/Passenger.

Mike Rosenberg doesn't look like a man with a dark side. When we meet, he is drinking Earl Grey tea and tucking a thick tome by a Booker Prize nominee in to his bag. Yet the 23 year old founder of Brighton-based Passenger pens unsettling songs about stalking, wasted lives and, er, the despair of abandoned dogs with an alarming eye for detail. Is there something he's hiding? "That I have a disturbed mind, you mean?" laughs Rosenberg. "No, not at all. Even my darkest songs have a sense of humour. The worst crime you can commit in pop is taking yourself too seriously. Passenger has its down tempo moments and some our songs are quite sensitive, but they all share a certain quirkiness. In the end, it's about storytelling - creating characters and sending them off on a journey."

The seeds of Passenger were sown when Uni drop-out turned troubadour Rosenberg bumped in to Bafta award-winning film and TV soundtrack composer Andrew Phillips at a Free Burma event in London, featuring the likes of Faithless, Travis and Horace Andy. Rosenberg had blagged a one-song solo slot and Phillips was performing with the band Slovo. "Andrew and I met backstage, starting chatting about music and football and hit it off straight away," recalls Rosenberg. "He had just moved to Brighton and set up his own studio, so a few months later, we met up to try writing together."

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