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Includes unlimited streaming of Forever Breathes the Lonely Word via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more. nick was one of my oldest and closest friends. he was like the other half of me. nick was the kindest most humble person I have ever known, his way of interacting with the world and how he treated others was a yardstick by which I still measure my own aspirations as a human being.

when nick called me to tell me about his cancer diagnosis on 24/02/23 it hit me so hard I could barely breathe. there was hope that we might have a few years to spend with him but we lost him only 6 months later. it still seems unbelievable to me that I must now travel through life without him, but I try to remember that his love and friendship formed me like the sea shapes a coastline and that it continues to do so.

nick’s passion and need for music was immeasurable. he was the only person I knew other than myself who ‘felt’ and ‘saw’ music and who it changed internally. our daily conversations about new music or about sections or even individual beats and how they made us feel were unlike any discussions I have had with any other person. nick and I had a private internal universe which it appeared only he and I could understand and interpret. I feel privileged that we spent so much time there with each other. nick’s passion for truth and beauty in all its creative form was quite something to behold. if something moved nick, he wanted you to know about it so I wanted you to know about him and how beautiful a human being he was.

making this music with quentin was the only way I knew how to process my immense grief and loss. I found comfort and solace in the melodies which helped me convey my sorrow and pain. I am grateful to quentin for how he held me through this process and enabled me to convey how I felt through these pieces of music over two weekends with him at his home studio in paris. I could not have done it without him. they were dark and yet beautiful weekends of reflection and mourning in musical form.

there was and never will be anyone like nick, or what he gave to me. I think about him every day and am committed to becoming someone he would have been proud of.

this record is for him.


nick hawley (06/12/63 - 04/08/23)

Formed in Leeds during a particularly melancholy 1996, Chris Hooson and David Buxton have set about making both singer songwriter and ambient / cinematic soundscapes since the beginning.

They do this with varying degrees of success.

The band has toured with only slight vigour across Europe and Japan. The music of Dakota Suite has featured in mainstream cinema, art house cinema and also TV.

1. dakotasuite.com
2. Twitter
3. SoundCloud