Ocean Songs is a mixture between an album and a song-cycle. It’s got elements of pop, classical music, ambient music. There are nine songs in all, and each one of them celebrates – in a different way – aspects of our ocean.
– Colin Riley
Nine songs about one ocean: Ocean Songs is a genre-bending journey across a blue planet by new band Blue Machine. The band brings together Colin Riley and Nic Pendlebury with Steve Pretty (Hackney Colliery Band) and Lottie P (Goat Girl).
Premiered in Lowestoft (June 2025, First Light Festival) and London (July 2025, National Maritime Museum), an album is due to follow. Stay in touch for news of further releases and performances. This project builds on 2024’s ‘Cutty Sark Soundscape‘, also for Royal Museums Greenwich and featuring Lottie P.
Images from rehearsals and performances of ‘Ocean Songs” – Summer 2025.
Woven into the songs are other voices, including several spoken-word pieces by Helen Czerski. These highlight the importance of protecting our oceans through extracts from Czerski’s award-winning book Blue Machine: How the Ocean Shapes our World (Penguin Books) – a major influence on the project.
A showreel of extracts from the project, featuring several of the spoken-word pieces.
Alongside this are parts for community choir drawing on mythology (‘Sirens’), the nature of waves (‘Every Wave’) and Hawaiian chant E ala e, celebrating the sunlight’s first touch of the ocean (‘We Are Ocean’). This choir element allows Blue Machine to collaborate with local musicians at each performance, from emerging young artists to community music-and-health groups.
The project was a joint commission by First Light Festival CIC, Royal Museums Greenwich, Messums and Ocean Rising. For press and performance enquiries please contact sonic.collaborations@gmail.com.