About
Be Like Water
Original Art Rock from Wiltshire
Music • Story • Performance
Be Like Water are a six-piece original art-rock band creating cinematic, piano-led music with powerful vocals, guitar, bass, drums and electric sax.
Our music moves between rock, progressive music, blues, jazz, classical influences and theatre — but we are less interested in fitting neatly into a genre than in creating songs with their own atmosphere, characters and worlds.
At the centre of Be Like Water is Stealing Horses — an eleven-song concept album and an evolving visual story set in a strange post-apocalyptic world where music has been barred and a group of travellers set out in search of something better.
The fictional journey and the real-life journey of the band are beginning to intertwine...
STEALING HORSES
An album becoming a story - A story becoming a world - A band living its way through both.
Somewhere in a vast magical forest, two people are searching for one another without fully understanding who — or what — they are searching for. They communicate through music. Somewhere deeper in the trees, a drummer is playing.
Eventually the travelers leave the forest and enter The Land: a strange, beautiful and damaged post-apocalyptic world where towns have fallen silent, music has been outlawed and those who refuse to conform live on the edges of society.
They travel with very little. Except, eventually, a stolen piano.
Along the road they encounter outcasts, healers, wanderers, mirages, strange carnivals, forbidden musicians and people who have abandoned the lives they were expected to lead.
Each of the eleven songs on Stealing Horses forms part of that journey.
But underneath the surreal landscapes and larger-than-life characters is something very human.
It is a story about searching. About creativity. About love, conflict, reinvention, belonging and refusing to stop imagining that another kind of life might still exist.
Welcome to the world of Stealing Horses
© Stealing Horses story, fictional world, characters and narrative treatment
© Adriana Saliu and Lee Knott 2026. All rights reserved.
Band Members
Adriana Saliu
Piano / Keys • Composer • Co-writer/ Mme Diabolique
Classically trained pianist, composer and habitual builder of strange musical worlds.
Adriana’s musical background moves between classical music, rock, soundtrack composition and improvisation. She tends to hear music visually — as landscapes, characters, colours and stories — which is probably how a rock album eventually acquired its own post-apocalyptic universe. In Stealing Horses, Adriana is one of the central travellers: Madame Diabolique. Wherever she goes, a piano generally follows. Even when this is spectacularly impractical.
In her words: I'm a classically trained pianist, half Polish half Albanian, with love of cinematic and World music. Songs to me are movie sets full of interesting and funny characters (motifs) that are likeable just like real people are. You can tell, I live in my own world, and it's in free time, so I'm mostly late to appointments, on the way to which I tend to lose personal items. Influences - Chopin, Pink Floyd, MUSE, Led Zeppelin, The Doors, Gershwin, Queen, Black Pumas, Nina Simone, Joni Mitchell, Kate Bush, Peter Gabriel, Hans Zimmer, Ennio Morricone, John Williams, Antonio Badalamenti, to mention a few.
Lee Knott
Lead Vocal • Songwriter • Co-writer/ Monsieur Magnifique
The voice at the centre of Be Like Water.
Lee brings a raw, soulful quality to the songs and a lifetime of musical influences that move through rock, blues, soul and beyond. He and Adriana jointly write the world and story of Stealing Horses, where Lee becomes the second central traveller — a man who has already spent more than one lifetime trying to find his way here. He sings his way through most problems. This works surprisingly often…
In his own words: Born and bread in Partington (Partytown), Manchester, now a proud Swincunian, I'm a people loving party animal, singer songwriter, painter, and infectiously passionate in all things art. Influences: David Bowie, The Doors, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, The Who, Ritchie Havens, The Smiths, Stone Roses, Black Pumas, Curtis Mayfield, Al Wilson, Gregory Porter. The first band I ever joined was The Silent Getaway, I then formed my own bands: The Knott, COACH, Spidasense, and Here Come The Crows. Inspiring gigs: playing at St George's Hall and The Fleece in Bristol, performing at Glastonbury 2022, 2023 and 2024 in The Greenfields, a regular at Minety festival, supporting The Farm at Pimm's In The Park 2023, performing at Bearded Theory 2016, supporting and performing with Lord Bishop Rocks at Riff's Bar.
GAV LAR
Drums/ COLIN
Every journey needs a pulse.
In Be Like Water, that pulse is Gav. In the world of Stealing Horses, he becomes Colin — the mysterious drummer whose rhythm travels through the forest before the other travellers ever see him. His name carries another meaning as it is an acronym for: Cycle Of Life Is Necessary. Gav eventually follows Adriana and Lee out of the forest. They do not realise this until circumstances become considerably more complicated.
In his own words: I'm a Paultonian, from South West of England, and I'm the opposite of overconfident, with a lack of self-awareness and being crap at dancing with no sense of rhythm. Influences? Soundgarden, Faith No More, Nine Inch Nails, Tool, Sparks, Mr. Bungle, Simple Minds, Police, Depeche Mode, John Denver and Barry Manilow (my life long appreciation of his music must have begun when I was a baby - my parents ran the Barry Manilow Fan Club and I got a mention every now and again in the official Manilow magazines, Barry even used to send us framed roses at Christmas). The good, the bad and ugly bands I've played in before, from past to Christmas present: La Horse, The Real Oasis, Blake, Dante, Kingpin, Aorta, Dante again, Karmadeva, Joli and The Souls, Here Come The Crows.
ROB HIBBERD
Bass/ The Lone Traveler
Rob is the band’s bassist, sonic anchor and resident technical brain. In Stealing Horses, he becomes The Lone Traveller - born into one of The Land’s wealthiest political families, his fictional counterpart walks away from privilege and everything he is expected to become. He travels with almost nothing. Except his bass. And his Orange amp. Naturally. He trusts very few people, plays bass illegally in the forest at night and initially suspects Adriana and Lee may be circus charlatans. His judgement has not yet been formally disproved.
Shaun Barry
Guitar/ The Soul Doctor
Shaun brings guitar, warmth and an instinctive musicality to Be Like Water.
In the world of Stealing Horses, he becomes The Soul Doctor.
A friend to people, animals and almost everything living, the Soul Doctor has spent years helping other people mend themselves.
But healers are human too.
When he joins the travellers, he begins his own journey alongside theirs.
Alex Ryan
Electric sax/ The Piper
Alex brings electric sax, atmosphere and another entirely different colour to the Be Like Water sound.
His Stealing Horses incarnation is The Piper.
An enigmatic figure who appears unexpectedly along the travellers’ route, dressed in unusual clothes, smiling calmly and playing a mysterious pipe.
He never explains very much.
He simply points people in the right direction and occasionally disappears.
In real life Alex is currently somewhat less supernatural.
His probationary status within Be Like Water remains under review.
photo by Elmar Rubio