Future Lullaby (album) with Arjuna Oakes

This is the first of the EP-trilogy from Arjuna and me. We created this in person at Waitarere Beach, New Zealand. The second EP is called Sierra (recorded in Greece) and the third is (at the time of this writing, June 2025) currently being created long-distance as Arjuna lives in London and I'm in Wellington.

I met Arjuna through the Arts Foundation's Springboard mentorship program. Arjuna had proposed me as a possible mentor. Not knowing him (or of him) when the Arts Foundation reached out, I suggested having a conversation before agreeing - I wanted to be sure that this very rare opportunity for a young artist wasn't wasted due to a mis-match with a mentor. We spoke a few times and I felt a connection immediately, and also was encouraged by Arjuna's responses to 'why me?', given I was in a very different genre of music than he was.

We started by my sitting with Arjuna as he played me some of the songs he was working on and me giving whatever feedback I thought might be useful. This went well. At the same time I was working on a collaborative album project with Jack Hooker, This was eventually released as the It'a Already Tomorrow album. I suggested to Arjuna that we create a song together for it. I sent him a very bare sketch of a chord progression (that happened to be in 11/8). He sent me back something absolutely incredible. We developed it a bit, and asked Hayden Chisholm at add saxophone layers, and our first ever collaboration was born: Unlearn.

So we decided to start writing songs together. We planned some time out at Waitarere Beach, with no plan or defined goal.

The way I remember it is; Arjuna would find his way to the piano and start exploring. I would sit in a chair in the same room and listen. Every now and then one of us would go 'ooh' in response to something Arjuna would play and we'd backtrack. We'd start shaping and refining a 'nugget', and I'd start suggesting various things like reversing a progression or substituting a one chord for another. We fell into a very easy way of developing ideas and fleshing them out. Eventually thinking this might be a verse, or this might be a bridge. Maybe it ends like this.

What I remember is how incredibly fast Arjuna was; his ability to absorb new ideas, versions, transformations, and internalise them immediately so we could move on. We hardly wrote anything down. We then moved into the main room where the synths and microphones were setup. We'd create a Logic session and Arjuna would play the material he'd been assembling on the upright piano, into Logic via the Nord.

Once we had the structure, we started layering; on this EP mostly through synths. Arjuna is a wizard at getting great sounds (quickly) on analog synths, and also at performing them expressively. A great example of this is the first few minutes of Breaking a Fold. These patches, unique and tailored to each song's essence, were never saved. Totally ephemeral.

And then came the vocals. I have a great visual memory of recording Arjuna singing with the doors wide open, looking out at the ocean and the horizon.

When it came to lyrics, we developed an interesting pattern. Arjuna would stand far away from me and create lyric ideas from pure instinct and feeling. I would write down what I thought I heard him singing, applying my own semantic logic to make sense of what I thought he was saying. This was often totally different from the words he was actually singing. Then I'd give him what I'd written and he would sing that and respond to it, changing it, or mis-reading, or taking it somewhere else that felt better. In this way we intuitively found our way to what each song was about. Incredible that it works as a process.

We ended up with four songs. All of which I love. We then approached Callum Mower, aka Serebii, to mix the tracks, and our beautiful EP Future Lullaby was born.

Buy album on BandCamp

We went on to make an orchestral arrangement of Safe Way to Fall, and performed it with Orchestra Wellington. An incredible experience, marking my return to live performance after nearly 30 years. Video link below......or here