First of all, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to anyone who reads this. This year has been a busy one, although I managed to avoid the mayhem of releasing a 12-track CD, which I achieved last year.

For the first time, I was able to get two songs through to the Semi-Final stage of the UK Songwriting Contest and am still waiting to hear if either has been selected as a Finalist. The songs, “Classical Trance” and “Trance Mission”, are both entered in the Instrumental category and, as such, are up against opposition from classical, jazz, blues, orchestral and pop instrumentals, among others. For this reason, the Instrumental category is considered to be one of the most difficult to win. Becoming a Finalist is also considered to be very difficult in any category with less than two percent of songs making it through. I wasn’t aware of this in 2020 when “To Andromeda and Beyond” was a Finalist in the EDM category, which sadly doesn’t exist anymore.

“Trance Mission” also gave me my first track which was accepted on Beatport, which claims to be the world’s largest DJ store for electronic dance music, so that aspect of my journey appears to be going in the right direction. I am also in contact with other EDM producers in the Luke Bond group on the social media platform, Discord, where we exchange feedback on each other’s music.

I am currently working on an orchestral track, “Tempora Mutantur (Changing Times)”, which morphs into EDM and back in just over three minutes. The time signature changes from 6/8 to 4/4 and back and this represents a new direction for me. I have received some encouraging feedback for the piece on SongU, so hopefully you will like it when it is released, probably in January.

My aim for 2026 is to carry on with the EDM theme, probably in the Trance genre, but I want to include contributions from my ROLI Seaboard 2 keyboard, with its emphasis on MIDI Polyphonic Expression, and from my Kontakt 8 library, with particular emphasis on sampled orchestral instruments. That combination, which I believe to be unique, should give me something different on which to work. Watch this space.