillips and Stella Le Page.

The album carries the wonderfully appropriate phrase:

**Imagination Is A Weapon.**

For a band whose entire identity seems built around taking fragments of cultural memory and constructing new worlds from them, it could hardly be more fitting.

It also happens to be a sentiment I rather like.

Music while creating can be difficult. Something too quiet disappears completely. Something too intrusive starts competing with the work. Songs that demand close attention can be wonderful when you are simply listening, but rather less useful when you are attempting to hold an entire fictional scene in your head. GUNSHIP somehow occupy the territory between the two.

Their music creates momentum.

When I am painting, that momentum can carry me through the repetitive or fiddly stages when the initial excitement of an idea has worn off and the painting has entered the irritating stage where it looks dreadful and I begin questioning every decision that led me to it.

Every artist knows that stage.

When writing, the effect is slightly different. Their music can make the imaginary world feel closer. A scene gains atmosphere. Characters become easier to inhabit. The room around me becomes less noticeable.

Eventually I realise I have been listening to GUNSHIP for several hours.

Again.

Calling them background music would therefore be rather unfair.

Background music is something that happens to be playing.

This is closer to creating an environment.

GUNSHIP have built an entire musical universe from analogue synthesisers, rock, electronic music, science fiction, horror, cyberpunk and the cultural wreckage of the 1980s. Yet somehow that universe leaves enough empty space for other people’s imaginations to move into it. Mine certainly has.

Their music has accompanied paintings, ideas, characters, arguments, deaths, wolves, villains and probably several thousand words that seemed like a brilliant idea at two in the morning and required substantial repair the following day. I suspect that is why I keep returning to them.