I AM HANDS is the new project from UK-based musician and producer, Owen Gillham. With a self-titled debut album, Owen is raising money for the mental health charity CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably). All income received from record sales will be passed on to the charity. The project, which explores a range of genres, from neo-folk to ambient electronica, will be released via Bandcamp, CD and Vinyl. Though often instrumental, I AM HANDS is filled with profound emotion, with gorgeous production tying together a decade of ideas.
Having lost two of the most important people in his life – his dad and then his best friend, fellow musician, James McCully – Owen has described how he felt pointless, paralysed and trapped. Part of the process of moving forward required a certain amount of looking backwards, so he took the unlikely decision to revisit and finish the ten-year deep catalogue of music he’d started with James. Many of these tracks were little more than short melodic excerpts and loops, but the notion of completing or developing this raft of unfinished work offered some closure and now acts as a vehicle for doing good.
Owen shares, “Grief grabs you and pulls you down like you’re being pulled underwater. Part of the process of recovering from loss for me, at least, required a certain amount of looking backwards – I determined that I needed to fight the undertow”
Explaining further, “it was an opportunity for something beautiful to grow from the misery of the past year and a half and a way to make our music mean something, not just exist as a relic of a creative process that had been stolen away”.
Owen has previously worked with Junkboy (whose latest album was described by Mojo Magazine as a “moment of calm in our turbulent world…”), novelist and songwriter Sophie Mackintosh, The Whiskey Priest and Swedish singer-songwriter Ellie Madeland.
