In a world of musical templates and generic demarcation, latest fads and followers of sonic fashion, Dick Aven is something of a unique musical explorer. Not for him the game of playing up to the expectations of the target audience….if there is even an easily defined target audience. And so, Fly Into The Fire, a lilting and gorgeously gentle track from his latest album, Spin So Long, definitely follows its own, individual path.

Blending chilled ELO vibes and ambient Beach Boy harmonies, this understated track ebbs and flows between hippy grooves and sassy sax, accessible jazz-blues moves and an unexpected pop sensibility. But we know that Dick Aven isn’t one for playing by anyone else’s rules but that doesn’t mean that his take on pop is “out there” or deliberately odd, it’s just different, that’s all. It’s pop music from an alternative timeline, one where the Summer of Love never ended, where the hippies won, the record label empires never flourished and weed was the drug of choice rather than booze, or coffee or TV or ego! And, to be honest, looking at the state of the world today, and perhaps even the state of modern music, that doesn’t seem such a bad world to have found ourselves in, does it?

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Musician, scribbler, historian, gnostic, seeker of enlightenment, asker of the wrong questions, delver into the lost archives, fugitive from the law of averages, blogger, quantum spanner, left footed traveller, music journalist, zenarchist, freelance writer, reviewer and gemini. People have woken up to worse.

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