Singles submitted as part of the Lights And Lines #AlbumWritingClub 2023 where independent artists from around the world signed up to write an album or an EP each in just 1 month. 

VOTE FOR YOUR FAVOURITE 3 HERE: https://forms.gle/o9NTgKWpqWqKVx7x9

Each artist is given the option to submit a single as part of the competition and the public get to choose their favourite - the one with the most votes gets released on Lights And Lines!

Please don't judge anyone's work based on recording quality - We did not ask artists to master their projects for final release due to time restraints. Instead think about things like songwriting, instrumentation, creativity, and how it makes you feel 😀

#AlbumWritingClub2023 - Best Single (Public Vote)

Any artist is welcome to send us a track via freshonthenet.co.uk anytime between Monday lunchtime and Wednesday evening (or when we receive 200 submissions, whichever is sooner) - and all our moderators, including Tom Robinson, will listen to every track. This is our full inbox from the week beginning Mon 10th July 2023: from Friday afternoon you'll be able to hear our shortlist and pick your favourites on this week's Listening Post which will appear at freshonthenet.co.uk/batch496

If a track you submitted does not appear in this list, it’s probably because another of your tracks appeared in our Fresh Faves or on the BBC Music Introducing Mixtape during the last three months — we ask that artists featured on either wait three months before resubmitting to give others a chance. 

We also don’t accept short previews or SoundCloud Go tracks that can only be heard as 30 second previews, and tracks made private after submission, which cannot be included in playlists. You will be able to resubmit the track in future. Tracks (and remixes of tracks) that have been previously submitted, and tracks from banned artists will also be removed.

ENTIRE INBOX: Batch 496

Big Grey Man essential

Live Contenders

End of November
Not long to December
Hiding in the driving rain
I don't know why it's always such a surprise
They say you can't remember pain
Windchill bites, the sheets of fractal ice
The falling of leaves in the grip of the freeze
Orion Rising, yeah

Can't believe the Summer's gone
Can't believe I thought I missed the cold
Can't believe it's over now
Can't believe the year has got so old

Whatever the weather
Get on your bike and ride
Breathe a little deeper
Summon the heat inside
Watch Orion Rise

The air tastes sharp
The smell of things forgotten
The time is ripe, but
The year's gone rotten
It belongs to the carrion and the insects now
Until the world's wiped clean under the winter snow
Leaf skeletons and mackerel skies
Glowing in the embers as the daylight dies
Orion Rising, yeah

Can't believe the Summer's gone
Can't believe I thought I missed the cold
Can't believe it's over now
Can't believe the year has got so old

There's no way of knowing
Where the time is going
The days go by so fast
The winter sun brings a warming glow
For every shadow cast
Watch Orion Rise

Orion Rising

RECLAIM THE NIGHT

Waves Of Serenity Sunset

This song is my 'single entry' for the Lights and Lines Album Writing Club.
Please listen to the end, the messages get more potent as the song progresses.
Part of the album titled 'The Product' an electro-folk protest album about the state of the country and my interpretation of the causes...

Lyrics:

This life of comfort, this life of life of opportunities,
What was the price of your big house in the country?

Should you ask for forgiveness,
And should you make amends?

How did you come to be so powerful?
How did things come to be so unequal?

Should you ask for forgiveness,
And should you make amends?
Should you ask for forgiveness,
And should you make amends?

Should you pay back the profits?
Should you recompense?
Should you give up the titles?
And should you start again,
With nothing, like we did, like we did?

Is it who you grew up with,
And where you went to school?
Are we the ones that deserve it?
Or are we just a tool?

Should we ask for forgiveness,
And should we make amends?

Reparations

The next album from Time. Space. Repeat. - the soundtrack to a utopian society, destroyed by hubris and unforeseen events. Everything has its consequence.

Bossa Never

You can sit wherever you like, but
Don't distract the autopilot
For your safety and mine
Please be orderly behind the line

The future's bright
And the past is dead
Put your trust in the power of rust
At least I think that's what he said

Please can I politely advise you
To do whatever the autopilot says
Please relax and enjoy the ride
As we plummet to our fiery deaths
We could try to fight or run but
I guess it all depends
If you value your freedom or comfort more
It's all the same in the end

The future's written
And the past is gone
For your safety and convenience
The camera is always on

Invest your every movement with meaning
That's the only way we'll beat them
Are you certain who you're talking to?
Are you certain that you've thought this through?

The past is yours but the future's dead (repeat)
Ah I think that's what he said

Don't distract the autopilot

You can sit wherever you like, but
Don't distract the autopilot
Or he might bring your vehicle
To a sudden stop

Don't Distract the Autopilot

With my fantastic new appliance, I can fry anything
If you can buy it, I can fry it, look at me go!
I'm fully posable with all the accessories
Clothes maketh the man they say, isn't that so?

It's not your chest out thumping, heavy booted stomping
It's not the way you stride inside while bending my ear
It's not the savoury odour or the locker room vibe
It's that you're better than that
Please don't bring it in here!

Don't you bring it in here (repeat)

It's delicious, it's nutritious and it's laced with barbiturates
Come shelter in our loving trap, recite what we say
Guided by coordinates, the Angel of the North
Will swoop down on it's rusty wings and carry us away

It's not your self-aggrandising, flat track mythologizing
Why the need to dominate? I've got my ideas
It's not the mood swings
Believe me, I identify
Just leave it at home
Please don't bring it in here!

Don't you bring it in here (repeat)

Cult of the Air Fryer

Now I'm listening in, waiting to begin
Floating in my underwater cave
Not long now until I need you to care
If it's dangerous then please keep me away

Please be careful with my fluttering heart
Please speak softly in my tender ear
Please be gentle as you fall apart
Please remember when you fight I'm here
Please try to hold me on the surface
While everything around you sinks
You're not alone when you suffer
I hear more than you think

I hear more, I hear more than you think (repeat)

I'll remember but I won't understand
I'll be wondering as you hold onto my hand
I'll be dreaming of the things that came before
You know I never saw a girl that really walked into a door
War and roses, cuts and bruises
Fear, petechiae, it's everyone that sinks
Bangs and crashes, screams and smashes
I hear more, I hear more than you think

I hear more, I hear more than you think (repeat)

Please be careful with my fluttering heart
Please speak softly in my tender ear
Please be gentle as you fall apart
Please remember when you fight I'm here
Please try to hold me on the surface
While everything around you sinks
You're not alone when you suffer
I hear more than you think

I hear more, I hear more than you think (repeat)

I Hear More Than You Think

(Music & Lyrics by Annika Elting
© 2 May 2023
E-guitar, Bass Ukulele, Vocals: Annika Jayne
Cover Art: Annika Jayne, picture taken from Canva

This is my SINGLE submission for the Album Writing Club of 2023. 

Here's the complete playlist containing all entries: https://on.soundcloud.com/GLd3t
VOTE FOR YOUR FAVOURITE 3 HERE: forms.gle/o9NTgKWpqWqKVx7x9

I guess it's true when they say "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned". I was very, very angry at someone, not because they rejected me, but because they were holding me back from making music, so much so that I was starting to lose myself. As scary as that was, it also made me realise that I need songwriting and recording like I need air to breathe. And in this song I make sure that I'm back and more determined than ever. It's like a lot of people say: With all the pain and misery they put me through, they only pushed me towards my destiny. I suppose I should thank them for that.  So instead of channeling my anger into something destructive, I channeled it into creativity.

In Moments Like These

I'm On Fire

I'm On Fire SINGLE ALBUM WRITING CLUB

This is my single submission for the 2023 Album Writing Club.

Here is the complete playlist of the entries: on.soundcloud.com/GLd3t

Please vote for your favorites (up to three) here: forms.gle/o9NTgKWpqWqKVx7x9

Dark horse, came from nothin’
Disregards whatever makes his life complete
Black sheep, started runnin’
Traveled far, searchin’ for something to beat
Black eye, hindered vision
Head aloft, forcing us to understand
Boxed ears, you never listen
Shouting off whoever wants to lend a hand

What a struggle when you’re always right
How difficult that seems
If only all of us would see the light
We could start building your dreams

Reelin’ mad, so pathetic
Debate is trash when winning is the only goal
Feelin’ bad, sympathetic
Watching as you spiral down a rabbit hole
Honor bound, keep on talkin’
Right or not, you’re acting like a total douche
Turn around, just start walkin’
Haven’t got the energy to deal with you

Can just imagine all the bridges burning and fences you’ve built up
Walls and chambers, battlements as you refuse the drawbridge lowered

Fair play that fateful Tuesday
Shot a dove and pushed away an olive branch
His way or the highway
Makes a peace sign with his fist and calls it righteousness
Can’t miss the looks and comments
I’ve been catchin’ all the salty vibes you’re sendin’ me
If this is how he treats us
Just imagine what he visits on his enemies

All the demons and the feral winds that you loose upon your home
Can maybe chalk it up to arrogance as to why you die alone

Scenes From an Empty Stage

Fences

Classic Lie

"But your tresses are a tepid river,
Where the soul that haunts us drowns, without a shiver
And finds the Nothingness you cannot know!"

Piano Abscond Me (Summer Version)

I am a curious creature
A spiral bound prisoner of sleepy lagoons
And when we meet in the future
I'll be a memory cast in the layers of stone
Of lava and silicon
Under the bladder wrack
Tentacles reaching in warm brackish pools
While rising land masses breed thunder and lightning
That rage as the turbulent world starts to cool

Riding saltwater currents in temperate seas
Underneath the foam and the mare's tails that dance in the breeze
The sparkle and shimmer of wide open skies
The embrace of sediment
Fossil Eyes
Yeah Fossil Eyes

I am an alien being
That drifts on mercurial currents of time
Until the eyes of a curious child
Fall bright on the shadows that I left behind
A life in transition, yeah
Literal, littoral.
Hiding in crevasses away from the sun.
The grinding of shingle banks
Guttural, guttural
Dies with the tide and our world is reborn

Riding saltwater currents in temperate seas
Underneath the foam and the mare's tails that dance in the breeze
The sparkle and shimmer of wide open skies
The embrace of sediment
Fossil Eyes
Yeah Fossil Eyes

Ammonite, Ammonite, cast in the jet
A guest from the past we can never forget
Ammonite, Ammonite, hidden from view
An echo persists when existence is through

Fossil Eyes

A metaphor for self-reliance, but also totally about the climbing knot

Bit by bit, hand over hand
Up by your bootstraps, stick to your plan

All the rapid ascenders, and death-mod descenders
And people so brave they abandon the rope
But I've got my prusik and that's what I'll use
To climb out of the darkness and into the hope

It's fair to say I'm difficult
But show me someone who is not
People are complicated you know
We'd have a tedious world if they weren't
The prusik will hold!

Inch by inch, hold after hold
Up by your bootstraps, out of the cold

Not enough turns and you'll slide down the mountain
Grip on too tight and you're stuck where you are
Don't lose your cool though, 'cos we've got the prusik
It won't let us down, well, it hasn't so far

It's fair to say I'm cynical
It's the way I've become over time
But even I still rely on the prusik
And I'm sure in the end we'll be fine
Grab your prusik and climb!

Is it prusik or prusik? Just dance to the music!
A Kleimheist just isn't the same
Use what you've got, you can't use what you've not
Oh the prusik, The prusik remains
The prusik remains!

Prusik

Fifty cold years since you turned from his grace
Caterpillar Girl with her hands to her face
She never heard
All his words

One stroke and she's down on her knees
Telephone slightly out of her reach
A burning cold
In her soul

I needed songs not your sermons
But you never knew me
I needed songs not your sermons
But you never, you never knew me

In the ischaemia of things
Peaches and clotted cream for you sins
Decent hacks
Worn out tracks

LP scratches out of it's groove
Paralysed in the darkening room
Nurses words
Turn to worms
Have they heard?

The Old Maid was a banshee
But you never knew me
Songs of discord won't chill me
But you never, you never knew me

Catheter, pill, the thermometer sings
Devil knows of the band you were in
Nurse feign a smile
Take your time

Devil makes work, but ECT will free it
I don't think they succeeded
Fight fire with fire
It's my funeral pyre

Father Pious at the ICU door
Last Rites a little premature
I'm half alive
Don't look so surprised

I had a tryst with a witch
Come here

I needed songs not your sermons
But you never knew me
I needed songs not your sermons
But you never knew me
I needed songs not your sermons
But you never knew me
I needed songs not your sermons
But you never, you never knew me

Caterpillar Girl

I'd be broken by the trouble you've seen
World go easy, go easy on me
Life and death and all the places between
Oh have mercy, have mercy on me

Oh my lost love, oh my heart
Curse this obsession that has torn us apart
I can't tell you, how it possesses me
That's the way it ended now
Death is peace but life is lonely

Broken hearts and broken limbs, wind in our teeth
Oh have mercy, have mercy on me
Through the floating rifts, savage ice and frozen peaks
Oh have mercy, have mercy on me

And the beauty, of it all
In the thin air the leader can't fall
Can you hear the beckoning silence of height and the
Sound of wasted youth, screaming on the shattered summits

I'd be broken by the trouble you've seen
World go easy, go easy on me
Life and death and all the places between
Oh have mercy, have mercy on me

In the corner of my eye, and the voice in my head
Between the land of the living and the land of the dead
For the fallen, as they lie
Tied to the broken cord, sleeping under frozen skies

Sagamartha, Chomolungmna
Please have mercy, Goddess Mother
Is it worth it? Can we justify?
Screams of working men
Trapped beneath the fallen ice

Shattered Summits

Don't worry, now, really don't
But I think that the Sun might be dying
The day was always coming, but 
I thought we had a bit more time
Do you see what I'm seeing? 
There's just not enough coming through
Not enough of those sweet Tau Neutrinos
The question right now is really "what do we do"?

Oh those Solar Neutrinos
They just go right through you
Those pesky little critters
Are giving us the jitters

Yeah, OK I see it, but let's not freak out just yet
Not until we're certain, not until we've double checked
Let's keep this under our hats
We don't want all the fighting and fussing
What if we've got it all wrong?
I don't want to cause panic for nothing

They're in a flap at Fermilab
There's concern at CERN
I knew a girl at the Hadron Collider
They wriggled and jiggled and shivered inside her

Mate...mate, look here, look at this, look
What if we've missed a trick?
What if there are different flavours, like crisps
Our basic palate just can't detect
I think we've gone off half-cocked, jumped the gun
I think we've got all excited for nowt
It's understandable, easily explained, but we've gone and freaked everyone out

People, as you were!
The neutrinos are all flowing fine
And the Sun isn't dying
Not now, not yet, not this time
You know the Sun isn't hot enough
To do what it does?
Quantum Tunnelling? Cosmic Cunning?
One day we'll run out of luck

Stick 'em in the Tokamak
Stick 'em in the Tokamak
Stick 'em in the Tokamak and make it so

Stick 'em in the Tokamak
Stick 'em in the Tokamak
Stick 'em in the Tokamak and watch 'em go!

Oh those Solar Neutrinos, they just go right through you
Hanging out at DUNE trying to fathom why
They're only ever passing by

Well back there it seemed like the end of the world
But I have to admit for a moment, in spite of
The obvious problems it presents for us all
I couldn't help feeling
Excited

Solar Neutrino Problem

A sideways take on recent troubles

Them 
It's always them 
Look what they've got 
That's what I want 
How'd they get it? 
How'd they take a hold? 
And why not us?
I think we should be told 

You've got to know when you've got it easy 
You've got to know when you've got it tough 
You've got to realise when you've gone too far 
You've got to know when enough's enough 

Us 
What about us? 
We've been forgotten while they take what we deserve 
It's time to take it back, it's time to make some noise 
If we can't have it then we'll see it get's destroyed 

You've got to know when to mind your business 
You've got to know what it's fair to keep 
You've got to know the whole, unvarnished truth 
You've got to look before you leap. 
Before you're in it too deep. 

At the end of the day I'm as bad as the rest 
Like to stick to my own, won't give up my place
But I'm not so naïve I believe 
You can have justice, without having losers
And you know that it's always been this way
Since we hollowed the bones, since we walked on the plain
Always been us and them, but this is now and that was then 

I 
I recognise 
All that I've got 
All that they've not 
I can't blame anybody trying to reverse 
Their disadvantage from the accident of birth 

You've got to know when you've ridden your luck 
You've got to realise where you'd be without it 
And it's right you get to make your point, but fuck 
Do you really need to be a dick about it?

Don't Distract the Autopilot

The Big Grey Man