West Sussex musician Ed Blunt offers debut album

Ed, who lives in Graffham and also in South London, has brought out Over The Moon.

“It’s my first album and it’s basically one of those lockdown albums you hear about. It was all written over the course of the lockdowns but it is not really about the lockdowns. It’s about lots of different things though there is quite a lot of space-related stuff on there.

"The title is Over The Moon and space is just really one of those things that I’m really interested in. I’ve always been a bit of a geek about the Apollo programme and about NASA and when you sit down to write a song these sorts of things seem to come naturally. There is another track called The Universe Is Ours. It’s saying our little planet is having all these wars but when you Zoom out we’re just a tiny little pixel.

“I like telling stories with the songs.

"If you listen to the album each song is its own mini-tale. The title track Over The Moon is this story of us and our planet and how when you look at our planet from the moon or from far away it is this beautiful pearl blue sphere with the green forests and the white of mountains. And then along come these things called humans who fight each other all the time and it asks the question what happens when we have ruined this planet. It asks the question how does the story end though the song itself ends in a hopeful way.

“I’m 31 and I’ve been working as a musician for a long time now.

"I studied jazz piano at the Guildhall School and after that I played quite a few years as a piano player for other artists doing gigs and playing in a band.

"I also run a choir in London called The Camden Voices, like a jazz close harmony choir.

“But it was the lockdown that got me started on writing my own songs. I had not done so before in any serious way.”

Key to Ed’s development during the lockdowns was joining Squeeze maestro Chris Difford’s online song-writing workshops.

“He would pair you up with other writers and we would write a song each day and I think it really helped. I ended up doing five of those weeks with Chris.

“I think basically he gave me the confidence to believe in myself as a songwriter.

"He teaches in a really interesting way. He never gives technical or specific advice.

"It’s just gentle encouragement to write. Every day he provided a different theme. On one day it might be about losing something or losing someone and then on another day it might be about childhood. He loosely guided the day. He is a good benevolent spirit.”

And maybe there is the Difford influence on Ed’s album.

“A lot of Chris’s lyrics tell a story and I think I’m inspired by that. I really like to think of my songs as like a little story, each of them.”

On the album Ed sings and plays piano and keyboards; “But I was joined in the studio by a band and there are also some featured performers. I roped in my choir and there are also some strings on there.”