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
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.
Standing in space. Wide open away from any barrier, wall, manmade or natural object. Humans have a strange desire to be next to or under something. Taking a pee by a lonely tree. Creating an arch for your wedding, framing the lovely couple within the view. Grounding them. Why not have the wide expanse of the Arizona Desert rolling out before you, untethered, unleashed. But you take a picture by the only cactus within 20 miles. There needs to be a prop. Something to contextualise your presence on earth. Which makes it all the more bizarre that we seem so obsessed with travel into space. Space Twitter or X as it is now called. Putting the first people on the moon in 1968 then just waiting around until 2030 until we do it again. Apollo disasters halting any idea of mass migration to outer space. Elon Musk and Trump hoping to control the planet by regulating the space all around. They will charge us to breathe air before you know it. There is a fascination to searching the solar system, looking for likeminded inhabitants. So far though no one has turned up, except perhaps the clangers, trumpeting around with almost discernible presence. A fascination to look on where we all reside from a vantage point, from above, all trying to be gods, what an unbelievable waste of time and money. Fools fantasy. The planet is dying, yes, but rather than rush for the escape pod then surely it needs some TLC. People need help. Not some hair brained multi trillion dollar experiment. Imagine what you could do with the money. Applying for some small creative arts funds takes weeks of your life, jumping through ever decreasing hoops until you are squeezed by a Boa Constrictor. Review after review then your bid is deemed worthy of submission. Weeks of waiting, heart beating faster when any email pings into your inbox with the message “the quality of applications was very high…..”. And then, oh sorry you haven’t been successful this time. Please resubmit though, changing all your budget forecasts and being more realistic with your project aims. Be more realistic. Blimey. Fortunes are being spent propelling people into other orbits. You want me to be more realistic and less arty? Space travel is the ultimate rich persons folly. Pure art. Pointless. An inevitable outcome of greed and power searching. Can’t we just be happy in our communities rather than trying to form a space station on the boiling mess that is Mars. I mean a Mars a day helps you work, rest and dream of flying into the great beyond. Refugees, fleeing war torn nations battle across lands, rejected and looked down upon before reaching waters edge, crammed into flimsy life or death rafts, desperate for a life on earth. Do their kids wonder about life on mars, do they look at the moon and wish they could set foot on it or do they just wish for a safe place. Home. Not under siege. A place where they can exist. Not heading to some otherworldly final frontier but to real end points. Spaces to live within. A tree.
On 1st December 2016 I took the train from Bristol Temple Meads to London Paddington. It was one of those beautiful rare clear cold sunny vibrant winter days, one where the trains ran on time, everyone had a seat and enough room to spread out. I was very excited. At 11.47 precisely I was transported to the ornate iron and glass door of a mews house in Ladbrook Grove. Just about to knock on the pane I see a figure furtively rustling around the colourful and bright studio space. Picking up objects, transferring them, bustling around with what seemed like an ever enlarging grin on his face. A medium set bald guy with a kind of beard. Ah Brian, there you are. I was transfixed. I wanted to keep just watching. I did for about 11 minutes before I walked away a few stops and came back to the door to knock. Brian was welcoming and lovely, making me a large cup of his wizards tea.
During our session, artist musician Brian Eno demonstrated Chaos Theory with his 2 handed pendulum, where simple motion on the first one creates infinite non repeated movements on the second. So, a little nudge one way can send all kinds of confusion across the next, thereby subordinating populations. Collective consciousness came through in punk, hip hop, techno, jungle etc.. through commonalities of fashion, style, music, art, taste, lifestyle, place, rhythm, dance. There are instigators, those key people who lead the collective in a certain direction. We are all swayed in some way, which can be a positive in cultural scenes but have global destroying effects in political spheres.
Brian Eno hanging out with the German electronic musicians of Kluster, provided the time and space for creative exploration by dropping out and living in their Kommune for a while. London squats were the beating heart of the emerging punk scene, and within Western Europe.
Our connections to our lands, our ancestors, spaces and places, kneeling in the soil, digging the garden, the new rock and roll as Cosey Fanni Tutti and Kim Wilde continue to show. I’m sure Brian Eno potters around hot tomato plants, winding them carefully up their strings, reaching to the sky. Little glowing red orbs gradually appearing. The Farmers Boys and Girls in their Norfolk greenhouses. Sets of allotments are the socio-cultural space for the new creatives, or the old creatives who need to be in touch with their land, the city dweller who yearns for the countryside, everyone effected by global cost of living crises, where pulling up your evening meal from the ground can offset ever rising food prices.
Roxy Music keyboard knob twiddler Brian Eno learnt about the power of humour through his art school adventures with tutor Roy Ascott. His first lessons at art school included devising personality tests, where students had to enact the opposite traits they normally displayed. For chatterbox Eno, he had to remain silent for the sessions and let other people lead projects. When becoming a record producer, Eno introduced concepts relating to getting artists out of their normal comfort zone so that they would maximise their self in performances and composition ideas, without the usual routines or trappings. The Oblique Strategy cards he created with artist Peter Schmidt contains humorous, tasks such as play with your non dominant hand, do something boring or emphasise the flaws, whilst also suggesting role play ideas to bands including pretending to be an alien funk band from the year 2055.
Brian and I had a good chat. He showed me 2 floor standing safes, saturated with notebooks, relaying pictures and concepts from years of doodling and thinking. A time bandit. Brian got on his fold up bike and scooted off for a meeting with George Monbiot. See you again Brian.
So for any people out there interested in creativity, especially within music, my first book, Blank Canvas, is available from Intellect Books. Remarkably good value for a book that straddles academic and commercial values. Lots of info from creative artists including Brian Eno, Pauline Black, Gavin Bryars, Barry Adamson, Roy Ascott, Gina Birch, Gaye Advert etc…..
Numbers or letters connected to your name are meant to define who you are by society. Are you bright, intelligent, diligent, conscientious etc… Years of being at school, slaving over a hot desk scratched with the names of former victims, that familiar sweet and woody smell as you lift the lid. Reaching underneath to feel gum squelching into each of the four leg joints. A place which is your present but will decide your future. That moment when you look at the wall, should you start high or low to see where you come in the roll call of grades or opening a brown envelope, peering in to view the figures that might decide your future. Formerly there were letters A,B,C but now numbers, searching for the 9’s but generally hovering around the 6 region. On the edge. A point where you are unsure what to do next, a grade just below what was required by the sparkling university you visited a few months ago in great expectation and belief. Did I pick up the right envelope, maybe these are someone else’s marks. The buzz of friends and enemies around you collecting their fate. All is evened out. The brainy swats finally having their moment of fame. Oxford or Cambridge for you is it dears. Bristol poly for me then. Possibly. If I can persuade someone in their applications department that I might be worth a shot. Numbers or letters deciding your fate. Life turning in one moment, from the path of riches, fun, laughter ahead to one of struggle stretching forward. This obviously isn’t true though. What do grades really mean? That you knew how to remember some things, that you have a settled home life, interested and engaged parents, parents, lack of other interests such as music, football, cricket, culture, fashion, sex, drink, drugs, books, humour, travel. The past controls your future, how lucky did you get in the roll call of life, providing a backbone to drive forwards from. It carries on to university too if you decide to go there. More exams, testing, grades. 3rd, Desmond, 2:1, first. You can only go to the next level if you get over a certain grade. Computer says no otherwise. You are thrown out with the trash, left with massive debts, hangovers, some new friends and no idea what to do next. Already a perceived multiple failure by the age of 22. You know your place. Grades don’t take account of humans, the fact that we all develop at various speeds, start to get into our skins, realise who we are, be the real me. We should all be tested for happiness really. Where are we on the scale? Are we doing the things that we love and are suited for, making the most of our talents and personalities, being the best person, we can be. All perfect 10’s if we need to give it a number. A**.
I read a series of books at the same time, flicking from one to the other, diving into the underground life of music, philosophy, fantasy, reality, fact or fiction. I have books for various times of days. Mornings are for writing, afternoons evenings for reading. I flitter, float about. The later the day becomes the more that fiction seems to resonate. Gently moving from theory to fantasy. I have books dotted around my house. A stolen moment here to pick up writing on Western Philosophy. A yoga manual perched by the sink in my bathroom, stood on one leg brushing my teeth. The shelf in my study contains all that music and culture information, books I have read and can constantly go back to, dive in again to remember sections or reacquaint with nuggets of information. Just by looking at the sleeve of a book and taking time to think, I can transport myself back in time, a tardis of information that is lodged somewhere in my brain waiting to be unleashed again. My living room contains a mixture, from magazines, journal, novels and more playful academic studies. Also books for guests. Ones other we have loved or those that haven’t quite resonated that passing people might grab hold of and take on their travels. A couple of books sit on my bedside table, again sliding from fact to fiction, generally combining both. Ways of supporting transference from daily life into dream states. There are patterns through everything. I find it difficult to watch TV without also reading at the same time, my brain not satisfied with just one form of stimulation but wanting to switch between states, multiple stories occurring at the same time. Most people also flick through their phones while watching TV, not content just to sink into one medium. I always feel better turning the blue screens off and sinking into a book, airplane mode, sat on the sofa, concentration honing in on just the one story, my mind switching off from reality. I find libraries both beautiful and scary. Overwhelmed by the enormous amount of information, again peering at sleeves to imagine what is inside each book. Trying to suck the information from the pages into my brain. Auto transference. Like the other Dr Strange I can raise my arms at the entrance to a library and suck the information of multiverses straight into me.
Nottingham is an interesting place. Sat halfway up the country, home to Byron, Boots, Raleigh and lace. It is not somewhere I previously considered but starting to work with the university there and my youngest daughter going to university in the city, has brought it into focus. I met an orchestral leader and educator in the city, someone who transferred their life from LA to the East Midlands. For work, such is the joy of academia, throwing you around the world in search of nirvana. Looking for the excitement and safety in equal measures. Academic working puts your whole sense of place in another context because it provides opportunity and threat. The chance to travel around the world, put small roots down wherever the best role seems to fit. It also keeps you there though because when you start to specialise in an area the options become less apparent. You raise a family and don’t want then have to decamp somewhere else. It provides a level of paranoia, especially within the creative arts that are under attack yet again in Higher Education. Leave those teams alone. Fight alternative beings rather than going for the easy targets situated within the arts. The creative arts bring a whole range of excitement, interest and sets of skills that really traverse boundaries. Reflexivity, stamina, concentration, innovation, dedication, collaboration, humour, physicality, neuroscientific skills which are transferable or just lay in place to entertain. Local Councils like that in Birmingham or Nottingham are in financial peril, so the first they consider is to cut the arts. But these are the elements which make them, drive local industries, provide employment, set the tone of a place. Why not think about doing the reverse. Embrace the arts, place trust in their ability to lead your city to prosperity.
I am exploring the concept of scenius, the collective genius existing within scenes. Exploring the intricate parts which make up successful scenes, lifting them beyond the norm. I see the main elements as centred around hierarchies, process, experimentation, relationships and flow. The Bristol music scene as defined by bands such as Massive Attack and Portishead brought disparate parts of the city together. St Pauls and Clifton, placed in the Dug Out club and revolver records equidistant between both areas. The music resonated with the sound of the city, the Bristol hum, water sloshing underneath the pathways, providing a resonant frequency which connected with the bass music, a slow tempo with depth. An ethos based on attitude. Political protest. Standing up for the common good. Preparing to fail or anger the regular creative arts industry. Banksy. Placing faith in art. No compromise. No sellout. Each place has its own resonance, connects through natural and social factors. It’s time again to fight for the arts, to provide the new upcoming government with so much evidence that they finally support the arts once and for all, enshrines British culture with the security it needs and deserves.
There seems to be a common trend at the moment of art works spreading out before you like the great expanse of the Gobi Desert, blowing around aimlessly, waiting to get to the point. Sometimes it is necessary to sit in and feel the energy, get sucked into lifestyles, atmospheres, take time to tell the story. Jeez though, some recent films and books have meandered their way. Booker Prize or Oscar nominees. Have the editors been cut from their jobs? Jettisoned like unwanted plankton into the seas of journalistic oblivion. There was I thinking we live in the tick tock world.
The Bee Sting – Irish family troubles taken to the nth degree of narrative, personalities you understand within a few paragraphs drawn out for huge swaths, 100s of pages.
Oppenheimer– the human big bang, lots of men talking, shouting, laughing, plotting, bombing.
Dragons Den – in the end it just repeats its formula infinitum until we throw down the remote control in disgust and go for a walk. Or pick up the latest recommended novel.
The Love Songs of WEB du Bois by Honorée Fannone needed it’s length, the opportunity to exist in current and historical black American worlds. The Bee Sting groaned from under the weight of over bearing descriptions and recap, reinforcing messages which were understood early on. A great 250 page novel turned into War and Peace, love and cars. Likewise, David Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, where the interesting storylines are battered into submission by over explanation. Leave the reader or viewer with some element of involvement. Like a classic French film, leave open endings. Stop halfway through. John Cage’s 4’33” of background noise or random performance, nothingness expanding a short space of time. Minimalism. Less is more. There is no need for yet another series of Schitts Creek, the humour, the stories have all been told. Fawlty Towers for all its racist, homophobic, hegemonic rantings knew when to stop, 12 episodes. Maybe Friends could justify its expanse. The double album never really worked, except for maybe The Clash London Calling or Sandinista. Daydream Nation, Selected Ambient Works. The White Album, taking minimalist Yoko Ono inspired Richard Hamilton artwork and introducing a range of styles that flowed over the whole. Country star Beyonce is yet another to cover Blackbird in the dead of night. New Order’s Blue Monday, only ever available at 12” length is a perfectly formed record. An example of using the medium in a perfect way. Maybe that is the problem with books? There is no limit. A press can just add more parchment. The same with Spotify. Your playlist can expand to ever reaching worlds, keep evolving, never having an end point. Music, music, music. Artists, musicians, producers saturating an already overburdened market with a slew of mid quality flotsam which floats around, no-one really streaming, no impact, just a space where artists can present their work. I mean that is probably a good thing, but the gatekeepers have vanished. The only people saying no are those working for major labels who just churn out material from their top selling artists. Fleetwood Mac, Elton John, Abba, Bob Marley, Taylor Swift x 10, the Beatles of course. Even Billy Joel hasn’t yet moved out. What hope do new artists have to puncture this dichotomy of a world. It’s never been so easy to release music, it’s never been so difficult to get heard. What new music makers should concentrate on is creating the perfect song. Don’t worry about a whole load of material, just write one amazing piece of music and then somehow get this to the ears of radio and record companies. Or create lots of tracks, form a band and get out there on the road battling through Brexit paperwork, sleeping six up in a dodgy freezing old transit van, making enough money for food and a drink the next day. Rock ’n’ Roll. Actually just make a song that is 1’30”. Short, sweet, to the point and doesn’t take up much of anyone’s valuable time. Now where’s that Tolstoy..
7th March is world book day, the opportunity for all those with young children to spend hours scrabbling around to try and match up to their neighbours attempts, whilst the kids hope they wont be too embarrassed by it all. What fun. Like National Women’s Day or Record Store Day or Black History Month, these are all worthy concepts, supporting better lives for all. Really, though, everyday should be World Book Day. Everyday should be equality of opportunity for all day. One Day should be watched every day.
In supporting the adult focus to WBD then please have a look at my first book, Blank Canvas, soon to be followed by Creative Spheres, deep, playful, anarchic, experimental and entertaining explorations of popular culture, with creativity centrally placed.
Now time to dress up as my favourite cultural icon …..
A fresh looking Brian Eno at Watford Art College (Mid 1970s)
