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Lying By Myself

by Pete Hobbs aka Diving At Dawn

Pete Hobbs aka Diving At Dawn

In October 2022, I made Diving At Dawn’s 2010 debut single A Lot Like Love available on Spotify for the first time. I pitched the track to some playlists via a site called Groover and was surprised and pleased with the response; it started getting plays and picking up some fans. This modest interest in the song got me thinking about recording and releasing some new material.

Diving At Dawn has always been a frustrating stop-start affair for me. I’ve never been able to be genuinely productive and build momentum with it because I find working alone so tricky. As part of a band or production team, I’m pretty efficient, but when the responsibility falls solely upon my shoulders, I become a procrastinating perfectionist of epic proportions. The lack of productivity in my solo work has caused me a fair bit of anxiety over the years, but I’ve always been busy enough with other projects to distract myself. However, in 2022 my anxiety levels went through the roof. Unfortunately, age, experience, budget constraints, and technology have all conspired against me, thus turning Diving At Dawn into a genuine one-person band.

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Modern Fairy Tales on the Piano

by Million Pebble Beach

Million Pebble Beach


Mrs. Penny was one of those teachers you remember – she encouraged me, enjoyed my stories, and often read them to the class. She told me to study sciences for a better-paid job, and off down that road I skipped studying engineering. But as Iggy Pop once quipped, if you’re creative, there’s something inside you, and it needs to get out…

Million Pebble Beach is my chosen “Nom de Guerre” – a nod to a local artist and the area (Pete Codling’s One Million Pebbles project in Portsmouth).

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Prince, Black History Month and The Spoken Word

by Lee Christian

Prince, Black History Month and The Spoken Word by Lee Christian


I have been a Prince fan since I was 8 and first heard Let’s Go Crazy, with its ear grabbing pyrotechnic guitar ending. Since then, I’ve learned from him, copied him and even just ended up doing the same things as him by osmosis or naturally. His work ethic, energy and diversity are three touchstones of my own ‘career’ and I have many strange ethereal intangible links to prince and ‘signs’ attached to many of my fondest moments in music so far that it’s almost as if he’s been a musical guardian angel since his passing in 2016 – an event that hit me so bad that I bought a streaming package, set up a little shrine on screen and DJ’d for 3 days straight, so fans had a place to hang, and I had some way of expressing my own sense of loss and gratitude for him voluminous output and inspiring presence in my own life. My phone went off non-stop that first day, I was associated with him so much by my circle of friends, they were checking that I was ok!

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Lock In That Rhythm!

by Torsten Jensen of Hexcut

Hexcut


Hi, my name is Torsten, I play piano and synth in an instrumental band from Bristol, UK called Hexcut. Also in the band are Chris Dreher (electronics), Dominic Fludger (bass guitar) and Rick Entwistle (drums). Our sound is somewhere between rock, modern jazz and electronic dance music and is hard to put into any one genre! It comes from the collective influences of all of us, and we write music together so it comes out as a blend of all our tastes: I am particularly into jazz acts like Gogo Penguin and Mammal Hands as well as alternative electronic acts such as Bonobo and Jon Hopkins, Chris is into hip hop and trip hop such as Blockhead and Portishead, Dom is into progressive rock and metal and Rick is into heavy rock and metal as well as house and drum’n’bass.

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The Window Seat

by Joe Holtaway

More The Love That's Given by Joe Holtaway


They sat in that window seat for 5 days as we moved through the house as normal, 106 Erlanger Road in London. We had a pact in that house that came from somewhere deeply rooted, you could feel it in the wooden corridors, in the table, the cups and furniture, it said, you’re ok – whatever is happening inside and outside, we got you.

15 of us shared the space, the landlord, living out in the countryside, set it up years before to be a kind of sanctuary I guess. They interviewed prospective tenants and also trusted friends of friends to fill the rooms.

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A New Normal

by John Zonn

A New Normal by John Zonn


As Ralph Waldo Emerson – the great American Individualist and Transcendentalist – once said: “All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better”. And so, the new Zonn mini-album “Songs Of Truth And Freedom” started off, as many experiments do, with the inventor watching the world around and perceiving that something needed to be done. This approach, coupled with my fondness for re-writing old tunes, led to the interpretation of a 1980s new-socialist stalwart into a novel anthem for the 2020s.

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Changes to Numbers Broken

by Ben George

Changes to Numbers Broken by Ben George of Merry Christmas
The spherical ball flew flyingly through the damn autumn leaves like a nauseating plane that was too small and round to be in any way practical. But flew it did, having been propelled as it had by Adam’s fearsome left foot. The kids who lived in Miyashita-koen still tell stories about that left foot and use words like “fearsome” and “left”. I stood vertical in the goalmouth, a moth to the flame, a fish in a barrel, a horse to water, and did what any decent Thursday morning goalkeeper is obliged to do: I saved the potential goal so hard and crushed the dreams of the understandably confident Adam.

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Howlin’ Herman And The Dwellers

by Tiger Morrocco

Howlin' Herman And The Dwellers

We would say it’s great to hear you enjoyed our unique blend of genres, but we hear that every day baby! I’m a Gypsy Dub Rockstaaa sugar!

We invented the genre of Viber and we ain’t done there, next we’re gonna invent portable lean fat grilling machines…. sign up for updates on this project by texting “update me hoe” to 0800-GRILL-ME-NICELY.
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