there is another sky

4/05/25

There is another sky,
Ever serene and fair,
And there is another sunshine,
Though it be darkness there;
Never mind faded forests, Austin,
Never mind silent fields—
Here is a little forest,
Whose leaf is ever green;
Here is a brighter garden,
Where not a frost has been;
In its unfading flowers
I hear the bright bee hum:
Prithee, my brother,
Into my garden come

Back in 2013, when I was 19, I left my hometown to study music in south east London. I met three other people, and we began jamming weekly in the dark, blue police lights flickering voicelessly through soundproofed glass, inspired by the latter two jazz-infused Talk Talk records. And we spent three years that way.

In 2016, we were put on a bill with Rosie Lowe and Ghostpoet, and started attracting attention. We sold out St Pancras Church as backlit silhouettes, called ‘Nocturne’, and got signed to Fiction Records in 2017, hailed as the next potential Radiohead. I couldn’t believe it. I was in a band being hailed as the next potential Radiohead! Cool!

There was a nineties industrial rock band also called Nocturne, so we realised we really had to change our name. So we spent an evening cycling through them, and landed on a song we’d written based on an Emily Dickinson poem. I still remember the melody, and the words, ‘there is another sky I lived under once’.

We supported Sam Fender, toured the Netherlands, toured America, played SXSW, did a Tiny Desk, got billboards put up all around London. We had a studio in Limehouse called ‘The Lighthouse’ and spent a day painting it sailor-blue. I spent most days there, making music, playing a piano we bought off gumtree, lovingly called ‘Dorma’. That studio was flooded by a weed farm, and so we moved into the Crypt of a church, where we made a rock record, and turned a bit Soundgarden.

The bit that always makes me cry in my solo album is when I say, ‘there is an edge to every desert if I walk far enough’, because I genuinely remember believing that could be true, that if I just wrote the right words, that if I just explained myself in the right way, then everything would be okay.

I wonder if subconsciously, I think that if I write my pain truthfully or clearly enough, it’ll fix everything, and I don’t just mean the band, I mean…everything. I remember believing once that art had the power to do that. Now, I think art merely documents, and allows us to process the inevitable pain and joy of living.

Writing our pains and truths doesn’t fix everything, but does mean we get to have edges to our outlines, to stand as ourselves. The real reward for writing our pain truthfully or clearly enough is that we get to truly heal and own our experiences, even if others deny them. That’s why we do this. That’s why we make art. For our healing, for ourselves, and for freedom.

I wonder if the true grief of this all is the discovery I’m alone in my own body, that nothing is forever.

I think, the truth is, underneath this world of deep conflict, underneath all our human pain - we just love each other. Very deeply. And it hurts so bad to lose people, lives, futures, places, things we love. And I want to live a life where I can say, I miss you, I lost you, and this hurts. And even if I’ve lost you forever, I will always love you from afar. Because that is the kind of person I want to be. I wasn’t always that person. But I will try to be, now.

I think the best thing you can do as an artist is speak to experiences so human, so ubiquitous, that by naming your experiences, and what it feels like to be human, you are speaking for everybody, that anybody can see themselves in you. I think that is the most powerful art.

And I want to say that as much as the band got hyped, got its chances, got far; anyone can get in a band with four people and make beautiful music. Yes, anyone. This is the truth of being human. We are all deserving of it, of fun, of community, of best friends, of something we collectively love and can feed, of creative projects, of a space we can go to and pour our hearts out, and into, and so few get it. For that, I am forever grateful. The funding is less, the spaces are becoming smaller, the world more hyper-capitalistic. Most people believe they aren’t artists at all, when in reality, by proxy of being human, we all are.

Down in the Crypt, my therapist told me to start drawing pictures. I drew this picture which I stuck above Dorma. It was of a cave, and there were three lifeboats coming out of it. I want to stipulate these weren’t supposed to represent band members, these lifeboats represented lots of people in my life, me, also. Three felt like a significant number, for whatever reason.

“It’s beautiful out here!”, I wrote at the top of the drawing.

“Please don’t go back in”, I wrote at the bottom.

Behind front-facing Another Sky releases lies hours and hours worth of demos, these beautiful, utterly beautiful pieces of music. Honestly, you wouldn’t believe some of that music. Sigur-Ros level, I always thought.

There was this song I was writing for the band called ‘On Your Side’, and the lyrics went something like, ‘and if I love you, I must tell the truth, bring dark to light - I’m on your side’. I was trying to tell someone that when I acted as a mirror for them, I wasn’t the villain - it was an act of love.

And that is what I believe love is; a hall of mirrors, and walking with our shadows. No idealisation, no games. Sometimes I think true love is simply being seen, being witnessed in our broken entireties, and ultimately accepted, and pushed to be better. And sometimes I think the most vulnerable thing we can do is to drop the defence, and simply say, ‘this thing I lost? -

It mattered.’

And that makes me vulnerable, which can make me feel open for attack and scrutiny, but I now think this is a better way to live; vulnerably.

Going into a room with three very different people and being forced to find a way to agree taught me everything I know about being human. It’s the reason I question everything, and don’t think in black and white anymore, and can hold multiple truths at once, and listen to everyone’s perspective.

Another Sky was special, life changing, a one in a million experience, and I’d have given anything for it to have worked, and I will probably be very sad for a long time, but there is also a life beyond the things we lose, and we cannot wallow or allow our pain to engulf and become us, and I refuse to spend or waste any more years of my life in sadness or shame.

The day the band ended, I put a picture on the wall that used to be filled with our faces, and memories. I wrote something my therapist taught me;

‘We think grief gets smaller. Grief actually stays the same size, life just grows around it’.