"This is not a drill, repeat, this is not a drill." - imagine those words in Edward James Olmos gravelly voice, and hopefully you can picture the setting for this track. It's actually meant to be a soundtrack piece! One set in an especially stressful time. My daughter enjoyed being thrown around in the air to this.

Set Condition Red

Wow! thrilled to have made Tom Robinson's BBC 6 Music show and Fresh Faves 14.2.22!! This is from my 2nd album The Awakening. Made using loops/samples with love, by Helen Meissner.
How often do we ask ourselves ‘who do we want to be?’ It’s something that gets asked a lot of us when we’re younger isn’t it? But with a twist, everyone wants to know WHAT we want to be.
As an adult, after years of conditioning, we might need to go back to that question, and look behind the masks. It’s difficult because for many we have become the persona we felt society demanded of us. So in a way it’s clean slate time, time to ‘play’ in a way. To really fantasise. And it’s not easy. We’re conditioned to conform and fit into society, seamlessly and obediently.

New roles emerge and old roles change throughout our life. Masks are worn. Pretty much all the time. What’s appropriate in one setting most certainly is not in another. We often learn the hard way. And it’s sometimes toe curlingly embarrassing. And we struggle to forgive ourselves. It’s a real problem. It stops us getting out of the boxes we’ve allowed ourselves to be put in. And gradually saps our energy and joy til we might feel like a 2D version of ourselves.
Am I being too dramatic here? Sorry if this does not resonate. I know it will for a number of people reading. Our fear of doing something which is ‘wrong’ or which makes people think we are a loser, or which makes people talk about us in a way we feel to be disrespectful or unkind is palpable. Which is a million times worse if we find we actually agree with some of it at some level (or would if we’re being honest with ourselves). Being ‘found out’, being called a fraud, a fake... does that strike fear into the heart of you? Make you feel sick? If so we have to go there.  It’s also sometimes called Imposter Syndrome. What if someone realises that I am actually winging it and making it up as I go along? Join the club!
Perhaps we’ve striven to be the child our parents always wanted? The pupil the teachers were proud of? The friend that never let anyone down? The lover who always excited? The star at work? The parent who loved unconditionally and didn’t ‘fuck their children up’? (thanks for that ironic cross to bear, Philip Larkin). And perhaps we’ve not been 100% successful in those quests?
The reality is we cannot please all the people all of the time. And anyway, how people react really does say more about them than about us. We might have inadvertently touched upon one of their red flags, one of their insecurities about themselves and they then overreact to something that really, is NOT a big deal to other people. Ever noticed this?

Well we all have a choice about how we react to someone else’s behaviour towards us. And I have learnt to, in the most part, notice it, assess it and then move on. 
As we can’t guarantee to please others, we might as well please the most important person in your life. You. And as a bonus, if you are comfortable and accepting of yourself, kind and perhaps loving and tolerant(like you would be to a friend?), you will draw people into your life who recognise those qualities. And do yourself a favour. Others, manipulators or narcissists, will be attracted too as they will see that they can have a very nice life with you, thinking you are a pushover. Please always notice your interchanges and exchanges with them. And as soon as something happens which presents a red flag for you, investigate it, discuss it and act on your instinct if you realise this person is not as good for you as they might have appeared early on. People CAN change and you might be the first person to have pointed this unacceptable behaviour out to them. So give them a chance to redeem if that’s what you both want. But just keep an eye out for your own red flags and don’t ignore them. It’s better to be in a good relationship with yourself than a bad relationship with someone else.

So WHO do you wanna be – NOW?

Who Do You Wanna Be

Lives Defined By Winter Skies (SINGLE EDIT)

Billy doesn't like to go to sleep. There are things that lurk, just on the edges of her dreams. But she knows she has to dream every night to bring the universe into existence or there will be none of us left.

The Tale of Billy Dreamer

Phone Call

Streets At Night

Sister Wives - Streets At Night

Black Water - Angus Powell

A Very Old Space Station

prod ARCHI & ORORA
https://soundcloud.com/user-796652642

Amon

ჩემო ციცინათელა

Untouched Places.

Life is not about who you once were. It is about who you are now and who you have the potential to be.  About having fun. 
Throwing out the rule book! Thrilled to have had some lovely support from various unexpected quarters.
Teaching Darkness How To Fly was a lovely pastoral excursion, where I set some prose by Ian McMillan to local found sounds. It found a home on BBC Radio 3 (thanks to Elizabeth Alker on her Saturday morning show), and on Cery's Sunday show on 6 Music, who also shared my first 'bird as soloist' experiment Song Thrush Serenade on national radio.
These two tracks are on my debut album, Nature's Grace.

'Who Do You Wanna Be' attracted the kind attention of Tom Robinson and was honoured to make it into his broadcast mixtape on 6 Music. 
BBC Intro Channel Islands (a remix I did for Michael Donoghue) and featured in Fresh Faves from Fresh on The Net as well as on the super independent shows such as WorldWideFM thanks Nitin Sawhney, Anna Phoebe and Kayla Painter, Tim Willett's New Music Generator, Neil March's Trust The Doc show (who have both invited me to share my music at their events,) Andy Sharman's KYN Show, Amazing Radio, Rich James Electro Show, Chris West's The Tripwire, Slava and Trev's show, Russ Evans Electro show and more, many of whom play me week after week and have me as their opening or outgoing show tracks. I am so grateful. 
A collaboration with THE Jackie Weaver earlier in 2021 resulted in national TV, newspaper and radio coverage, which was huge fun.

I'm creating a range of music, from what could be viewed as classical for a modern era I guess? telling a story through notes rather than words. I also love a beat, prose and some simple phrase work (either my own voice, samples or spoken prose) and I love a bop!  so my genre is not really defined or fixed BUT people say they can tell it's my work. I've also been honoured to be asked to do remixes by a number of artists and these have been going down well.

This piece for the Featured Artists Coalition was fascinating to research and write - Ageing and Raging: https://thefac.org/news-directory/fav-insights-by-helen-meissner

Grateful to LA based magazine for this comprehensive interview!: https://shoutoutla.com/meet-helen-meissner-music-producer/

How did it all start?
A glitch in the matrix meant that Garageband ended up in my lap! (I have since moved to Logic)that's Lockdown for you!! never had any desire to write or produce before but love what's coming out in the mix and hope you do too.  
Supermassive black holes in my production knowledge of course. Happy to be guided by anyone who cares to get in touch!
It's a bit like having a baby without realising you were pregnant! There's plenty more where that came from, from other dance to more chill. The world is my oyster. (Boring bits, based in Herts, legend in my own lunchtime). Wrong side of 50, right side of life, left of centre, off of the strip. 

Old enough to know better, young enough not to care

Bring it on!!!

https://www.runninwithmyrhythm.com/2020/08/midlifemix.html?fbclid=IwAR0Ea41vTdcZ8EppwnX2BXqTIBEMW0l5f3s1osUp1wR0_fcbkn2A9C-a1Bc

Email : helefonix@gmail.com

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/helefonix/
Spotify https://open.spotify.com/artist/7xXiGIzlyGqrl91hDNb66i

Who Do You Wanna Be

Helefonix

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