Ocean Songs

Next live performance:
11 July 2025 19:00 – National Maritime Museum, London

View Digital Programme | Buy Tickets

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 follows in Autumn 2025. Stay in touch to be informed when new releases are coming out. This project builds on 2024’s ‘Cutty Sark Soundscape‘,also for Royal Museums Greenwich and featuring Lottie P.

A rehearsal of Ocean Songs featuring Lottie P, Nic Pendlebury and Colin Riley.
A beach at dawn in Suffolk, UK with musician Steve Pretty surrounded by electronics.
A beach at dawn in Suffolk, UK.
Nic Pendlebury, Lottie P and Colin Riley performing onstage in front of a community choir.

A few images from a weekend of adventure at First Light Festival, Lowestoft, including a very early start for a 4am dawn gig on the beach…

Woven into the songs are other voices. Parts for community choir draw on the myth of the Sirens and Hawaiian chant ‘E ala e’ – arise, awake! Alongside this listeners hear spoken-word pieces by Helen Czerski and George Monbiot. These highlight the importance of protecting our oceans, and include extracts from Czerski’s award-winning book Blue Machine: How the Ocean Shapes our World (Penguin Books) which was a major influence on the project.

A showreel of extracts from several songs in the project, with pages from its digital programme.

The project is a joint commission by First Light Festival CIC, Royal Museums Greenwich, Messums and Ocean Rising. For press enquiries please contact sonic.collaborations@gmail.com.