Pete Fowler’s afterparty is the final section of our line up for this weekend’s Edition 5 of the Chill Out Tent, coming live from 18:00 BST on Sunday, 30 August 2020. We’re super happy to have Pete; artist, DJ, bon viveur, one half of ambient legends Seahawks and all round gent closing out our festival, you know it’ll be an awesome send off. We interrupted Pete’s busy schedule to have a chat about what he’s been up to lately, and to find out what we can expect from his set at the weekend.
Pete has been working from his London home studio during lock-down, busy with commissions for his paintings, drawings and commercial illustration projects like the KPM – Island Visions cover above and similar work for music biz clients like Marius Circus.
On the music front Pete’s been continuing his Seahawks project with Jon Tye of Lo Recordings fame, collaborating remotely on new material like the remix for Andy Pye’s Balearic Social (see link above) and releasing Star Seeds through Bandcamp as a fund raiser for Red Cross Lebanon to directly help people after the disaster in Beirut. Seahawks will also be releasing a very special vinyl print of their super rare ‘Secrets of the Deep’ album from 2010 on Diggers Factory, as they say ‘Deep trench, marina drone, deck shoegaze, cosmic yacht rock at it’s finest’ and who are we to argue?
If that’s not enough to keep him busy Pete’s continued to broadcast his weekly live show ‘Open’ on London’s Soho Radio, which is always worth a listen for it’s mix of music ‘veering from 70’s smooth rock, to discoid balearic debris’, sounds right up our street! He’s also continued to man the virtual decks every Friday for the Heavenly Social crew, providing the playlist, commentary and beverage recommendations.
We also discussed a few of the other projects Pete’s been involved in including the image above that he produced in response to the removal of the Colston statue in Bristol, that went on to sell out a 900 print run via legendary bootlegger Johnny Banger, raising £9000 for a primary school food bank in Bristol. Another unexpected success was his run of colouring sheets that went viral, ended up on the school curriculum and saved many stressed lock-down families from those ‘I’m bored’ moments of anxiety and angst. Pete’s drawing skills and lifelong fandom of culinary legend Keith Floyd came together in this unexpected merch opportunity to support a well loved record shop.
We sprung a ‘Desert Island Discs’ moment on Pete to conclude our chat, asking where he’d like to be if he could be free of Covid restrictions for a weekend. He decided that an escape to the lovely Port Eliot Festival to DJ and celebrate with friends old and new would be his choice, and what would his last track of the night be? The glorious ‘Silly Love Songs’ by Wings was his choice, and as Alan Partridge put it ‘Wings; the band the Beetles could have been…’ One last recommendation for anyone who over indulges over the weekend Pete suggests we refer to Mr Floyd in how to alleviate our hangovers.
Many thanks to Pete for taking time to talk to us, and of course for playing at our event this weekend, it’s going to be fab right?
The Chill Out Tent 