Egyptian licorice with milk

Ten minute tea with Afternoon Tea. Spend ten minutes with Afternoon Tea. In the time it takes to boil one kettle, and let one cup of tea steep, we will have your daily art + music fix covered. Take your afternoon break with our Afternoon Tea curators. Need an extra lump of sugar? One more sip? If you have five minutes more (or ten), we have one more hit. 

Today’s tea + soundtrack + visuals curated by Jont.

Nova Scotia via London singer-songwriter Jont shares his stirring new single “All Become One” – an intimate indie anthem about collective healing, unity, and the power of love over fear.

Jont recalls: “I remember doing some yoga on my own at home listening to East Forest, enjoying that feeling his music brings on. I just started singing. I turned off the music and picked up my guitar… The first lines, ‘I just wanna lie down with you’ came out. Like it is now, it was a messed up time. It was impossible to know what was true and what was lies. And again like now, there was pressure on people not to say certain things. Just naming what was going on in the world felt challenging. It felt like many people weren’t wanting to do that. When the lines ‘We’re going down, we’re going down’ came, I didn’t know what the song was going to be about… But I thought, ‘Ah well, here we go…'”

“This song is being sung by many of us in different ways, because it is the song of our time,” explains Jont. “This is the eternal news, that you are me and I am you. This song is an anthem to the breaking down of division, and coming out of fear of the other.”

The recording has a raw and spontaneous feel. It was the very first song that Jont and his band, The Fish, recorded in the studio.

“The climax at the end where I sing the high note of ‘all become one’ twice – that was just an ad lib that came out because the song was wanting to come through,” Jont states. “So there’s a magic to the recording, a spontaneity and a life.”

Musically, the track is a melodic indie rock tune, but lyrically, it digs deep – like a cosmic folk song wrapped in a singable chorus.

Stream + share “All Become One” now:

The official video, directed by frequent collaborators Annaka Gale and Dario Lozano Thornton, features a striking mirror motif – people of all identities and backgrounds looking at their reflection and seeing someone else.

“The video reinforces the meaning with a stunning, simple visual metaphor,” Jont says. “Celebrating our diversity, the video shoot contains the glorious spectrum of humanity – people with disability and the able bodied, white and BIPOC, LGBTQS2+ and cisgender women, men, kids…”

With its message of resilience, presence, and spiritual awakening, “All Become One” offers a timely reminder of what connects us.

Egyptian licorice with milk

Thank You for the Medicine by Vanni Mangoni

Summertime In England by Van Morrison 

Just going with the flow, used to be here on my own, with the cats and now suddenly there are two housemates, more than house-mates – brothers in song, Jonathan and Connor, when I came back from the store yesterday one was on the deck with a guitar and the other singing in the garage. The nature of accident: I asked for Egyptian Licorice and when it arrived it was of an opaque hue, oat milk had been added. I drank it anyway, my first time, and it wasn’t bad. Sometimes things just come along. Like my friendship with Vanni Mangoni, a visionary artist from Tuscany, Italy who has painted all of my album covers for the last while. Listening to my songs in 2020 a flower started coming through as he drew with coloured pencils. It hangs on my wall in the main living room / kitchen in my house, up in the countryside of Western Cape Breton. It still moves with the spirit of a flower not yet cut. Its tendrils are searching, loving, moving, living – perfectly present. Similar to this beat that comes through the needle to the 4 vintage speakers, the same speakers that ungrounded give me an electric shock everytime I touch the amp. But it’s worth it. The low-mids of the Isophons and hi-fi of the Boston Acoustics meld and sway with Van’s murmuring and mumbling and the beautiful african rhythm guitar as outside the birds sing and inside we are take again to Avalon, would you meet me in the country in the summertime in England, would you meet me? The flower is still alive, brought to life by pencils. The feel of this peak of Van’s spirituality and musicality in the early 80s is brought to life again by electricity. We are all buzzing, impermanent fixtures, leaving behind endless trails of our own meandering. One song, so long, that we sing. In this case it’s 15 minutes, not ten. But that gives me 5 minutes to ponder if I will ever add oat milk to Egyptian Licorice again.