People we like




Over the past years the FUTERRA team has been busy. They have worked with FTSE 100 companies, tiny local businesses, national government departments, schoolchildren, the UN, filmmakers, accountants and charities. In all work they have found innovative, creative and strategic ways to promote sustainable development.
Often their clients and partners have an idea, but need help to make it happen. Perhaps they need training on sustainable development or corporate responsibility, but don’t want another boring seminar. Or need to explain a new process to a range of audiences, without producing another unread leaflet. Or want to understand an issue, without having a load of technical jargon thrown at them.




Irish Times

WHO THE HELL IS TOM BAXTER
Young buck: Walking in the quavering path of Jeff Buckley is a dangerous business: many a singer-songwriter has fallen to his doom trying to scale Buckley's emotional peaks and match his vertiginous vocals.
One young man from Suffolk, however, is ready to take this Everest-like challenge and, judging from the word of mouth from his live performances, he's got what it takes to go all the way to the summit. Tom Baxter has a pretty ordinary name, but this singer has an extraordinary, expressive voice, reminiscent of ol' Jeff himself, but with a firmness and earthiness that stops it flying off into a helium-filled orbit. He's also got some great songs.
Baxter is signed to Sony Music, which is convinced they've finally found a worthy successor to the late, great Buckley.
Fawlty Towers: Baxter's parents were folk musicians in the 1960s, and Tom remembers growing up in a rundown old hotel in Bungay in Suffolk, with a ballroom and a nightclub, which his parents had bought and fixed up from the proceeds of their gigs. "I met so many characters living there as a kid" he recalls. "There were different acts on almost every night of the week." At 19, Tom moved to London, enrolled in music college, and started playing in bars, cafes and restaurants. When he wasnt singing for his supper, he worked as a painter and decorator, sometimes combining the two careers in one venue. "In the day I was grouting the toilets, and in the evenings I was playing in the front bar."





SAM SEMPLE
An old-school songwriter. He loves planet earth and makes alternative acoustic folk rock music. He sings from the heart and he wears fancy shoes. He's what you get when you cross David Bowie with Kris Kristofferson. Maybe throw in a bit of Burt Bacharach, Harry Nilsson and Mickey Newbury.
"One of the most exciting discoveries of the year is Sam Semple, whose songwriting is staggeringly good. Regular readers of this review will know how highly Sam Semple is rated around these parts. He is mapping out uncharted territory with the topics he writes about, and his uniquely original approach to words and music makes for a compelling talent. The man is a true one-off." - Annabel's Diaries, The Kashmir Klub
Sam is a late starter when it comes to songwriting, but since coming to London ten years ago, he has always earned his crust as a writer. His last 'proper' job was working for the legendary author Douglas Adams who created a website, h2g2, based on his famous book, The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. Having studied English at Southampton University, literatature, as much as music, is a big inspiration behind Sam's music.
Sam’s dad, Shel Macrae is also a singer and for many years he was co-lead singer with famous 60s and 70s harmony pop band The Fortunes. Personally encouraged by already established artists who are big fans of his music (Karine Polwart, Tom Baxter, Polly Paulusma), and inspired by the example of his hero Kris Kristofferson (who himself was a scholar of William Blake and English Literature), Semple finally quit his job and has now embarked upon the lonesome road…
I like to think that humans were long ago like trees; they had roots that went deep into the ground. Our heads these days have got so big, stuffed full of garbage, inflated with ceaseless mental chatter, they've become like hot air balloons, filled with exactly that, hot air. The ropes have burst loose from the soil and huge human heads are drifting away from the surface of the earth in their millions, all lost. Pretty soon there'll be no need for us to have legs at all. Just plug your head into a socket or a hard drive.
I insist on my right to love churches, to be in them and to cry in them, in prayer and piety, in terror at death and awe at my own littleness; to confound my brain with thoughts of infinity. I actually think notions of God get in the way of religion. All religions are syncretic, they fudge and lie and steal from the past but all contain the diamond seed, the root, the golden vein. I'm religious in my own way, even if I can't fully articulate it. I love my life. I love planet earth. I never want to leave. It's a genuine miracle that we made it here at all, this assemblage of oxygen, carbon, minerals and metals. I turned to writing to try and somewhow articulate my inarticulacy in the face of infinty, but also my love, to elevate myself, even just for moments at a time, above the humdrum, the mental chatter, the quotidian grubbiness of a life lived in a world totally enthralled with turning a buck, chasing a profit. I'm trying to reach out to the stars, the place where we all came from.
Most of us refuse to acknowledge the shadow we see out the corner of our eye, the grim reaper who watches all in silence, with great tenderness. This really is heaven, this morning. My songs are generally concerned with the above.



MATT SAXTON

There are two things you should know about me; one, I love music and two, the words “trouble at mill” have a certain ring (no pun intended) to them with regards to certain bodily functions of mine Over the last year I wrote and recorded my own album “Surrender to Happiness”. Having spent a number of years playing and singing in various bands I decided I would do my own thing, answerable to no one but myself. As I can play the guitar, drums, piano, clarinet and sing, I set about the arduous and time consuming task of recording most of the instruments myself. As you can hear from the downloads I am “jack of all and master of none” but it’s the song which counts.

I have also used some great musicians on tracks who have added such sparkle. Big thanks to Sam Semple, Mike Palmer, Mike Veness, Marcus McCarroll, Mat Newcomb and Jeremy Chestnutt. Also thanks to Billy Traxler at Battenburg Recording Studios for recording and producing the album. His encouragement and enthusiasm was paramount. Lastly thanks to Sean Hayden for his stunning art work/design on the album and this web site.
If you enjoy the songs on this site, come and check out the live gigs and get a copy of the full album. For the record my favourite songwriter is Pete Townshend from The Who and favourite author is Graham Greene.
Favorite dog = Sausage Matt








The sound of Lily Fraser in a nutshell: "Lily's voice, at times angelic and fragile, at others charged and seductive, rides high over a playground of beautiful instruments: Concert Harp, Cello, double bass and drums." "there is something wonderfully magical and quite beautifully strange about Lily and her music....the juxtaposition of dignity and abandonment." Born and bred in Cornwall, raised in the middle of nowhere, nourished on honey comb, bathed in mud and rinsed in creek water.... Lily seems quite normal in every day life......


CHARLIE WINSTON
What can we say about Charlie, other than the man was born to entertain.
He looks so comfortable on stage you would think he had been there all his life, which in fact is not far froom the truth. A bona fide individual who is running fast into the arms of success.