East Devon Soul Festival will support, nurture, enlivening and reawaken the music scene in East Devon, UK, utilising the underrepresented town of Seaton, snuck between those classic holiday destination, Lyme Regis and Sidmouth. Music is vibrant in these two places, central to their cultural and tourist economy. Seaton is a beautiful brutalist place, the concrete wall protecting the town from the ravages of the sea, a wide open expanse with white and red stone cliffs on either side, a perfect crescent, half moon, curvacious place. Seaton has lots of venues, all currently utilised to recreate school discos or house another covers band mainly full of blokes. East Devon Soul aims to bring global music beats from around the world to the southern shores, a Womadian aim to educate and glamourise, provide multi-ethnic culture to this mainly white populace. Bands featuring the music of Africa, South America, Europe, Australasia and Asia. Interesting electronic beats. New sounds, interesting instruments. East Devon Soul sees the heartfelt, music coming from within the self and collaborative cultures. A chance to dance and listen, to be transported, to be educated, to be entertained and join in with that process.
Plans are afoot for a big event in 2026, the East Devon Soul Festival. Venues across the town such as The Gateway Theatre, the Tramway and the Old Picturehouse will house artists within global, soul, funk, electronic and jazz genres, crossing divides, entertaining and educating. Early July will see people flock to Seaton, dancing on the beach, by the beach, looking at the beach. Devon’s answer to Cafe del Mar, evening summer raves, a quick dip after a sweaty dance.
This year we are bringing acts such as the Cuban Buena Bristol Social Club,Omega Nebula firing dub and step, Fulu with their hidden personas, brass and techno in joyous combination, the amazing soulful Hannah and the Affirmations, as sampled by Jay-Z, to the live drum and bass of Doctor Meaker. Cuban heavyweights Asere will fire into the region at the start of Novembr. Music ecosystems enlivened by adding to the mix, adding variables to support cultural expansion in this naturally beautiful place.
Information about the East Devon Soul Festival will be coming to your eyes and ears soon. July 2026. Great value. Great acts. Great fun
Football, football, football. You watch your team through thick and thin. Weekend after weekend, peering for your results. All to end up without a trophy, maybe promotion, relegation. Supporting a middling Midlands team, some wins, some loses, some good performances, some bad. It’s about the individual moments. You are never going to have much success, just waiting for those few elements of excitement, happiness, warmth. Another season to look forward to. New players, new look. Hope is the hardest thing. But also, the most exciting. Pre-season. Then it’s more football, football, football. Week in week out, through thick and thin. Home and away. Same old teams to play. Football is very technical nowadays. No fouling, no real tackling. Little nudges, on the edge of fouls, moving bodies into certain spaces, gaining balance and space advantage over competitors. Subtle ways of keeping control of the ball. The fans getting excited, looking forward. Most teams don’t really win. They might win the individual battles, games, but not the big cups, awards. It’s about the communal family being happy. A new year. Hope eternal. New kit. New players. New coach. Same old same old. But there are moments, a point in time where everyone and everything comes together, that last minute goal where shouts of joy and relief splatter your locale, occurring at slightly different moments due to the lag in TV feeds. Arriving home, gently rolling into the driveway just as England superstar Jude Bellingham brilliantly places an overhead kick into the bottom right-hand corner. From despair to joy, emotions raging through. It is the moments that count rather than some beautiful game, the movement of the ball matching heartbeats. Watching your own team is like a completely different sport, every pass, tackle, cross, save coming deep from within rather than distance. Collectively kicking every ball. Hope. As humans that is all we need, the possibility of the future being something better than what is now. Preseason pre-reality.
So, the Olympics provide an opportunity to show the non-futility of sport. Nations coming together across the globe every four years. There is enough distance and distinction between events to create innovative original games, emerging at certain points in history that create a certain resonance. From the first person to run to Ancient Greece. I remember the Moscow games of 1980 where the USA boycott provided opportunities for others on the track and field. Alan Wells. Superstar. 1984, George Orwell appeared in the dystopian city of angels, huge coliseums and Carl Lewis. Korea, Spain, Australia, America again, China and then London, our own games. No better than any of the others. Rebuilding disused parts of the city. Bringing the country together in great hope. People seemed connected towards a common goal. The fighting could stop. But then Brexit. Great wounds blasted open, a country in disarray, shooting itself in the foot instead of hitting a target or clay disc. Such experts in ancient sports. The modern pentathlon. There is such jingoism about our games. Surely they were the best ever. Iconic. But then the world moved onto Brazil, equally as amazing gathering of athletes. Poor Japan had the covid Olympics. Masks, no crowds, deathly silence echoing through vast stadiums. Surely Tokyo should be given another opportunity, the chance to hold them with people present. All that infrastructure, money spent building should go towards something positive. It would clear the world of those isolated memories. The Paris 2024 Olympics concluded, recognised by many already as one of the best ever. Whisper it, even greater than London. Taking the sports to the central part of the city, using its stunning architecture. Having fun. Being totally French. There was such great warmth, emotion, love and enjoyments, people who don’t normally enjoy sport getting hooked into the skateboarding, Australian breakdancing, synchronised diving, speed climbing, BMX. The outlying sports provided with as much focus as any other. A completely non-hierarchical experience. And it has a finite length. Sadness creeps over me as the closing ceremony hands over the baton to LA (again). Surely somewhere else would be appropriate, away from the land of Donald, but at least they have the infrastructure already there. Is Africa generally too hot and poor to be given the opportunity. I mean, football came to Kuwait. A slight regret sweeps over me that I didn’t try to go and be part of the Parisian event, living so close, having lived a little life in France. That was bad planning as the games won’t be coming so near for quite a while. I feel sad that LA wont be the same. Too brash and knowing. The French have a naivety that is instantly charming. Puffing on a Gitanes whiles absent mindedly tossing silver balls into a pit of sand. Who really wants a Hollywood blockbuster. So time for a rest from sport, or let the new football season gradually wash over me, taking me subtly in again. New hopes. New dreams. Players diving around in fake agony, felled by slight clips, trips and fingertips. The Olympics are honest, difficult, a true test of the best. Years of hard work coming to fruition or crunch points, moments where you either succeed or disappear back to obscurity, unable to secure the funding to continue. Dreams shattered. The success of the Olympics provides hope, bringing the world together through excellence. The fittest people in the world all in one place at the same time. The ultimate truth. Sport, sport, sport.
Artificially intelligent. Robots taking over the world. Our lives changing forever, your life in their hands. Big brother taking control of the wheel, building the car and taking you for whatever journey they fancy. You are out of control, like Trump out for a morning stroll, spitting nonsensical rubbish out into the world, creating chaos, firing shots all over the place just to see what happens, shooting them so they just fly past ears, surface wounds. Just a few centimetres from a different world; the fallibility of humans. AI will take the strain although trains will still probably run late, be cancelled, smell of the 1970s: Comfort, sweat and piss. The perfect world built around AI will never exist. People will still be sheltering under bridges, wrapped in stinking old blankets, comforted by Blue Nun or other such fortified wine. Our computerised intelligent friends will make many jobs redundant, those menial tasks that some people probably enjoy. Fiddling around with a spreadsheet, using mental arithmetic, digging deep into school history lessons to remember dates of lesser-known wars. The Boer wars, when were they again? Time will exist to pop more regularly to the gym, to go out for midday walks whilst your bot collates every element of your business into a streamlined project management proposal. Us humans left to ponder, to be artistic, creative. So why then are multiple governments defunding the arts, when understanding our creative selves is going to be a key element of the next 100 years. By 2099 the average life span will be 150 years old, frail bodies reconstructed, minds connected to mainframes, town centres overpopulated with electric zimmer frames and silent non-polluting vehicles. Healthcare transformed, early warnings for the previously terminally ill. Street corner smokers replaced by electronic transmitters. No one dies. Graveyards get turned over to be used as spaces to house mega computers. Chips implanted into babies at birth, regulating every last internal element, checking dietary requirements from within. Providing a smart watch readout, regulating everything so that you can maximise productivity and life. Serendipity disappears. We are all under central control. Tik Tok memes a quaint remembrance from the past like grainy black and white film. Everything is sanitised. Life is perfect. More people are stacked up under the bridges, freezing, washed away by yet another deluge as ice caps melt. What is AI going to do for and to us? But what is the overall ethos? What is the point? Increased efficiency. No more potholes in the road as AI can gather this data and put repairs into action, robotic teams laying steaming tarmac whilst one human worker looks on from central control. One human worker oversees all potholes, shuffling to monthly line management meetings with his robotic boss. Lines of driverless cars waiting patiently for the green light, no horns are blared, the world is silent except for the incessant sounds of nature and the unromantic whirring of machines; a chance to make music and write poetry whilst sat in early morning traffic. Planning vacations where electric planes can silently deliver you to picture perfect locations; all is clean and sanitised now, the madness of Varanasi no longer existing, pushing past cows in the streets as bodies burn by the dirty rivers edge. No gritty industrial estates, bleak and foreboding windswept arenas. But inequalities will remain, the human desire for separation and difference. Sanitised AI worlds only existing for a few not the many. Those lucky to have been born into AI families, those fortunate Gen Z whose long line of families bought property cheaply during the 1970s and 80s. Will AI really change that much for the general population, like watching the BAFTA’s, lots of suited and booted mega stars on your screens, talking about inequalities, talking about creativity, still a load of old white men in boring evening suits congratulating other white men in equally anonymous attire. Hopefully AI can help to bring some levels of equality rather than just efficiency, provide opportunities and visibility for all. Reconfigure the workplace so that everyone’s talents are maximised, that life work balance, universal wage and true equality arrives for all.
So there are 5 nights until the next full moon, where you can leave the comfort of your house and safely venture out to the wonderful Marine Theatre in Lyme Regis where you will happen upon East Devon Soul presenting the wonderful music of the Buena Vista Social Club recreated with a Bristol swagger by some of the best UK latin musicians. What more do you want to usher in Spring and Summer 2025. What better sound or view will you get in the UK to experience latin tropical vibes. Enrollar, enrollar, come and join the moon!
Watching the early Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown has altered the perspective on a singer songwriter I never really understood or resonated with. I still don’t. It seems incongruous the reaction from audiences as Zimmerman announces his presence across New York and then the globe. A voice of a generation emerging from the shooting of Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis. A voice of the people who couldn’t really connect with anyone personally, relationships destroyed by his desire to create, the importance of voicing the creative product over spending time with partners. A complete blinkered drive heading one way down the highway straight to the creative space, casualties splattered on the pavement around him joining those static and rolling stones. The film doesn’t dive into his backstory, provide some sort of connectivity with family, upbringing, education or socialisation but just places Bob in Greenwich Village, with the fellow cats, shades on, cigarettes smoked. That’s how he got such a gravelly voice, alongside the passive smoke from everyone else who was lighting up. It’s what’s missing from our popular culture nowadays. No one smokes, all pop artists are generally squeaky clean, autotuned to robotic AI perfection. Dylan was anti AI although just as anti-social. In modern day New York he could open up his computer rather than searching for key changes on his guitar, speak into it, say “create a song in the style of Bob Dylan talking about how the world is heading for yet another disaster, this time with captains Trump and Musk at the controls rather than Khruschev or Nixon. A hard drives train is going to fall in place. Why are so many revered artists such c**t* in the real world. George Michael or Prince, lovely geezers. Laurie Anderson, brilliantly creative artist who still lives on her main hit O Superman, Uh uh uh uh, oh mum and dad. In a wonderful Desert Island Discs, Anderson talks about her amazing family, starring at school, the creative process and spirituality. Dylan smokes, looks moody and mumbles alongside his guitar. A great songwriter who appears to have come from outer space, inventing his own backstory, a carnival of smoke and mirrors. Someone no one will ever know.
These are funny things. The spotlight turns on you. At a young age, the frisson of excitement is almost too much, anticipation and then release. Seeming to take for ever to arrive. As an adult there is more nervousness, whether the presents you have bought your partner are really any good. Will they like them. What made you choose that? Lack of money. Pressure. Having to fulfil expectations both as a giver and a receiver. It’s a day you have to enjoy yourself. Too much pressure. Which is why you should spread it out, have a birthday week. Enjoy the chance of a lie in. Alter your patterns. The Covid 19 pandemic changed birthdays, a screen full of friends, acting, playing games, memories. Almost more connection, although virtual. Rafts of in person events cancelled. Meetings on doorsteps, sneaking off to the park, borrowing a dog for a secret rendezvous. Under control, police states surfacing almost instantly, the collective behaviour altered irreparably. Eat out to help out. Now we can’t afford to eat out or are bored of it, living in a small town going to the same places, eating average food at expensive prices. In doorways, lumps of human flesh are concealed, wrapped in sleeping bags and blankets, possessions stuffed around them, trying to stay warm, trying to be human. Birthdays, like every other day should be about trying to help, to recognise the plight of fellow humans. Stop and talk. Be there. Be present.
I don’t really want to celebrate but I feel obliged. OK I can enjoy it but having a deep winter birthday I try and add some sunshine to my spheres, to meet with friends and get the year moving; light is returning. The flood of deep winter deaths relenting. Hawaiian parties, Latin music, sparkle, light, glitter. There are never any expectations. Spring and summer birthdays have it lucky, or get disappointed due to the weather, or people being away. At least in the winter everyone is generally around, and desperate for something to alter their states of mind. One friend has his birthday at the end of May, often falling on a bank holiday, a time when people are away, doing their own thing. This creates a sense of isolation, a lack of connection as couples, families have their own agendas which cater for their inner circle, the unit, not especially interested in friends at that point. Birthdays can highlight the lack of children, tensions in family, a poignant moment. My dad died on my birthday. Thanks papa. Some sort of perfect symmetry, 23.1.23.
Automatic replies have been on. A moment to leave the working world behind, turn off the email and let the brain relax. It can take a few days for the mind to stop thinking about everyday issues and problems. You need to try and leave in a way where there are no issues overhanging which might eat into your brain, not allow you to fully relax. Our worlds are so overcome by earning a living, running projects, administration, bureaucracy, the needs of others, thinking about your job, looking for another job, friends, families, football teams. We all need a break, reset, get alternative perspectives which will then feed into our daily working worlds. The leisure process relies on us taking holidays, getting away from the daily grind to experience new worlds. A time to leave the screen, explore new cultures, sit by the pool, swim, read, wander, contemplate, talk, make new friends, cares gradually leaving your self as detachment from your daily routine and objects starts to nurture the soul. There is power in leaving work for periods of time, allowing your company or project to function even though you are not there. It shows trust in others. It is human to want to feel indispensable but allowing others to step up provides strength to organisations. Like a reserve goalkeeper in football, an unknown quantity until they are given the chance to perform under pressure. Give youth a chance. Managers nervous about their own precarious positions so afraid to experiment, to take a chance. It shows a lack of conviction in their own ways of working. But you can unleash them, from sitting on the side lines they take their moment, usurp the incumbent, become number one. Roy of the Rovers stuff. Experiment. Try things you never dared to consider. Do goalkeepers really need a break though, standing around watching. Goalkeepers are said to be mad, probably something to do with coping with the abuse they receive from behind their net. You’re s*** Agh. There aren’t many jobs where this level of personal attack is tolerated, even celebrated. All part of generating a great atmosphere. What do goalkeepers do when they go on vacation? Shout at random strangers. Stand longingly on a stretch of grass peering into the distance, wondering where all their mates have gone.
I love the winter break, a chance to stop, get ill, listen to podcasts and read. A chance to reflect on your top 20 books, albums, events, moments of the year almost past. Former conservative MP Rory Stewart is increasingly fascinating, a life spent trying to gather all information, to walk and connect with as many people as possible. His latest podcast, The long history of Ignorance, resonates in so many ways, especially episode 3 where he talks about ignorance behind creativity, the pure space where innovative work comes from which was the core theory behind my book Blank Canvas.
Why do we create stuff? Is there some inbuilt need to innovate, solidify your place in the world by manifesting? How creative practice connects to the brain is fascinating, the need to redevelop something fresh and original. Every day I have an innate need to do something creative, engage with the playful and free part of my brain. It doesn’t have to be for a long time, just at some point my inner self finds peace finds its tranquil home through scratching the creative itch.
I sometimes forge the time to create pieces of music, hours spent slaving over a hot computer based Digital Audio Workstation (DAW), perfecting sections on my computer, listening over and over to the same section, distorting reality, a sample of a Buddhist chant or the gentle lapping of the sea. Although I don’t really have the attention span for attention to detail. I love developing the structure, creating the whole outline, building up parts but then you need to go back and alter elements of instruments, hi hat positioning, the velocity of the odd kick drum, automation across your strings pads, hone the reverb until it sounds glassily transparent, build echoes onto certain moments so that that they last just the right amount of time, don’t mask or clash but aid the flow. I love creating melodies, interlocking parts that flow off each other. Rhythm less so. I like a pulse, a beat, but I keep missing all those intricacies that make up a great drum track. Creating the music is one thing, but then what happens? In previous eras you could go to your local studio, record some live parts over the basic structure, mix, master and create an artefact. Get friends to help in creating cover images, get your vinyl from the Czech pressing plant. Burn straight to 1/4-inch tape then Digital Audio Tape (DAT). Avidly, we created packs and sent them off to our favourite DJ’s and record shops. If it was any good then it got played. Not necessarily in large amounts but there was some traction, a point to the creative process, validation and the thrill of your sounds heading off into the ether. Nowadays I am increasingly thinking about the pointlessness of sending music out into the world. It is a saturated market, flooded by accessibility. The point of releasing music is generally about the self, satisfying a personal need to let the world have your piece of art, more flotsam to spin around digital highways, polluting, blocking up the cloud. The conundrum that the top 100 albums feature regular favourites such as the Beatles, Stones, Neil Sedaka and Nana Mouskouri, charity shops the new record stores. Spotify has endless music. Everyone can get their music on the platform; the gatekeepers have been sidelined at this point. Emancipation for good and bad. Although you now need connected humans, DJ’s, label managers, to make an impact. To get plays, streams, downloads you need a record company or influencer to catch onto your track, to like it in a way that connects with their other material. Music promotion companies such as Label Radar or Groover provide this service, enticing you to pitch your music to an endless supply of record companies. It does work. Some of my tracks get taken up and then you are onto stage 2. Promoting your track. Friends and family will sometimes listen but reaching beyond is so difficult, battling the tide of artists who have also released music that day. Estimates range between 60 to 100k releases per day. Every day. Still, you turn on 6 Music and Marvin Gaye is thoughtfully crooning along. Wonderwall is still building. The Smile continue to sound like Radiohead, but without the iconic songs. The Gatekeepers have shut the door and thrown away the key for infinity and beyond. Wham! and Last Christmas the two top documentaries. Nostalgia, nostalgia. So, should you keep making music I hear you cry? Maybe there should be an amnesty, no more music until we have filtered out all which is blocking, a year of silence to contemplate, think where creativity is taking us all. A year for everyone to prepare, restart culture. To try new instruments that have never been part of your world, the true blank space of creativity. Innovation through ignorance. Musicking is personal, moving your head from thoughts of Top of the Pops and stardom to a process, going through something cathartic. You need to make the music for yourself, to get what is inside out. The pure self. Anyway, I still check my Spotify streams, have extreme pleasure when it says that someone is listening to my latest track Rise up by Inochi. In-Oh-Chee. Japanese for life energy, I think. Check it out on all streaming platforms. So maybe that is the point, personal satisfaction that someone somewhere gets it, gets you. Listens to you. Reads your words. Takes time to connect their life with yours. Or maybe it’s just a release, an internal burden which needs to be set free. Our lives are time stamped by the creativity of others, remembering different eras, innovative sounds or combinations of the audio and visual, stopping us in our tracks, providing new directions and thought processes. Picking a random book from the shelf of a library stack that alters your thinking, the ideas of others taking centre stage and manipulating your life in a certain direction. We need creativity to keep us sane, provide a reason for being. It is one of the most important elements so should be embraced fully, hugged to death, translating thoughts from your mind into actions. I am interested in bringing culture and creativity to rural locations, having moved from the city during the Covid pandemic, Stewart Lee’s sketch where he has friends who move to the countryside, to live an idyllic life but the reality is extreme boredom. They enquire to friends, please come and visit; bring coke. He has only a horse to talk to now. The buzz of the city replaced by peace and calm only works if you can have a balance. A vibrant life where the beauty and purity of nature and culture intersect. An internal smile. My research is based on exploring the infrastructure and innovative ideas you can collate which forms a rural scene or scenius, finding the people and locations, stories and place. A collective will to develop culture, a blank canvas on which anything can be drawn. No competition. If you create it they will come, bringing thoughts from everyone’s head into realisation. Collective intelligence and ignorance brought beautifully together.
It used to be a time I dreaded, long nights stretching, engulfing days but as I get older there seems to be greater romance in those cold winter days. Jumpers, snuggling, battling through rain. The dark emphasising the light, neon glowing. Xmas. Glowing lights. Mulled wine. Waiting for change. Looking forward rather than at the present. I am determined to luxuriate in the wrapping up of winter, to stroke the deep woollen knit, put my feet up towards the roaring fire, gentle puff on a pipe, reading TheHound of the Baskervilles. I love the low searing light of winter. In summer it is expansive and flat, but those cold wet dark months are crossed with laser like strips of sun, striking from far to near, providing depth and excitement. Waking up in the dark and gradually arising with the light unlike summer months where it is instant, turning a light on, no sun to full sun. You can leave your garden to just exist rather than spending hours fighting off excessive growth, hacking at weeds, willing the grass to stay short. Winter is romantic. You two or three of more against the world. Summer is full on, everyone out there, festival, party, active, blinded by the flat light, wide angle, no place to hide as the sun engulfs. Splashing on suncream to protect against a deteriorating ozone layer, a thin film with holes puncturing through. No aircon. Instead, dark dramatic atmospheric winter world, wrapped in blankets, fire on, lights twinkling, a season of thought and anticipation. Wrapping up the year. The worst thing about winter is the thought of its arrival. Increasingly my summer months are ruined as summer solstice disappears in the rear-view mirror veering towards it’s winter equivalent, the days getting inexorably shorter. The long lead up to dark wet cold depressing months when I should just be enjoying summer days and nights drifting along. Never ending days to be replaced by never starting moments. Some of our friends have the right idea, lucky sods. Enough money to luxuriate in English summers and then plan their winter escapes to South America, Asia, Australia, Africa, maintaining the light of life, following the sun, keeping winter at bay. Up in space there is no issue with the seasons. If you’re looking down on earth they fly past, daily, providing a dazzling display of summer, autumn, spring. But surely embrace the winter. There is a stark beauty, a low light which plays enormous shadows, providing greater depth and interest onto vistas. Wrap up warm and get outside, look at the views, seep in the world. Neon Lights twinkling in the gloom, providing a vibrancy and electricity. Colour and interest. Beautiful cold thin morning sunrises where metallic light purples and thin warm oranges litter a pastel sky. Look to the now but also ahead. Winter can be cold and lonely but there is also the promise of something better ahead, the winter solstice a marker, the most hopeful day of the year when gradually more light and interest arrives daily, the football season coming through its phoney war into games which actually means something, there is jeopardy. The long slog of league games developing into a tussle for the top, to move up or down a level, settle on a new normal. Cup games in muddy fields, ball stuck in treacherous puddles as wind rattles around the stands blowing you sideways. Fearful of the journey from changing room to pitch, vaseline caked over freezing limbs. The winter is also a time to luxuriate, to cuddle up with some of the great authors of our time, let ideas and knowledge seep into your brain. Relearn. Recharge. Rethink. Settle into new and old concepts, philosophy, AI, culture, stories of war and peace, light and shade, action and adventure, beautiful prose or edge of the seat excitement. Winter seems to be the longest season, to go on inexorably, dark following dark, where illness can lead to death. But it is also the most romantic, when friends and families come together, to talk and argue, to annoy and rejoice. The last time in that house. Setting markers, remembering departed family and friends through stories, games and laughter. The rest of the year you can be apart but the winter forces families together, to eat too much, watch too much, slobber on the sofa until the hope and joy of new year arrives. A fresh start. A new beginning. The chance to reset and go again.
Red Alerts were sirening off all over the west of the country as Storm Darragh battered the bruised country into further submission. Luckily humans are hardy and the first event for our new organisation east Devon Soul went off. It was great to see such a lovely eclectic bunch of people enjoying Grammy nominated Acantha Lang at the Marine Theatre, a last minute change from the embattled Seaton Gateway. It was a beautiful night and we at East Devon Soul will be running many more events over the next few years. We see soul music as all music that comes from the soul. So it will be hip hop, funk, latin, jazz, pop, rock, jungle, electronic dance and of course soul. We are also planning a big event in July 2026 so news will be passed around when details have been defined through the first part of next year.
We are really looking forward to developing music in and around East Devon, providing high quality music for all.
