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The Media Monster...

Mon, 13 Oct 2025 16:08:47 GMT

... and its insatiable hunger.

People say the world is getting more and more dangerous and unpredictable. And I often see interviews with celebrities and other spotlight seekers where they’re asked: "how do you cope with the madness/political instability/inequalities etc. all around us today?" As if we’re living through some kind of mad dystopian nightmare. And this got me thinking about this global paranoia forming all around social media.

However, before I continue I would like to clarify that I don't believe things are perfect, far from it, but I am certain that the primary reason we have been led to believe that times are dire (and drastically direr than before) is due to that big fat scary entity called the Internet. Ah that World Wide Web… The Endless access to Everything .

That old adage "ignorance is bliss" is exactly what we were experiencing pre the internet revolution, although we were of course blissfully unaware of our ignorance… It reminds me of the old belief that the smarter you are the more likely you are to be unhappy. And that may well be why many of us feel so low and disheartened in the current climate. It also does seem that the more adversity one faces in real life: war/famine/dislocation etc., the more one experiences true happiness in return. E.g. the post-war 50s boom… but I digress.

Today this access to information has made us believe that everything has turned sour because the worst is being broadcast and experienced at a simple scroll. Except that the pockets of knowledge we gain from our screens are counter-intellectual and only designed to feed a pervasive algorithmic purpose to divide and conquer, and to dumb down our critical thinking. A kind of throw away, cheap knowledge fast-food of sorts designed to ostracise one group against another in order to make a profit.

And who’s to blame for this endless cesspit of chaos and illusion of impending doom? The Media of course: "Beware of men who are like this/behave like that; women who are like this/behave like that..." New terms keep on popping up everywhere to define traits/behaviours/actions that we’re supposed to swallow like a chemically well-balanced pill. Tapping into our most basic primal instincts of fear. And this insatiable Monster Media is absolutely gorging on it. Grabbing and devouring our fickle little undivided attentions whole in order to sell prime shock content: Us against Them. Black against White. Good against Evil. "How dare they stand against what I believe in: I stand for real justice! Time to take action!" It’s Divisiveness making Dividends (there’s a song there somewhere)…

If you thought sensationalist journalism and media was having a breeze with tabloid magazines/newspapers and TV back in the 90s, they’re having a field day with our emotions on our little bright screens we’re hooked on/glued to all day. Not to mention the new hegemony of AI and the opportunities it will bring to further this scheme.

The fact of the matter is that things are actually much better than they ever have been before. There isn’t the adversity of a world war, we have abundant food and access to healthcare. As a frightening historic statistic the life-expectancy only 150 years ago in our (very) long evolution as a species was merely 40 years… Basically my age (and I feel physically great, we won’t talk about the mental however…).

All this rambling just to say that I feel people need to look on the brighter side a bit more. I have found myself growing tired of always seeing the same shock, divisive content on socials and around the web. The world is not perfect, there’s loads to fix: humanitarian and environmental issues, nepotism, classism, racism, questionable leaders to bash and make accountable, influencers to hang (only joking, not reeeeeeally), the list goes on, but it’s certainly not as bad as it was… by a stretch. The bottom line in my opinion: best to avoid sensationalism to build a worldview.

So I say: make art, make music, make love, make good food, drink yourself stupid, read books, breath in that country air, workout, love your family, love your animals, debate passionately about what you believe in, respect and love your neighbour, ditch the screen whenever possible and count those many blessings.

Music and Intelligence

Tue, 14 Nov 2023 02:13:51 GMT

I often wonder what I would have done if I hadn’t chosen art as a vocation from a young age...

When I was around 8 years old I developed a strong passion for drawing. I would spend hours sitting and drawing all sorts of things I saw or encountered: from portraits/landscapes/dinosaurs and even fossils picked up on my holiday trips to places like Lyme Regis (you probably know about my obsession with palaeontology by now!). I actually got quite good at it and for a time my parents were wondering whether I should potentially go on to Art School.

It obviously didn’t happen as music very quickly took a complete hold of all my attention and focus as soon as I entered my teenage years, starting with the drums and very swiftly moving on to guitar and bass. Then started a life-long passion for music, but the foundations for my passion for art in general were laid down from a very young age.

Despite the obsession with drawing, I never considered myself a smart kid at school and neither did any of the teachers. I was labelled a dreamer, not willing to put the work in and a bit of a lost cause academically really. The fact that I had been abruptly uprooted from my home country to a brand new scary place that was the South of France was partly to blame of course together with the language barrier and culture clash, but there was something deeper going on: I knew that I just wasn’t wired to excel at scholarly endeavours. My vocation lay elsewhere and my creative pursuits just fulfilled me and made me profoundly happy.

Frustratingly however, I put this dream on hold for many years whilst I completed my degree then master’s degree in France in my early twenties. Peer pressure and a feeling of 'doing the right thing' are partly to blame, and a full five years of university studies later, I was moulded into an exemplary French/English teacher.

But in no way do I regret this journey as I have had some amazing experiences along the way, I have thoroughly enjoyed a lot of the classes and the learning experience, I have met some lovely people and I believe I learnt a lot about discipline and hard work. The Literature seminars in particular opened up many poets and writers that would later inspire me for my own songwriting journey, and I am extremely grateful for that.

I read that "studies have shown that music can improve cognitive abilities, increase academic performance, and even help with memory recall. Music can also help to reduce stress and anxiety, improve mood, and increase creativity.” ( Link to source). I believe I have experienced many of these benefits throughout my life, especially during the early years of learning instruments. It has been a huge help in improving my mood/stress levels and emotional processing: the hours of drawing infused a deep sense of calm and, later on, the ability to put feelings into song has enabled me to process a lot of emotional ups and downs throughout my adult life. Art creation has helped put a lot of things into perspective and develop an ability to move on.

In Howard Gardner’s book, The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, he argues that everyone has varying degrees of all 9 types of intelligence, musical intelligence of course being one of them. Everyone uses their specific intelligence to develop their skillset, solve problems and drive their productivity throughout their lives.

Another interesting source for the relationship between playing a musical instrument and intelligence is one of the TED Talks (watch video here ). In this lesson the educator highlights the benefits of music on the brain, explaining that “playing a musical instrument engages practically every area of the brain at once, especially the visual, auditory and motor cortices. And as with any other workout, disciplined, structured practice in playing music strengthens those brain functions, allowing us to apply that strength to other activities.” It goes on to question “how do we know that all these benefits are unique to music, as opposed to sports or painting. Or could it be that people who go into music were already smarter to begin with?” Recalling aspects of the Howard Gardner theory.

Personally, the early passion for art seems to have originated as a coping mechanism in reaction to the personal turmoil that was taking place as a child and it developed into an important outlet for my feelings. And this confronts us with a sort of a chicken and egg situation in a sense: are we predisposed to a certain intelligence or does our environment bring it about? Howard Gardner seems to imply that it’s largely innate, and the TED Talk also touches on this subject. But in the end, maybe it’s a subtle mixture of the two?

Regardless of how it came to be, I have to say that this early passion did seem to help me academically, and the ability to “apply the strengthened brain functions to other activities” does resonate. But personality too surely plays a part: I believe the ability to focus on studies also stemmed from my unwillingness to give up learning new artistic crafts/instruments and from my slightly perfectionist mind. You need to have a certain tenacity to learn music, to possess an unrelenting determination to excel at what you’ve put your mind to, and this certainly helps in many other aspects of life, especially studies.

Falling in love with art certainly changed my life in a myriad ways. Looking to the future, I would love my own daughter to experience the same things as me, but at the same time it’s hard to force something on a child if they don’t want to do it. For me art was more of a solace from pain, but everyone is different and a child that’s forced to study something at a young age as often as not ends up resenting it later on.

It’s of course a dilemma that’s not easy to resolve. I am doing my best to try and get my daughter to explore the world of creativity, and if and when she does fall in love with it, I have no doubt that it will be a life-changing experience for her emotionally and developmentally.

If all this doesn’t encourage us all to pick up an instrument, I don’t know what will. So, if you’re not doing so already… what’s your excuse for not starting to learn an instrument?

The Future of Music

Thu, 06 Apr 2023 16:35:14 GMT

Predicting the future of music is always a difficult feat. The future is by definition unpredictable. Everything can seem like it's going one way and all of a sudden the "future" decides to take a left-turn and surprise everyone...

But I’m going to attempt to offer some personal insights and try and picture a musical landscape that I would personally prefer to see over any other.

Technology has helped put the recording power into the hands of musicians and songwriters. The first consequence of the developments of softwares and plugins has made physically going to a studio for a lot of musicians and songwriters become obsolete. Anyone can now have a digital studio in their computer providing most of the needs a full-equipped one would, albeit digitally and not quite to the same quality of the actual studio, but the technologies are improving as we speak and the quality difference will become very negligible in the future. It is also way more cost effective: bedroom producers can make a record now at a fraction of the price it took to book a professional studio with an engineer and dedicated team.

But this technological boom for the aspiring songwriter/producer also has its pitfalls. I was watching a popular sound engineer talking about the choice producers have regarding the sound for a just the snare of a drum kit. He was saying 10 000 snare drum samples are available online to download now, which would take a whopping two months to go through! He goes on to say that he encourages his students to work with much less than is available, as scarcity encourages the creative mind over the confusion of too much choice. The digital utopia of the modern age has helped me of course in many ways, but I wholeheartedly agree with him: I keep my digital needs to an absolute minimum as I much prefer to be hands-on with actual hardware over the use of its digital counterpart as not only does it sound better, but you’re stuck with it and that turns out to actually be beneficial as the focus turns to the song and not the sound.

But this revolution has inevitably caused an explosion in the release of music across a broad spectrum of musical styles, and the outlets that are the giants of the streaming world (Spotify, Amazon and Apple Music) have welcomed this explosion with open arms to become the ever-increasing fat cats of the music industry. Yet The ongoing dichotomy with these streaming platforms is that on the one hand they have made any style of music discoverable in an instant, yet on the other they have depleted the importance of the songwriter in the process. The seemingly ridiculous payment per stream ($0.003 - $0.005 per stream on average) is just a reflection of the increasing unimportance of the songwriter in the modern world, and it’s showing no signs of stopping, and that is one thing I do worry about in the future.

But two developments in recent years that have been particularly noteworthy could be even more dooming for songwriters: the improvement of algorithms and in particular algorithmic playlists in the streaming world (replacing the old-fashioned hub of new-artist discovery: radio stations); and the explosion of AI. The algorithmic playlist matches similar artists to your favourite music taste on an everlasting search for your favourite new sound. This is just one part of the increasing digital learning age we are in, algorithms are getting more and more fine-tuned to reflect the needs of the consumer (the listener in our case), and there’s not just a handful of them to chose from, there are literally millions of them. In the songwriting department, AI can now even write songs based on style, genre and specific artists to please a certain demographic and taste, and it can sound surprisingly good… There are even dedicated websites that aim to aid songwriters in their endeavour with AI-assisted songwriting, like the AI Lyrics Generator that claims to help songwriters with writer’s block, in the same way Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt’s famed Oblique Strategies cards were designed to help the creative writing process back in the 70s.

Maybe the definition of songwriter will radically change in the future, where coders for AI in all different aspects of art (painting, sculpture, music…) will become the “artist-making artist” where an indirect relationship between the person creating and the art-form emerges. People will be labelled as artistic geniuses in their ability to code the perfect AI songwriter, or image generator in visual arts.

Virtual Reality is yet another field where people may be able to attend live events from their bedroom at a fraction of a price of a live music ticket and meet other "virtual" friends and grab a pint. Even more scary for the performing artist is the development of holograms or “digital avatars" as some prefer to call them (because it sounds less "hollow" maybe?), as for example in the new hit ABBA experience "Voyage" which represents yet another field of technology that could potentially threaten the organic live music industry.

Does this all mean that we’re being gradually replaced? It all sounds like an increasing call for arms between the artist and the growing voracious monster that’s AI and the algorithm… right? However, AI has no personal sensibility as of yet and cannot innovate in the myriad ways that a person can. Sure it can produce material based on taste etc., it can prove to be a powerful tool for songwriting and can even provide prime entertainment, but it can’t surprise us like a person or react unpredictably the way a human can… at least for now.

The algorithm, AI and digital avatar age definitely sound like a threatening prospect for the songwriter, musician and potentially every form of art. I know I may sound old- fashioned but there really is nothing better than human interaction, and that is what a lot of song creating/performing is about with all its flaws and imperfections. It would be sad to see a day where the “perfect” AI replace the “imperfect” human. On the other hand I acknowledge the myriad benefits it can have, but I would like to see a world where we keep this development in check: as long as technologies are there to aid and not replace I am personally all for it. Just as long as they don’t start saying “Hasta la vista, baby…”

The Need to Stay Creatively Relevant

faceyhenry@gmail.com (Henry Facey) — Tue, 17 Jan 2023 02:33:43 GMT

In the wake of the new year, I am finding myself exploring new musical directions and this got me thinking about why this was such a necessity...

I have already touched upon the subject of the ever-changing digital landscape in Newsletter #3, where the struggle between staying true to oneself creatively and keeping up with a certain online presence is just part of the modern musician’s life. But here I would like to go deeper and focus on relevancy of the songwriter and the evolution of sound that, to me, is a necessity in any musician’s career.

Life seemed pretty simple when I was a teenager in terms of consuming music: you saw a band/artist advertised, you liked it, you asked your parents for a bit of cash to buy the cassette/CD and you consumed the heck out of it until you knew every single second of every song. Then something magical happened: it meant something profound to you on a deeper level.

Such a thing happened to me when I was 13 and Blur’s album 13 (ironically) came out in 1999. A seemingly lethargic and emotional 13-track album, a bizarre entity with soundscapes and a darkness I had never heard before and miles away from anything else they had released during their Brit Pop era. At the time it seemed mad to me that a band so popular would take such a left-turn from their audience and show a completely different side to their creativity.

I learnt to love this album because it revealed something truly profound about the burden of being a songwriter in any kind of spotlight: there’s no point in pleasing an audience if you’re not staying true to yourself. I realised that this simple fact is a truth that transcends musical tastes, genres and generations.

Shortly after the release of this album, it was Radiohead’s turn to mess up their sound with the release of their highly controversial album Kid A and shortly after Amnesiac : again, light years away from anything they had released previously, filled with jazz and electronic sounds that they merged into something that would, for some Radiohead fans, be hailed as the rebirth of the band, and for others, the death of the band they so dearly loved in the 90s. For me personally, these two albums are partly what inspired me to take this journey, I considered them as pure artistic genius. These are just two examples of artists with a willingness to go against the grain and potentially upset a fanbase that was so loyal in order to stay true to themselves, but this is what it was about for me: pure and unrelinquished artistic freedom.

This gave me such a feeling of freedom when it came to approaching my early years of songwriting. It became clear to me that the same thing had happened throughout the decades: from Hendrix’s new approach to electric guitar playing, Bob Dylan’s controversial switch to electric, the experimental eras of The Beatles and Pink Floyd with their use of sampling, Bowie’s constant and ever-changing identities and musical styles, through to more recently The Arctic Monkeys’ surprising direction: anyone who had ever meant anything to the genuine musical legacy had gone against the grain in one way or another, messed up the norm and what was expected from them to convey something that had meaning on a deeper level to them, and consequently their audience. The only thing that has been changing is the technology: Hendrix couldn’t use electronic sounds, but he probably would have if he could.

Today, one could argue that everything’s been done in music, so any sonic novelty would not actually sound new, but I would disagree with that statement. Any new sound will sound different in the hands of a given artist. I would be very surprised to see Bob Dylan embrace say electronic music, but there’s no denying that it would be a new sound and thus a very personal, inimitable evolution in his career. No one can deny that. The evolution of sound goes hand in hand with the evolution of the person creating. And so it must: we are constantly changing as human beings, our emotions, our outlook on life are continuously being moulded by our experiences, and the sounds we create must, or at least should, reflect that. There should be no boundaries restricting us to a specific “sound” or “genre” that we believe, or more worryingly what we think others believe, we should stick to.

I would like to add that this obviously doesn’t just apply to music. Countless artists have gone through similar artistic metamorphoses to stay true to their own artistic sensibilities. One such person that pops to mind is of course Pablo Picasso: he learnt the rules from a young age where he would excel in creating realistic paintings to then drastically break them with a completely new abstract approach, pioneering a new style of art: Cubism and later on in his career Surrealism.

This brings me to my personal development: I am seeing a change in the way I would like to approach the second full-length release, and instead of resisting a change out of fear of losing relevancy to a style or fanbase, I believe that it is a necessity that compels me to venture into new sonic worlds that reflect the changes I am going through and keep the creative fire alive. Of course however, this does not mean that I am going as far as completely changing my musical identity as I believe that every artist has their own unique sensibility that draws them to a certain sound and songwriting. And so it should be: this is what makes every artistic creation so personal. Our own personal story, cultural and emotional experiences throughout life are what mould each and every creative mind resulting in exceptional diversity across the globe. Without such diversity the artistic world would be a very dull place indeed.

I feel very excited to step into this new year with some new ideas and sounds to dive into. Often, the venture into the sonic realm is as much of a journey as is the lyric/instrument writing and adds that extra exciting dimension to the whole process. I am spending time embracing new soundscapes and rhythms and am really looking forward to getting a full-length release out there.

Its title as of today will be Urban Tales . This is of course subject to change at this stage but I can safely say that it's slowly taking shape. Watch this space.

'Struck From Above': an Ode to the Passage of Time

faceyhenry@gmail.com (Henry Facey) — Mon, 16 Jan 2023 17:31:50 GMT

The music video for the B-side was finally released on 17th December, just in time for Christmas...

I am proud of the work done on this together with videographer Max Wyllie, and if you haven’t watched it yet please head to the link here . I have spoken a little about the making of this music video in the previous newsletter but would like to go a bit more in depth here.

It starts with the audio then video on TV of the performance at The Water Rats on 4th November 2022, the audio slowly merges into the track whereby the camera slowly drifts to the frames on the wall. I wanted this to feel like a journey into a dreamy memory, scrolling from when I first moved to London to become a full-time musician all the way to the present day.

The old scrolling camera effect was introduced to enhance this effect of time passing by until I finally wake up realising it was all just a dream. Interspersed with videos of the live performance at The Water Rats and performing the song on Jubilee Bridge in London are the photos that highlight a few of the important milestones in my musical journey so far. The very first photo on the wall is me playing guitar to my daughter when she was still a baby, then the camera moves on to my early years busking in Trafalgar Square/the performance with Rod Stewart in Piccadilly Circus/the various artistic collaborations (for The Teenage Cancer Trust with Alistair Morisson and the book Fantastic Voyage by Adam Geras)/the travels abroad performing/the launch nights/images of the music videos that came out… The timeline finally ends on the release of the album Ocean Sky .

These are just a few of the various projects/adventures I’ve been lucky to be a part of during my time on this earth as a musician. It serves as a personal reminder that the journey is what it’s all about as I believe that we shouldn’t focus on an end goal because ultimately there is no real destination. The milestones are what create the memories and a very poignant quote always comes back to me when I think of time passing by: "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans" - John Lennon. For me, this really epitomises the passage of time: we are not aware of its presence in the now but it’s continuously scrolling before our eyes, in the background, weaving experiences into our lives and slowly moulding us as human beings… It’s fair to say I feel like a very different person today than when I first decided to embark on this musical venture all those years ago, and it’s fair to say I will be a very different person years to come from now, such is the effect of time on a life.

The Live Concert at The Water Rats

faceyhenry@gmail.com (Henry Facey) — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:26:39 GMT

It is a real pleasure to be able to perform with the full band again. The last time this happened was back in February for the album launch...

The album launch back in February was a blast, but despite having a great time, the weather was atrocious with furious winds bringing many of London’s public transport lines to a halt. As a result of this the turn-out was unfortunately not as good as it could have been.

Looking back, these intimate nights at Piano Smithfield were fantastic for introducing the singles and the music to everyone. I really appreciate the venue and particularly James Sayer’s help in making all of these nights possible. The Water Rats venue however is in a slightly different league: the legendary Bob Dylan performed his very first gig in London here back in ’62, The Pogues had their first gig here back in ’82, and Oasis’s debut London performance took place here in ’94, just to name a few in the venue's prestigious history.

Ever since a talented mate of mine, by the very cool name of Andy John Jones played at The Water Rats pre-Covid (discover his music and more here ), I thought this would be an ideal venue for performing the album Ocean Sky.

This is quite a significant gig for me in two ways: the first is that it will be celebrating the official release of the b-side Struck From Above that comes out the day before on Friday 26th of August. This is the last song from the Ocean Sky recording sessions, thus closing the final chapter of the album’s journey.

The second significance is that it will be the first performance in which we will be showcasing the songs to an audience where many know the album by now and have their favourites. It has been a really fantastic and insightful few months getting feedback from everyone since the release, discovering which songs people like from different backgrounds, as it is quite an eclectic album. I would really love to hear back from more of you readers: what do you think of it? Which one(s) is (are) your favourite(s)?

So, the concert is on August 27 and can't wait to see you there.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: The livestream tickets are at last available to purchase for all that cannot attend in person, please follow the link below to get yours:

Did you know?

Originally built in 1517, prior to 1985 this pub was called the Pindar of Wakefield. The existing building, built in 1878 (the former was destroyed in a thunderstorm in 1793), allegedly had among its punters both Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx (who apparently boarded in one of the rooms upstairs).

Here, in December 1962, a young (and not yet famous) Bob Dylan gave his first English folk performance.

The pub is now called The Water Rats (it was bought in 1986 by the British entertainment industry fraternity and charitable organisation called the Grand Order of Water Rats).

Above: Bob Dylan at the Pindar of Wakefield pub on Grays Inn Road, December 1962. Photo taken and provided by the very kind Brian Shuel.

The Release of The Mouth Of The Sea Music Video

faceyhenry@gmail.com (Henry Facey) — Mon, 08 Aug 2022 21:24:33 GMT

The music video for The Mouth Of The Sea came out on 04/04/22. I briefly touched on the significance of the song in the previous newsletter, but I would like to elaborate further on its meaning and significance to me…

This song has a long history of re-recordings throughout the years, and although it’s taken me close to ten years to finally release it on an album, it took me no longer than 30 minutes to write. I experienced a stream of consciousness that occasionally happens during the songwriting process. It also took me a while to figure out whether to include it on Ocean Sky or not, as I had a lot of newer material, but its place on the album just felt right in the end.

It was written back in 2013 during an important period of change where my life seemed replete with responsibilities and doubts about the future. I had finished my university studies in France a year prior, moved back to the UK and launched myself into a teaching career that I was unsure of. The song reflects that need to hit the brakes on all the overwhelming changes we inevitably all experience at some point and go back to a time of innocence and blissful ignorance.

That innocence of course took me back to my youth. I’ve always been a nostalgic soul, and you may rightly say that this is reflected in my songwriting style. I remember being a confident child, but with my parents splitting up at the age of 7, things got a lot harder within the family, and I grew increasingly shy and introvert. I suppose I developed a growing yearning to return to a form of lost happiness that I could express through art and music throughout my teens that never left me.

As a family, we would often spend summer holidays at my grandma’s place in Newlyn in Cornwall, where I felt a special connection with the ocean, and later after my parents split up, in my teens I would wander along the windy roaring coasts near Sennen Cove and Land’s End with my walkman listening to compilation cassettes (ah the cassette era!), in an attempt to escape the stresses of life.

The song very much draws inspiration from those early years of family tumult, but also to when I was growing up in my late teens/early 20s. The lyrics 'the man who went through his life in a sad dream' is a reference to a film that profoundly marked me as a young man: The Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind . If you haven’t seen it I urge you to watch it. I was going through a bumpy first long-term relationship when I was 21 and this film resonated with me profoundly.

It was also around this time that I went on a walking trip with my dad along the Jurassic Coast in South-East England. I remember feeling very low, and it was the first time my father and I had been on a proper holiday together just the two of us. The connection with nature I felt brought me back to my early years in Cornwall and woke something up in me that I felt had lain dormant for a long time. A rush of emotions hit me on that holiday, and often when performing ' The Mouth Of The Sea' , memories of that unique feeling resurge. The repeating lyrics in the chorus: 'we haven’t seen you round for such a long time, have you ever thought it’s taken too long to find' echoes like an internal voice questioning whether all the changes were worth it, and a longing to return to a time of pure innocence, simplicity and happiness.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the music video, it was great working with Max Wyllie on this project. If you haven’t seen it yet, please watch it here and why not give it a like/share.

Musicians and Mental Health

faceyhenry@gmail.com (Henry Facey) — Wed, 06 Apr 2022 14:06:28 GMT

The recent deaths of rockstars Taylor Hawkins and maybe lesser known singer Mark Lanegan have reignited this burning question in me: why are the artistic industries replete with tortured souls?

The Scream by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, 1893

Of course, when we think of troubled artists we automatically think of Vincent Van Gogh cutting off his own ear, Virginia Woolf’s suicide by drowning, Kurt Cobain’s suicide by shooting, Amy Winehouse's extreme drug and alcohol abuse, and of course the late drummer Taylor Hawkins who passed away a couple of weeks ago from an overdose and whose depression seems to have equally fuelled a deadly drug habit…

The list of untimely deaths in the art industry goes on and I could quote countless heroes of mine who have met a similar fate but for the sake of time we’ll have to leave it there. Referencing David Bowie once more, I specifically liked his very last album, Black Star, where we see a heart-wrenching contemplation of his own mortality in the song Lazarus just before his tragic death from liver cancer:

“Look up here, I’m in heaven

I’ve got scars that can’t be seen

I’ve got drama, can’t be stolen

Everybody knows me now…”

We are often faced with a sort of mythologising of the ‘impulsive’, ‘depressed’, ‘emotional’ or ‘mad’ artist. The image that perfectly represents this feeling of internal suffering and anxiety is of course the troubled Norwegian artist Edvard Munch’s piece The Scream. According to Munch himself, the warped ghostly figure on a bridge represented his soul. He checked himself into a mental health hospital shortly after painting it.

So what’s going on and why are depression and art so closely intertwined? Well, from a personal perspective I can totally relate to a lot of these feelings. An insightful study published by the University of Westminster in 2020 found that musicians are three times more likely to experience anxiety or depression than the general public (link to article here ). The article brings up key themes affecting musicians: the status of our work, financial challenges and the difficulty for us to define ‘success’ leaving us to question whether our profession can be classed as a ‘career’ amongst other things. This of course, in my view and I’m sure others will agree, can be extended to people creating in all other artistic fields such as literature, painting, sculpture, etc.

This hits very close to home as these are all points that I have thought about in depth concerning my own choice to pursue music. In response to the question whether my choice could be qualified as a ‘career’, I have often found myself floundering in fear of the future and asking myself “what’s the point?” “Just be a language teacher, that’s secure, you’ll get a proper status and a pension and you’ll no longer need to worry…” But the conclusion always remains the same: I would just be unhappy with that choice. Uncertainty, countless questions and self-doubt in regards to this musical endeavour have led me to some very dark places, sometimes leaving me in a crippling state of anxiety and depression. And yet, these very same feelings have been a form of fuel for creativity in themselves. A lot of the songs from the album Ocean Sky express these very human experiences that have often been the ‘necessary evil’ to create personal and thus meaningful art for me, and in turn the transformation from feelings into music has helped me understand/process these deep emotions that would be just impossible to express otherwise. And this is where the situation gets tricky: the often destructive feelings of depression and sadness are themselves the very catalysts for creativity in a lot of creatives: art becomes the outlet that allows them to communicate their grief.

I’ve often heard people tell me that happiness in life kills their creative streak, they just need to be in that deep emotional realm to make music that makes sense to them, and I for one would be part of that camp. As crazy as it seems, It’s nearly as if it’s required! And this may indeed be part of where the problem lies and why it’s so hard to battle. I suppose if you were to put an image to it, in my view it would be the equivalent of falling into a hole, and art is the ladder back out, but of course you need to fall into another one to be able to use the ladder again.

Regardless of this complex relationship, I suppose more importantly (and positively), the medium of art in all its forms serves an empathetic purpose to the audience: it says ‘you are not alone in feeling this way, I am communicating the way I feel these emotions to you.’ And this to me is why art is absolutely crucial to our society: the conveying and relating to the wide palette of different emotions creates a truly powerful organic relationship between producer and consumer of art. And this is why, more than ever now with the increased isolation that the pandemic has brought about, more support needs to be given to struggling musicians and artists in general. Whether depression and anxiety is required for some to be creative or not, proper support groups need to be set up for those who are unable to manage their emotions properly. Art and music bring communities and people together and can change lives for the better, so it’s time to take this mental health crisis seriously and provide proper and adequate help to aid creatives thrive along this perilous yet thrilling journey.

Personally, despite the emotional hurdles this artistic choice poses, it is the only way for me. In some way there’s some strange comfort in knowing that I don’t stand alone facing these challenges. That sense of purpose and calling in life is often powerful enough to stave off the darkness and bring assurance in knowing that this is what I’m meant to be doing, at least for the foreseeable future. Additionally of course, the positive feedback from friends/family and supporters (like you, reader) also makes it all worthwhile, and provides me with the necessary energy to keep on doing what I love most: making music not only for myself, but also for you.

I would love to hear your views on the subject, and of course from any of my fellow musician friends artists out there that can relate to the issues raised in this section. I look forward to hearing from you.

Music and the Digital Age

Thu, 06 Jan 2022 18:54:53 GMT

Since the days when I started playing the drums and guitar in the late 90s, the way music is consumed has changed beyond recognition. So where does the modern musician fit in this ever-changing digital landscape? Allow me to share some personal thoughts...

David Bowie predicted that the Internet would open up possibilities beyond anything imaginable when he was interviewed in 1999 by Jeremy Paxman. At this time I was just discovering the importance music would have in my own life. It seemed to him as though the Internet was going to be an exciting new medium, heralding a new age which would completely transform the artist/audience relationship. He quotes “the monopolies do not have the monopoly”, and claimed that we were “on the cusp of something exhilarating and terrifying”.

Indeed it has been, and although I do have to agree that he did predict a lot of things to come in the digital age, the verdict on the benefits of the Internet for the artists and their audience is unclear to say the least. The reality today is that the Internet has produced immense monopolies like we’ve never seen before: Spotify, Apple, Amazon and Google with unparalleled wealth and power. And with this wealth and power comes their increasing ability to determine who has the loudest voices on the Internet and who can be silenced, and so consequently the artist/audience dynamic becomes inevitably dependant on the will of these giants.

For the artist trying to find a way amongst these monopolies of the Web has become a complex one, and so with more Internet and technology comes increasing confusion. To take the example of Spotify, its influence has replaced the status of major labels but pays musicians peanuts for the songs they upload, even if they have a large following and many millions of streams, and the situation isn’t getting better. It has been left to the musician to figure out how to navigate the jungle of the internet, to try and get on the major streaming platform’s best playlists, to contact bloggers/radios, to create an online following, to self-promote on every social media platform and to find time to be creative all at the same time.

As a result, this new digital era seems to have fallen victim to a form of ADHD previously unknown to any society, and that the artist as well as the listener seem to suffer from. Producing a generation obsessed with endlessly searching for the next best thing, unable to focus our attention for too long, out of fear of missing out (the famous FOMO). In the process we are depriving ourselves of our abilities to be creative, attentive and contemplate the beauty of a work well done, of true craftsmanship. I myself have found myself guilty of this behaviour of course, and I would challenge any of my fellow musicians to claim otherwise.

But one fundamental question always come to mind: What is the point of being part of some new trend, like that of the rising social media platform TikTok today amongst the younger generation for example, if it is going to be replaced and forgotten by a better one, flashier, brighter, cooler in an instant? This ever-consuming society has inevitably pushed some of us creative people, and me included, into an increasing state of wanting to hit the brakes and go back to a time when things were simpler and unchanging, frozen in time: like using vinyls instead of mp3s, or analog recording devices instead of the latest new trendy plug-in software that’s just been released by a company claiming to be the best in the business.

For every new era however, there is a counter-culture that appears: take the surprising surge in vinyl sales and vintage equipment amongst music lovers and makers. I myself made a conscious effort to get vintage recording equipment to re- cord my album, like the UA 610 solo or the Neve 1073 for those studio nerds out there! And I know that those purchases were made in a conscious effort to freeze time and to be able to say to myself with confidence "this has required true craftsmanship to make, time and effort has been dedicated to this and it will not require the next big thing to replace it. It was crafted to be the best at what it does, immune to the passage of time".

I was reading an article in The Guardian not that long ago that read “Dusty vinyl records, vintage film cameras, rickety typewriters and antiquated recording equipment ... these are the creative tools being used by some emerging artists. Pure nostalgia? Or a laudable refusal to escape the speed and sanitised perfection of contemporary digital culture?” They go on to quote sociologist Alvin Toffler who coined the term “futureshock” to describe a psychological state for those of us with “too much change in too short a period of time” and this really does ring true to me. This simple quote alone seems to encapsulate what is happening to our culture as a whole. I really do applaud and admire artists that have a will to return to simpler times, as they are freeing themselves from the shackles of the endless pursuit of the next ‘best thing’.

I suppose on a positive note, the age of the internet and streaming has allowed the bedroom musician to be heard by the masses, and has been pivotal for many musicians that didn’t have a record deal or any other medium to gain a genuine following without having to go down the more official label “routes”. But there is a point when it becomes too much, when you need to refocus in my opinion and ask yourself the fundamental question as an artist: why did I get into this in the first place? Was it to focus most of my energy chasing the latest Internet algorithms and trends? Or was it to be the best artist I can possibly become by working hard on my craft? And, for me in any case, the answer has to be the latter.

Of course we are inevitably all part of this new digital age and there isn’t much any of us can do about it, but I believe that there must be a balance, and that this balance should always tend towards spending more time being creative, improving as an artist and being less focused on the next trend, big thing, or social media platform. Yes use the internet to your advantage and learn from what it has to offer in terms of promoting your creativity, but be wary of the rabbit hole of social media and FOMO, don’t let it get in the way of your sensibility and integrity as an artist.

For me, the prospect of simply sitting at the piano/or on the guitar for hours and letting my creativity take me to exciting places is something I relish, and I find that beautiful in its simplicity, and yes: the phone stays off. Even though I do feel I am increasingly belonging to a rare breed.

Theme and Artwork of the Album Ocean Sky

faceyhenry@gmail.com (Henry Facey) — Sun, 12 Sep 2021 13:54:21 GMT

There is a stream running through each song on the album...

It is one of Aristotle’s four classical elements: water.

Water is vital for life to exist, it is abundant everywhere and is an incredible force of nature. But more than just an element, I suppose the importance of water to me (apart from the fact that it rains constantly in this country!), and in particular the ocean, stems from spending a lot of my childhood holidays in Cornwall, West Country England (UK). For those of you who don’t know the area, it is probably best known as the ‘boot’ of England located at the farthest-most south-eastern corner of the country facing the Atlantic Ocean.

I would spend my youth running along Sennen Cove near Land’s End, jumping the waves, bodyboarding and watch- ing the changing tide. I would also spend long hours walking along the coast and cliffs watching the waves crash on the rocks in awe of the sheer force that the heavy winds exerted on the ocean and the landscape. It would often rain heavily and make the ocean even angrier, The rawness of nature in that area of England is impressive and sometimes scary, but it would always have a calming effect on me when I was feeling low as a child.

Even as a young adult I would sometimes visit my childhood spots and feel nostalgic of a past innocence that I felt I had lost growing up. When I was nineteen, I hitchhiked all the way from the South of France to Cornwall and back just to camp on the beach at Sennen Cove . So with the album Ocean Sky I wanted to somehow use these childhood memories and relate the ebb and flow of water to my emotional journey throughout the creation of the album, using this raw element as a metaphor for various feelings and emotions that inspired me to write.

A few examples of this can be found in songs like ' Heart In The Sand' : ‘Don’t leave me out, now my heart’s in the sand, and the tide pulls your hands’, ' The Mouth Of The Sea' : ‘The crashing waves have taken their toll on me’, ' Seafaring Days' : ‘Incendiary eyes, locked in the tide, thieves of time soar to the sky’, ' A Rendezvous with Recklessness' : ‘Poor the drinks, poor your heart out, rivers flowing down the hall’, or ' Summer Rain' : ‘A walk down memory lane in the pouring summer rain”.

This close relationship culminates in the 13th and last track of the album, called ' Neptune Orbit 1' , an instrumental song in which I included the Voyager 2 probe’s audio recordings of the sounds of Neptune. The audio was captured as it flew past the last lonely ice giant of our solar system before drifting off into deep space. In this song I wanted to convey an impression of darkness, immenseness and sheer power of nature whilst giving this freezing oddity a deeply sad and emotional character. I hope you enjoy the small sample of this song attached to this newsletter.

I long hesitated with the artwork of the album as I wanted it to play an important part in the release. I suppose this stems from the fact that before developing a passion for mu- sic, at the age of around seven to twelve years old I wanted to be an artist. I would draw anything I could see: from natural landscapes and portraits, to fossils and planets (as you may know by now, I have an enduring fascination with space). I would always be obsessed with detail, I needed to produce a drawing that was true to the original, a carbon copy of reality. I would sit for hours in my room after school flipping through books about space or dinosaurs (I remember two books that used to fascinate me: The Planets by David McNab & Walking With Dinosaurs by Tim Haines). I remember collecting fossilised ammonites I had found on the shores of Lyme Regis (UK), I would take them home and spend hours studying and drawing them, forever on a constant mission for something new to inspire me. Around the age of thirteen however, my passion for drawing soon gave way to music, and in particular the drums and the guitar. I’ve never seen it as giving up art for music, but rather the natural evolution of my artistic nature from one field to another, I do however miss my drawing years to this day.

Despite art holding such an important part in my early life, I wasn’t sure what direction I was going to go with Ocean Sky . I wanted an artwork for each song that conveyed a visual representation of the emotion of the track, and for a while I was actually thinking of picking up the pencil/paintbrush again myself and giving it a shot! However, my good friend Charlie Tupper from New York is a very prolific and talented artist with a very unique style and has hundreds of abstract pieces to his name (see some of his pieces for the album above). I presented him with the idea of producing pieces for the thirteen songs on the album and he agreed straight away. The collaboration has been amazing and each unique piece serves as an artistic representation of the thirteen tracks on the album. The various pieces will be released with the songs on streaming platforms and will feature within the booklet of the CD cover. You will also be able to purchase merchandise with each artwork on it: from t-shirts and hats, to tote bags, mugs and more on a special eShop section I will be setting up shortly on the website so look out for that.

I would also encourage all of you to check out Charlie Tupper’s work and give him the attention he deserves here .

The Story Behind the Songwriting

Wed, 19 May 2021 22:57:43 GMT

Songwriting and the quest for meaning. Whatever that means...

I t’s always been a tough one talking about inspiration for songs, and I think it’s the same for a lot of artists out there. Although I do consider it necessary to understand where a song is coming from, I also admire the songwriting process where a work doesn’t need to have any obvious meaning as such. One song that springs to mind would be Bowie’s ' The Man Who Sold The World' with its eerie atmosphere and surreal lyrics. In a way I see songs of this type as emotional chameleons: it’s for the listener to infuse sense into it, therefore different people will interpret the song in different ways and feel different things as a result.

I remember reading (or maybe my dad told me?) that Bob Dylan was often criticised for the lack of meaning in his songs, and I heard somewhere that the young David Bowie would write bits of words on pieces of paper and assemble them to make up the lyrics to a song. These two men have been heroes of mine and for many of you I’m sure. They have truly inspired me beyond words and you will probably hear me speak about them more than once in my newsletters.

But could their renowned genius and prolific inspiration just be a fluke? Were they just winging it? It reminds me of the masterpiece ' I Am The Walrus' by The Beatles where John Lennon said whilst writing it: “Let the f*****s work that one out”. In the case of Lennon it seems like a deliberate move to mislead people who interpret too much. Just feel it, stop analysing it!

Whether the anecdotes about Dylan and Bowie’s writing are true or not, and whether the ever-comical Lennon was just teasing the critics, I suppose inspiration sparks interest amongst people as it addresses the fundamental questions: where does inspiration actually come from? Can you command it at will? Is it only for a select few? There’s the romantic ideal that inspiration is some divine entity that one cannot fully explain. It comes from above and hits you. You cannot summon it, it just happens. The songwriter experiences a kind of stream of consciousness or epiphany wherein the music and lyrics just poor endlessly onto the page and pouf! there’s a song!

I feel this idea applies to all artistic fields, not just music. I would say that personally this has certainly happened for a few of my songs, there seems to have been an unstoppable energy, a flow that directs the songwriting process. Sometimes in ten-odd minutes I have ended up with a complete song, being entirely satisfied with music, lyrics and melody with an elated feeling, as if I can take on the world with my endless prolific songwriting! Other times, I have spent months on trying to make one song work, to finally just drop it and move on, frustrated that I spent so much time on something fruitlessly. I will often touch upon the topic of inspiration in my newsletters as I feel this is such an important part in any musician’s/artist’s life. We’re in a constant struggle to find inspiration, to try not to force it, and stay true to ourselves without compromising our integrity.

Integrity is an important word in this day and age where growing social media platforms and relentless adverts targeting the younger generation have created a homogeneous youth addicted to quick thrills. Shortened attention spans have resulted in the development of a sort of generalised ADHD amongst the young audience when it comes to art in all its forms (music and film especially), but this is a subject for another discussion.

So, within this context, I would like to move on and talk about the two songs for which the music videos have been made: ' Heart In The Sand' and ' Shackles' . I cannot say for sure where the inspiration came from, or dissect the process in any way, but I can place them at periods of my life when I was going through considerable change. ' Heart In The Sand' was written during the breakup with the mother of my child and my move back to London from France circa 2014, I can really place the lyrics: “Don’t leave me out, now my heart’s in the sand, and the tide pulls your hands” at a time when I felt isolated from my former partner and my child, and although I am in a very different place now with both the mother and my daughter, these feelings still resonate with me today.

The love I felt for my daughter and the feelings of nostalgia was an extremely important catalyst for the writing of this song, which is why it was all the more important to me to make it a single for the album. ' Shackles' was written later, around 2016 when I was going through the break-up with someone I truly loved but knew that the relationship was unsustainable. It is a very accoustic-based song as I was busking a lot and practically lived with my Maton guitar and harmonica, playing Dylan on the streets of London and living off my busking efforts. It has that London-based feel about it. “I spend these nights staring through a glass, I told you lies but I’ll try and make you laugh” relates to the time spent in pubs and bars around London doing things I would later regret, wandering lost and emotionally broken.

I found solace in writing songs like these, and although they both came from a dark place, the writing process felt very effortless and easy. I can only explain this ease because they were written with the purpose of healing and recovering from emotional trauma. They served as therapeutic entities that helped me get through the tough times spent alone. Not all songs came to me as easily as these two of course, and there are a few on the album that have required more work and time to get the right feel.

I sincerely hope you enjoy the two short samples of ' Heart In The Sand' and ' Shackles' I’ve attached to the newsletter (please send 'subscribe' to faceyhenry@gmail.com to receive the monthly issue). They are not quite the finished versions of the songs (as I have previously mentioned the album is still awaiting mastering) but they are very close. I would love to hear your feedback on them, and know your personal thoughts on the subject of emotions and music. Do you have a particular song that evokes a particular moment in your life, like with Proust’s madeleine in his In Search of Lost Time?