REAR WINDOW - Running Away

Rear Window was formed in the aftermath of a couple of successful co-writing sessions between two London based musicians; singer songwriter John Sterry (aka JJ. Sterry) and producer/guitarist Santi Arribas (aka The Roadside Bandits Project).
The two have known each other for almost a decade, they met when Sterry was invited by the late Andy Gill to join his influential post-punk outfit Gang of Four as their new front man, with whom he toured extensively and sang in all their new releases from 2015. At the time, Arribas was also closely working with Gill at his London recording studio as part of his production team until his passing in February 2020, it was at that time that he took the helm of Gill’s studio, Rear Window Studios, which soon became the home of all his production work and has been ever since.
The duo sat together in early 2023 to write a song to be included in Arribas’ second album “The Siberian Candidate”. As a result of that session, the two decided to “write a couple more songs, for fun…”, several other writing sessions followed which seamlessly evolved into the completion of an entire album made of a bunch of eclectic and sometimes uplifting songs, all performed by both musicians and infused with the pair’s musical influences indiscriminately coming from pop, dance, folk, blues and rock, with Sterry penning the lyrical content and Arribas taking over the production duties. For them, it only felt natural to name their new project after the studio since all the writing, recording and mixing were done inside the walls of what had been in different forms their natural creative environment over the years. Their debut album is set for release in the autumn of 2024.
Their first single ‘Running Away’ will see the light in June 2024, a mid-tempo arrangement enveloped in an alt-pop synthesised sound with rich melodic harmonies and airy guitar licks over a Bossa nova rhythm pattern unashamedly taken from an ancient Casio VL-1 mini synth, originally designed as an all-in-one portable keyboard and calculator. As for the lyrics, Sterry says “The song is about a restless life - that feeling when everything is going well - you feel yourself start settling down but somehow it all gets claustrophobic, and you want to just run away from it all. Call it self-sabotage, call it following your heart, I don't know, but it's a life lived I guess”.