Why Hope Over Fear Trumps No Music On A Dead Planet: DiS meets PVA’s Ella Harris

0:00Ella Harris:What is an action hub and why are Music Declares Emergency selling t-shirts to fund them? Well, in this episode of the Drowning Sound podcast, I sit down not just with one of the representatives of Music Declares Emergency, but also the front person of the absolutely brilliant PVA, three-piece band from London, whose debut album Blush was nominated for our alternative to the Mercury Prize, the Neptune Music Prize. and they have just released an absolutely extraordinary new album called No More Like This and I talked to Ella Harris who wears both hats. She's the music declares emergency person and also the front person of PVA.

0:39Ella Harris:So we talk a little bit about that new record which came out a couple of weeks ago, January 23rd, 2026, depending when you're listening to that. That might be many months ago. Hopefully it was a few days ago and in this episode we cover everything from the climate crisis to their new campaign, Hope Over Fear. We also talk about speaking songs because Ella's band PVA, she kind of speaks. And to go with this podcast, which we make in partnership with Cobuzz, you can hear a very special playlist. And it's a couple of hours long of songs I absolutely love that are a bit more spoken than sung. And some of them are almost wrapped there is some absolutely extraordinary things on there including chloe savani speaking over a beautiful solwax track there's some latigra there's a track the kate jackson from the long blonds did which i absolutely adored um so yeah there's lots on there so you head to droninsound.org forward slash playlists you can not only get a free 30-day trial to the ethical music streaming service but you can also find the link to that playlist and a companion playlist which we put together with every episode of this podcast.

1:49Ella Harris:And as is the rule, I must now say it's time to get into this. This is our interview with Ella Harris from PVA and Music Declares Emergency. I'll catch up with the end with a few thoughts.

2:12Ella Harris:So let's begin, Ella. Could you introduce yourself and the various different hats you wear to all of our audience? My name's Ella. I'm a musician and singer in the band PVA. I'm a visual artist and kind of creative director, trying to like build that hat a little bit in the next few years. and I'm the campaigns manager at Music Declares Emergency and have been in that position for the last year of my life. I'm really enjoying it and looking forward to continuing on. So at the time we're talking, your second album is about to drop as PVA. Yeah, and our single's literally just dropped. We've had a single drop while we're sitting here.

2:56So I'm sure my phone's doing lots of things right now, but I'm not going to look at it for a while.

3:00Ella Harris:um so i'll talk a little bit about both of the kind of your music projects and what you do at music declares emergency because i think that for the average music fan who listens to this and the musicians who tune in and people in the industry i think there's an understanding of you make amazing no music on a dead planet merch and you got the hashtag trending when you had to use it to get on the main stage screens at redding and yeah you kind of have done all these great projects but what in at its essence does music declares emergency do because it's more than just merch yeah and this is one thing i really i like to build into our narratives i think um we we do merch and we have the kind of no music on a dead planet and more recently the hope over fear campaign t-shirts and i think merch is a really important part of music fandom and we really believe like it can be done differently, more sustainably.

3:56So we work with T-Mill to, you know, it's like print on demand and it's in a reusable, like a factory powered by renewables and it's a circular model and all of this stuff. And we really believe in that. But I think people who maybe see it just as this kind of merch awareness campaign, a campaign of like music fandom showing your beliefs on your chest that's that's one thing we see that as like

4:24Ella Harris:the entry point i mean it's a bit like the ramones some people might they're actually a band yeah yeah exactly exactly rihanna's red album um but like yeah that that that's an entry point but but it's it's at the heart of what we believe because music fandom music uh music as a collective experience you know is such an important tool for one connecting emotionally to other people and also to building communities and you know sustainable community infrastructure and so a lot of our work we work in the industry we're sort of building partnerships within the industry within the lives circuit trying to promote engage and advocate for sustainable infrastructure and um even simple things like a rider which you can print out absolutely and kind of go absolutely please don't put plastic bottles on our ride yeah yeah and there's lots of there's there's so many organizations working um in parallel to what we're doing and there's so much interesting work that's out there at the moment our main kind of focus and mission statement in 2026 is sort of um engaging artists industry and fans through um building the no music on a dead planet movement in real life through action hubs in grassroots venues um this is primarily because you know i think there's a big apathy at the moment a disconnect the digital world is really pulling people maybe away from empathetic understanding um and i also think this is getting a little bit deep but um you know i think to be a music fan is an empathetic practice because We're going, we can go deep.

6:06Ella Harris:Yeah, yeah, yeah. But this is a real thing, I believe. And whenever I meet someone who's really connected to music, who like, for example, Quake Bass, we produced our album with, I would see him as like a, he just like channels music through him. It's like a magical thing. And we'll go into him later because I have lots to say about how wonderful he is. But, you know, he's such an empathetic and political person as well. And I think it's really, you know, people who listen to music can hear someone feeling so evocatively I don't know how that can't make you empathetic if you connect to that and if that makes you feel something like that is an empathetic relationship between an artist and a fan and so we're using that kind of as a as a core idea because I think music is an emotional tool to connect people it's it's long-sighted that that is a truth and it's a really amazing tool to engage people with political understanding but we have to make those connections in real life as well and that's why live music is such an amazing experience and that's why there's lots of viral moments now at live shows like you know artists advocating for you know marginalized groups or against genocide or all of these things so what we're trying to do is is we're trying to build opportunities for people to build these communities in real life alongside grassroots organisations who are already established in those areas, like not kind of, you know, working together, working stronger.

7:37Ella Harris:So what would someone do at an Action Hub? Because I know that the new merch you've got, the hope over fear, which I was one of your models on Instagram. Yes, yeah. And you've got the world is another world as possible. And our future, our fight. And the money from those is going to go towards creating these action hubs yeah what what would one of those look like yeah so we're working on the kind of rollout and strategy development of the action hubs but we're working with music venue trust um in partnership to identify grassroots venues that could that are already established pillars of community which grassroots venues are and they're at risk of shutting down like so many are already shutting down so many are struggling with landlords, rising prices, but they're really important.

8:25Ella Harris:And energy bills, which is very relevant to... Very, very relevant. And we've got some interesting ideas around that as well alongside Music Venue Trust. But it's often these venues don't have the capacity to implement things like let's get off the grid and own our power with solar panels, for example, or let's make our venue more accessible by installing a disabled bathroom and a wheelchair user ramp to get into the venue. Like they don't have the capacity or the funds. I mean, one of the things about solar that really surprised me, I worked with Max Richter for a while and they put back into the grid.

9:00Ella Harris:So it's not even like they're off the grid. They're a contributor to it. It's like, imagine if the grassroots venue was like powering the local primary schools and all sorts of other things. I mean, that's such a beautiful idea, isn't it? It's such an amazing idea. And I think it's so important to, you know, build into storytelling for climate action, for direct action. These spaces that are already established, we're not trying to invent a space. We have these spaces that already kind of do that job. They bring people together. Like I met all of my friends pretty much at grassroots venues between the ages of 16 to 25, at gigs, you know, at celebrations.

9:40But it would be amazing if one day there was like a workshop there, a Skillshare. Imagine if you went during the day. Like what we want to do is we want to go to festivals and recruit people to join these action hubs in their local area. They come and spend time at their venue, maybe meet people across generations, genres, divides, who knows? And, you know, we're bringing in artists to potentially host Skillshare's production workshops. and hopefully people can join these action hubs and build onto their CV, get into the music industry and we have more people in the music industry who are politically minded, sustainably minded, you know, that's our vision for it and it's an ambitious vision but I think there's a tangible energy and it shows how many artists got involved in the campaign compared to in previous artist advocacy campaigns.

10:30It was really uplifting to see how many people got involved and wanted to be a part of building um building community through grassroots venues i think it's a really of the moment um you're going quite quickly towards the target as well from what i saw like yeah yeah merch is selling yeah i mean it looks really cool yeah is it by anthony anthony burrell yeah yeah we worked with him i wanted to build some new designs into 2026 and some more hopeful designs as well i love no music on a dead planet is iconic and it's been seen by millions, I think, of people.

11:05Ella Harris:Often seen on the videos on this podcast because I'm often wearing it. Yeah, yeah. I decided not to today because I thought it was a bit like when you wear a band's t-shirt to their show. Yeah, I've got so many now because I always get a little sample of a new design and I just got like a bit of my wardrobe that's which no music on a dead planet t-shirt am I going to wear today? But yeah, I think it's nice to bring in some hopeful messaging and it aligns with our mission statement for 2026. but you know hope over fear hope is something you can do and you can build in yourself and build in your community um another world is possible is reimagining a future and actually creativity as a tool for that you know reimagination imagining something that doesn't feel currently tangible takes creativity and takes collective creativity and that's a really important thing and also our future our fight seeing it as a you know this is all of our futures generations over and all of that you know so i think those are things that everyone's feeling and you see it so many people are building in these kind of in real life structures like we're not the only ones doing action hubs at all like um hope over hate and earth sonic and there's loads of loads of amazing kind of organizations who are sort of uh things like mcmillan where they just like bring people together for i'm slightly jealous of old ladies sometimes they have all these amazing events organized throughout the week yeah that's like lunchtime drop-in type of things yeah i'm like why can't there be stuff like i don't i don't think i've ever seen like on the listings on a um venue like board games at midday absolutely like you do you do when i've been on tour you do turn up to some venues and there's like some locals that pop in and like they're sort of hanging out in the venues but a lot of venues are closed until the doors open and it's yeah they are community spaces aren't they yeah talking to venues i think there's also it would be it would be good for them as well because it makes them more fundable as well if they can demonstrate that community impact is happening within their venues and that's one thing music venue trust flagged to us is actually this you know if we if we if we got our community to you know using the action hubs to to for example making the venue more accessible making the venue more sustainable you know that's great for the venues and that helps them sustain and that helps and bring more people in so I think it's sort of this like reciprocal model as well and that's why there's a lot of focus I think across across our um I was about to say scene that's my music head on but like across like all the different organizations working in this space it's a real like a recognition and a turn to focus I think and also I you know as an artist myself I think it's sometimes hard because artists can feel commodified um you know if it's really beneficial for artists to go on socials and share their voice and their values and it really influences a lot of their music fans but sometimes when that is something that maybe is just the only thing that is being used for charity outreach I think it can maybe feel a bit like you know and you're getting so many different charities reaching out to you yeah it's potentially a it might feel like a commodification I think sometimes for me it feels like a commodification and you want to feel like you you you can use your creative abilities and your energy like this kinetic energy to actually like make some impact we all do so I think hopefully we'll be able to offer artists you know that kind of space like even if it's going into their local action hub and hosting something or you know passing down some wisdom like there's so much random stuff in music and activism that you only learn through doing like that no one could write a guide I don't think about how to kind of get involved in grassroots organizing or in music and it's sort of gatekept sometimes and it's like if that information was more readily accessible there'd be more people getting into that I mean even something as little as how do the lights work at a gig yeah like there's loads of people that go to gigs all the time.

15:09Ella Harris:What is PRS? Like what is PRS? I didn't even know what publishing was until like we were talking about sync and I was just like, what is this? I still don't really, and that's such a big part of income now and that's a whole conversation about ethical sponsorship. So it's like if people actually had this information more, like over time you could start building a bit more of an understanding rather than like, you know, coincidentally just stumbling across bits of knowledge and then that kind of going, oh, how does that make me feel about this? How does that make me feel about this? yeah it's super interesting I just think it's I think I've gone a bit off topic for all these things are off topic I think that that everything's a starting point and like for instance we could talk about the fact that we don't have energy security and the fact that we don't have renewables means that the cost of energy for venues is one of the reasons venues are closing absolutely like we could talk about the fact that artists don't like to speak up about things like climate crisis because they think, oh, well, our fans are just going to say that we travel around the world.

16:11Ella Harris:Absolutely, by planes. I think my first conversation with Lewis that co-founded Music Declares Emergency was like, no, it's the fans that make all of the emissions and it's poor public transport. So we could talk about the need for better local governance and the inability to travel home after some shows. And the supporting, and I think that's as well for fans, it's like accessibility of options, transport accounts. I think it's 76 % potentially of emissions for a show. But, you know, if you can't get a train home for a show and you have to get an Uber, then obviously that's going to be the case.

16:44And for artists, you know, if your fee for a show abroad, for example, or to even Scotland is 500 quid. Oh, can you play in Glasgow? Here's 500 quid. Trains are 150 each and you've got five of you. But the flights are 30 quid. obviously you're going to fly and your management will make that decision because you know it's it's it's it's really hard I think to um think in individual actions and not look at it as a systemic thing and I think it's good that people are considering systemic but I think social media sometimes allows people to micro in with these particular things I think that is why it's a bit of a fear like the coliseum of now like you know you put yourself out there it's a vulnerable position and people can come back and be very um very aggressive and very opinionated but i i i don't believe artists should stop using their voice because of that i think we just need to support them in in ways of storytelling and ways of you know also i think honesty i love phoebe from lambrini girls being on hugh stevens just being like yeah this is this is the reality i I think also painting it, you know, it's not sexy.

17:57It's not like mad men cool. Like maybe you're not living this glamorous rock and roll lifestyle. But if everyone has a bit more of an understanding of how the music industry is working, then maybe we can actually start to challenge these systemic issues that cause people to...

18:15Ella Harris:Were you reading our mission statement before coming in? Oh no. Because that's literally like, for me, like people don't understand the value of something unless they understand the complexity behind it.

18:32Ella Harris:This episode of the Drowning Sound podcast is presented in partnership with Cobus, the platform that pays artists four times more than the industry standard, that has high quality audio, that has human curation, which as a human curator is something that I truly value over the kind of algo slop that you get on some platforms. You can really hear the difference. I know lots of places talk about the audio qualities and as soon as I moved across, it sort of felt like I was rediscovering music, which is one of the platform's slogans. If you're worried about your playlists, you can use Soundiz. It's a really good tool that's part of the signup process when you join GoBuzz.

19:12Ella Harris:It just transfers everything across. If you'd like a free trial of this platform that's independently owned and made for music enthusiasts, head to drownedinsound.org forward slash playlists where you can hear not only our playlists but get a free trial you can also find these details in the show notes to this episode and now back to this episode of the Drowned in Sound podcast brought to you in partnership with Cobuzz

19:45Ella Harris:one of my big missions is to try and make music appreciation like we have for food like if the BBC had cookery programs like we like we would have songwriting programs yeah rather than just watching someone perform something you would understand the cultural references and the history that's gone into the different genres and influences absolutely you'd understand what each synthesizer does and like and in doing so when you hear something that's made by human beings you'd have a sense of the skill involved absolutely to create the thing they've made and you might value it differently or yeah take the time to listen to what someone's done and I think like people that get into poetry suddenly have like a different level for like what they expect from like songs and poems and writing and it's like so i think that so much of what we see as music fans like i've seen people go oh tickets over 20 pounds are a rip-off and it's like yeah like you said like yeah there aren't it's not like the train tickets are cheap yeah it's it's like difficult In fact, are you able to even tour by train?

20:48Ella Harris:Have you replaced your drummer with a drum machine so you can tour? No, no. That's the thing. I'm even in the position I'm in, being high up in a climate music charity. I still, in my band, can't necessarily implement sustainable changes because we're normally making a loss on everything. we don't have any money never have any money you know don't have tool support like it's it's it's it's hard graft one of my criticisms of the kind of carbon offset world is like for one they can't plant as many trees as people are buying but two people could be building infrastructure like if you bought trucks which use renewable energy like absolutely like and artists could then hire them for cheaper like that would instantly change the amount of emissions each van is laying out i know that's small but you would feel less guilty about getting in some like 15 year old van splitter van to drive around the country absolutely and often like with us it's not even like the splitter van is too expensive you know we're just kind of carpooling yeah and then that's what look at that that's three cars doing three journeys but that's the reality and lots of opportunities um you know, that require you to move around the country, even live sessions and this and that, like you, you, you don't get paid for those.

22:11So of course you're going to carpool or, you know, just try and find the cheapest possible way to do it. Like, you're not going to be thinking, oh, you know, if I was sitting there in those conversations being, what about an electric van? Like, you know, I think I'd get laughed out the door, not because of malicious intent or a lack of care about the planet or, you know, our beautiful world. It's like, you know, we're looking at trying to make this minus number less of a minus number um we can't you know and then we can't be hiring this expensive new fan that we had to find charging points for and all this stuff

22:44Ella Harris:and i think it's that thing of like the infrastructure is often like and then there's economic justice and social justice to that because absolutely like you can't charge someone that makes over 100 grand a year more for a ticket than someone that's on minimum wage yeah so all of the economics of everything is based on making it as accessible as possible to as many people as possible absolutely which is why like ticket touting to me is such an awful there's loads of people profiting from music yeah and i did a whole episode about it so i won't dwell on it too much but like the interconnectedness of all these different issues which i think i guess my my next question which this leads into is how did you end up going from being an artist that probably needed a second job to keep going because we all know i've interviewed 101 part-time jobs giles talks to everyone about the jobs they do why did you decide that going to work at a kind of organization like music declares was important to you yes so before i worked at music declares i was very much in that part-time job lifestyle for the eight years we've been doing pva um I was working as a barista at a bar I was a nanny I was a waitress you know doing all of this stuff but alongside I ran a and I'm not sure if you've heard of this but we were called Group Therapy Collective and during the lockdown we released two complations with you know on it now Yard Act were on it mandy indiana when they were called gary indiana um lots of lots of uh familiar faces jaskin fendrix did a track death crash lots and lots we had 60 on each compilation and that um and we were raising funds for help musicians black minds matter uh music venue trust we'd our first compilation was more of a focus on the grassroots venue and the grassroots scene and the second was on mental health, supporting mental health in music.

24:47And we ran some workshops alongside that to coincide on lots of things like getting people into the music industry alongside The Root who do accessibility into the music industry. All of that to say, I love doing that. And I did that unpaid and I loved it. And we ran events at the social and we were doing all of this work and I just saw at this moment this connection between music and activism and I just couldn't quite shake it and then went off and was working in a bar and doing this and doing that and had a bit of a sense of disenchantment by the world, feeling really also feeling really sad at the time because we were touring so much and it just felt a bit like we couldn't do anything sustainably.

25:39had a love for the natural world had a had an awareness of the issues of the climate crisis and political injustice but just felt a bit kind of lacking anything like i couldn't i didn't know how to speak out i didn't know how to be sustainable i didn't know anything just so

25:58Ella Harris:one of the themes for this season of the podcast is around resilience which yeah it's almost like you know what my questions were because i was next going to ask you which is having that sense of purpose something that makes all of the awful stuff um like i'm very purpose-driven and something that's to do with my neurodivergence yeah but like having a sense of all these things are bad rather than feeling kind of like activated by it actually feeling like you're able to contribute even if it's a small incremental change do you think that helps like obviously you said you're raising money for mental health charities and things like do you think it really helps to know that what you're doing is working towards something yeah I think so um I think I've got well I'm a person with PTSD so I think due to years of nervous system kind of spiking and I think I was very aware of things that felt wrong um we prescribed forest bathing no I wasn't I actually don't know what that is.

27:04Ella Harris:Oh, it's a thing they prescribe people in Japan. Oh, well, like kind of Wim Hof-y style. No, it's like just go and sit in a forest and things like that. Oh, yeah. I mean, nature is my remedy. I love being outdoors. I love it so much. I love gardening. Yeah, nature is my great healer and has saved my life in many ways. Growing up in London as well. So for context, not really ever having a connection to nature because I grew up in Hackney and then like moved to North London and it's just like you know we had a park that we all drank cans of beer in and it was a really like big beautiful forest and all that um so yeah I have fallen in love with it especially touring going around the UK and just seeing how beautiful the country is and just being like whoa what the hell big district highlands like my god this is Wales like this is a beautiful beautiful beautiful land Wales are just unreal yeah magical as well they've got magic in the land like there's when you're a green man you're like literally you're all connected to this did you ever play festival number six in port merion no i haven't played that one there's a drive there's loads of beautiful little ones i still am yet to discover they stopped doing it after about 10 years but there's part of the drive there i was like i didn't know like parts of wales were proper mount like yeah i knew about brecon beacons and things but these were like full-on like big hellies and yeah i climbed penny fan and it was like which is the highest point in the breaking beacons and it was like amazing experience up in the clouds you're just like wow but i just you know i didn't even think that those experiences were fun when i was a teenager because i was just living in the city just like fun was being out with people being social but it wasn't like um being in nature i didn't really access that as like a healing thing until my 20s um i was going to say with the hope over fear campaign and another world is possible like there's a lot of discussion in the climate movement i talked to tori choi on the podcast to talk sort of about sort of dumerism and how that like people have gone from denial to doom and like actually the thing that we need is people to envisage something bigger and better yeah yeah yeah to work towards something you sort of have to envisage what it is yeah not what it isn't yeah my brothers are 20 and they're always like we're so cooked and And I'm just like, no, we're not.

29:20There's hope. Like, you just got to believe. You got to believe in something. And I feel like I'm really, I used to always think of my brain as something that was against me. But now I really see it as something that's working with me because I feel quite creative. And I feel like I can create new ideas. That's something that I feel strongly about myself. and it's like you know and that's been so nice applying that to more like political activism and infrastructure conversations and I'm so grateful for the team at MD because I think they really give me space to bring in my kind of maybe more like music brain but like apply it to the work we're doing you know looking at things like how can we use music marketing ideas to engage people in activism or like understanding of um climate issues and you know how can we as an artist myself like what experiences an artist might inform how we approach artists and and we have that with Faye as well MD you know amazing she was in the band savages savages yeah goddess yeah yeah and she's amazing and and again it's just it's I think and Lewis you know having his background in NR and PR.

30:37I think we're managing to kind of touch a lot of ground and our community manager Phoebe is like an avid music fan as well so it's been really nice to bring her into the mix and just yeah I think we've got a few different perspectives in the team and bringing in a lot of partners as well and other orgs who are like we said already kind of doing established work I think is really important you know.

30:59Ella Harris:So we've touched on the edges of you being in PVA and this new record you've got like it's quite escapist it's sort of a record about desire and kind of thinking about like it it feels like it must be quite a nice release and escape and like you've not gone oh i'm gonna write a load of climate bangers because this is what i'm doing it's like the ability to actually go okay well i make all these things in the rest of my life has that liberated you to make the music more what you want the music not that the first album was like yeah yeah record or anything no no not at all but um yeah i think i was actually we did a feature with the quietest the other day and we were having this conversation about political music and like self-reflective music and find it really hard to write um if you think about like all the different ways of music there's like writing songs that like you know emotional kind of maybe more about me or like how or like the character of me and like responding to the world and relationships between people and then there's like you know the political bangers and then there's like the experiential stuff like shout out charlie like let's go on my private jet and like let me sell you this lifestyle it's really cool lifestyle and um i think the political the conversation we were having was the political songs and the like lifestyle commodification songs quite easy to I think in this kind of new AI landscape be turned into into stuff yeah but I think the thing about self-reflective music emotional music again it's this kind of deeper magic I think that um it's quite hard to I think AI learning won't quite ever get the neck of and And I think that is the music that like deeply connects people to things.

32:52But like, you know, I love, I, I, but like, there's nothing like, you know, political bang, you know, there's nothing like a song, like, um, walks from, uh, uh, and they do what they told you. And they do, you know, like I, I wish, like I have a deep wish that one day I'll write a bagger that just like rouses people and wants them to like topple something. But it is interesting though.

33:14Ella Harris:You were talking about empathy at the start. but Billie Eilish, her music has a deep empathetic connection to our audience, which means when she does speak, she's built this kind of connection. Yeah, that's a really interesting point. I hadn't really thought about that. I think that there's probably a lot of artists that don't feel like they have that depth of connection. If they feel like their fan base is fleeting, it might, in a weird way, sorry, this is not meant to be psychoanalysis. No. But I think there is something about the artists that do speak up and do speak out. that are not necessarily doing it in their music.

33:48Yeah.

33:48Ella Harris:Because I think it's sort of notable that the peril of the planet is such a huge existential topic. Absolutely. All of the music I love deals with these big existential, melancholic topics. And yet I can't think of a great song that's done for the climate movement, what punk songs did for social injustice. Yeah, I don't think we necessarily have one. And maybe we don't need one.

34:28Hi there, it's Emma here. I'm Gay Crash and the podcast to quickly tell you about the Drowned in Sound newsletter. every Wednesday I invite myself into your inbox with permission of course to share opinion writing and resources tell you about cool things that you should be involved in within the world of music activism etc I also bring track of the week and a little bit of hopeful news for you because we all know that the news cycle can be grim at the best of times drowned in sound newsletter every Wednesday in your inbox sign up now

35:09Ella Harris:i have a theory and i'd be curious what you make my thing is that cassandra jenkins making records about nature yeah probably does similar to what we were just talking about yeah of making you feel in love and in awe of the natural world absolutely then activates you to want to protect absolutely and i think i think building yeah building visual worlds as well um you know building it into campaign visuals building the natural world building um sampling you know uh using nature as an instrument um as earth percent have been working on doing but also loads of people do and it's also one of the kind of traits of like you know some of my favorite you know japanese ambient musicians like bringing that into it um you know years and years and years ago and i think that's kind of you know recognizing the connection between um between music and nature but doing i just think doing so yeah implicitly is that the word like kind of low-key um like that nts blood orange doing some gardening love that like let's do more interviews so lovely yeah let's just do more content like that like let's just get people in these spaces rather than talking about like well save these spaces was really really urgent it's just like okay just go like go show people enjoying them and give people cross you know like i i said i didn't feel like i had an access to nature growing up because i didn't really know that that was something that could make me feel good because i we had some london parks like north london little parks that yeah one of the episodes shot in weed in and stuff you know what i mean so it's just like one of the episodes we did last year was about um purpose disruptors yeah and they did a radio show from the walthamstow wetlands doing bird watching whilst making radio show and the radio show itself is no more like this is majorly inspired by walthamstow wetlands because i used to go on like a three-hour walk there every single day when i lived in stanford hill um which is when we were writing this album yeah that place is like that place has got magic i think um do you know jock mcfarland the painter um he paints like wetlands like london scenes he also paints um a lot of the east coast like kind of whitstable and stuff kind of a bit turner vibes but um yeah he does he's got these amazing paintings of like canary wharf and like kind of a lot of the east east end um and the wetlands and it's like you know these skyscrapers in the background you've got these like and they're just they're amazing they're so good um he did an exhibition at the ra that i went to see kind of around the time we were writing the album and i just yeah it's that kind of you know when you just see nature in its sort of raw form in london it's so magical because it's such a juxtaposition and i think yeah more about those spaces um and getting more people there as well is really important and getting more people to experience that kind of magic and you know i i actually got like you know when i went to green man for the first time that was like the first time i think i'd gone to wales potentially like that i remembered and i was like 22 and we woke and you know we were just like excited we were playing our first ever festival you know got the beers in having a lovely time coming from london like you know party party party and then you just wake up and you're like in the brecon beacons and you're just like whoa and it's just like it was this feeling of like okay and you burn the green man you're like oh wow you know and it's like that like check that that's core memory for me and that's like one of the ways i fell in love with nature and that is because we got the opportunity as a grassroots band to play the rising stage of a festival and they paid us enough that we could make it there and we you know all of this stuff so it's like maybe i wouldn't have been writing about nature as much or maybe i wouldn't have been kind of trying to combine the music and the activism as much if it wasn't for those kind of early experiences where you get to travel and see that kind of stuff it's interesting because i was listening to the record trying to like not overanalyze the lyrics but try and work out where your other hat lies and it's interesting then when you're talking about kind of people creating art of nature and i think some of what we talked about earlier about empathy and it's like how human a lot of what you write about is like we need to protect humans and the planet and i wonder if in a way the more in which you can make people because i think it's i love the way in which like even at the most loud points of some of your tracks you're often quite quiet speaking and like you really have to tune in to you and And it's quite a, like, your brain's oscillating between should I be dancing or listening?

40:03Yeah, I feel like 70's going to be like that.