#I want my explore-page full of all these weird blogs that sometimes recommends me someone I haven't seen for like 5 years

[windfighter]

Oh, "for you" is back on the explore-page again!

Now if it can just automatically go there instead of to the stupid "today on tumblr"-blog when I open it that'd be nice thanks.

[inspired-by-the-music]

For You: Stand By Me

Taglist: @jineunwootrash​

If you would like to be added to the taglist of any of this blog’s works, please ask!

Recommended Reading: For You: 4 O’Clock; these works have separate, independent, but deeply interwoven timelines.

Chapter 3: The Girl Who Wouldn’t Let Go

Sehun’s POV

In pre-debut days, before we were even grouped together, Junmyeon was determined that trainees should bond, so he wrote these little schedules of nearby events and sent them out in group messages. Owing to his busy university schedule, Junmyeon rarely went anywhere with us himself. He was absent that night in the drive-in too.

Although I was sixteen, I wasn’t especially eager to drive, so I didn’t mind when Minseok claimed the driver’s seat. Because I respected Luhan too much to complain when he bounced into the passenger seat, I quietly squeezed into the backseat where— as the youngest— I was sandwiched between Chanyeol and Kyungsoo.

Objectively, it was unfair that I was forced into the smallest seat because of my age. I get that Kyungsoo was older, and that was why I didn’t demand to trade seats. Still, I think that it only would have been right for him to take the middle seat because he was the shortest. I wasn’t really one to argue against rules, traditions, and societal roles, though, so I just folded my hands in my lap and decided that if ever I were the oldest person in the room, I wouldn’t get a big head. I wouldn’t abuse my power. I would be fair.

My members like to joke that I’m disobedient and border on disrespectful, but that’s not true. To tell you the truth, spending my Friday night in the drive-in with Chanyeol talking loudly in my ear wasn’t my idea of a good time, so my presence alone testified to my respect for Junmyeon before he was even the leader.

I wasn’t trying to be rude or disrespectful when I pushed Chanyeol out of the car as soon as Minseok parked. My legs were just aching from being cramped in the back seat, so I was eager to stretch and climb into the bed of the truck, where I could massage the knots that formed in my muscles. My eyes instinctively rolled at Chanyeol’s dramatized howls of pain as he tripped over gravel; he shouldn’t have taken offense.

As I eased my back against the cool metal wall of the truck, stretching my legs before me, Minseok smiled. His smile was always timid in those days. His voice was so quiet that my ears had to strain to make out his words. “Sehun, do you want something from the concession stand?”

Groaning at the thought of standing, I asked, “Are you going to pay for me?”

Having recovered from his trip, Chanyeol laughed as he sat next to me. “What a cheapskate!”

I didn’t think anything about what I said until I heard Kyungsoo’s faint snort of a laugh while he pushed his glasses further up on the bridge of his nose. Look— I firmly believe that seniors should pay for all expenses, and I still abide by that rule whenever I’m a senior— but I didn’t really know Minseok well enough to expect anything from him. All we had in common was that we knew Junmyeon.

Tugging my wallet out of my pocket, I prepared to hand it over with the explanation that I was too tired to walk with him after the full week of training, but Minseok wouldn’t accept my money. “Of course I’ll pay for you!” He was almost too nice. Sometimes, I don’t trust people like that, or I worry that someone will take advantage of them, but I was never worried about Minseok. “Just tell me what you want.”

I fit my wallet back into my pocket and shrugged. “I’m not picky.” Chanyeol laughed again— roaring right in my ear— and I cut my eyes at him. We were always friends, I guess, but we were very different people, and that’s why he was always on my nerves. “Just get me something sweet, please.”

Minseok nodded and, after listening to requests from Kyungsoo and Chanyeol, he took off with Luhan toward the concession stand.

Although too many hours had passed since the sunset for it to be bright enough to read, Kyungsoo held a book up to his face. He always liked to look smart, even when nobody was paying attention to him. Dropping the book to glance at me over the pages, he remarked, “You don’t seem like you would have a sweet tooth.

I blinked at him, never really caring much for people who speak in metaphors. A part of me wanted to tell him to speak plainly, but he probably wouldn’t have humored me anyway, so I bit my tongue. Besides, it didn’t matter what he meant.

Kyungsoo blinked back at me. It was obvious that he was sizing me up. That didn’t bother me so much; I just didn’t know what he thought he could discover about my character from my vague snack preferences. It’s foolish for people to attach meanings to insignificant things, but that’s something people do best.

I probably wouldn’t have responded to Kyungsoo even if Chanyeol hadn’t interrupted my thoughts to ask, “So, what movie are they playing?”

It wasn’t such a bad question. Because I only went to please Junmyeon, I didn’t know any specifics. Noticing that Chanyeol and I were looking to him, Kyungsoo answered, “Beauty and the Beast,” with a smile. He liked getting to share his knowledge.

“Like, the Disney movie?” I asked. 

Kyungsoo nodded sagely, and Chanyeol lowered his head, whining, “I didn’t realize we were here to watch a little girl movie!” He was a little too obsessed with being macho those days. If you ask me, a hyperfixation on manliness is pretty lame.

Kyungsoo glared at Chanyeol. “Animation is not exclusively for children.”

“Dude.” Chanyeol returned his glare— sharpened it. “It’s a princess movie! It’s marketed to little girls!”

“Don’t you think you’re being narrow-minded?” Kyungsoo phrased his criticism as a question, maybe, because Chanyeol was technically his senior. “Beauty and the Beast explores significant themes about sacrifice, superficiality, the nature of love—”

Regretting that I hadn’t pushed through my fatigue to walk with Minseok and Luhan, I tore my eyes away from Kyungsoo and tried to will myself deaf to his monologue as I tinkered with our portable speaker. Upon finding the station broadcasting the audio accompanying the images projected on the towering screen at the front to the lot, I frowned at an obvious problem.

I interrupted the debate to announce, “This is in English.” Even when I squinted, trying to distinguish the finer details on the screen, there were no captions to be found. When nobody responded, I added, “I don’t understand English.” 

Chanyeol nudged my ribs and joked, “Does anybody?”

Kyungsoo rolled his eyes. “Just appreciate the art of animation, Sehun.” 

I huffed at Kyungsoo’s pretentious attitude, “How am I supposed to appreciate something I don’t understand?”

“Well—” Kyungsoo’s eyebrows knit together, and I knew that he was considering my words too deeply again— “you’ve seen the movie before, right?”

Before I could respond flatly that (obviously) I had, Minseok returned, carrying armfuls of snacks that he dropped in the center of the truck bed along with the bright announcement, “Look who I found!”

I don’t know who I expected to find when I glanced over at him, but judging from the drop of my jaw, I hadn’t expected to find Lei clinging onto Luhan’s arm. I hadn’t expected to see her beaming up at him as if he hung the moon. 

When Luhan gestured for her to climb into the truck before him, she gasped, “Where did Heechul go? One second, he was standing next to me, and the next—” Her head turned from side to side as if she couldn’t imagine how she wound up at our truck. 

As stupid and irresponsible as it was, I could have forgiven her for losing Heechul in her starry-eyed pursuit of Luhan. After all, she was just a kid. But I couldn’t forgive Heechul for losing her. Who knows what could have happened if Minseok and Luhan hadn’t been there to lead her through the dark? All I knew was that after that night, I wouldn’t be able to look at Heechul without confronting the urge to roll my eyes at his carelessness. 

While Chanyeol, who never liked Lei for whatever stupid reason, stiffened at my side, Kyungsoo dropped his book to wave at her. “Hey, Lei!” 

My eyebrows twitched. How did Kyungsoo know her? Glancing from Kyungsoo’s joyful wave to Chanyeol’s scowl to Minseok’s small grin to Luhan’s dimpled smile, I realized that Lei wasn’t a stranger to anybody. Except for Chanyeol, she had managed to charm everyone into being her friend despite the age difference. 

It would have been weird to be jealous or possessive of a kid’s attention— even Lei’s— but there was something weird about recognizing that I wasn’t the only trainee she knew well enough to greet outside of the agency. It shouldn’t have been such an epiphany. I knew I wasn’t the center of the universe or anything. I knew that before we ever met, she was well acquainted with real idols. She was loved by real idols. 

She just always had this way of looking at me that made me feel— I don’t know. I don’t like talking about this kind of thing. I guess that moment was humbling. I guess Lei continued to humble me when she settled into the space next to me only to excitedly chatter to Luhan in rapid-fire Mandarin. Despite my basic understanding of the language, I couldn’t quite keep up with what they said between giggles. 

I guess I had always known that Lei wouldn’t cling to her crush on me forever. I guess I knew that I had been hoping for that day to come quickly, but now that I thought it had arrived, I felt weird. It wasn’t that I wanted her to like me or anything. I guess the issue was that if she had outgrown me, time really was passing, and it had done so without my permission. Nobody is ever that comfortable with time. 

When Lei and Luhan fell silent just long enough to glance at me before laughing again, it was obvious that they were talking about me. The tips of my ears probably burned. 

“Yeah,” I understood Luhan as he nodded at Lei, “he is pretty handsome.”

Oh. So that’s still what she thought of me. Weirdly, I was relieved. Some things would probably never change. Maybe Lei would always think I was handsome. Maybe no matter how many times I told her not to flirt, she would do what she wanted. Maybe people should learn to find comfort in constants. 

Probably because she seemed so happy, chewing through a chocolate bar as she talked to Luhan, probably because I was kind of (just a little) flattered, I swallowed the fading urge to lecture her. I instead listened to Chanyeol growl, “Look, Minseok, I don’t care where you found her. I just know that she can’t stay here.”

Although Chanyeol hadn’t said her name, Lei was sensitive to his criticism. Drawing her knees up to her chest, she said in a small voice, “I should probably go. My mom is probably worried about me.”

Kyungsoo was only trying to be helpful when he offered, “We’ll help you find your parents.” He wasn’t trying to knock all the air out of Lei’s chest. 

She ceased her efforts to climb down the side of the truck, collapsed at my side, and wheezed. I had seen Lei upset before, but never in my life had I seen somebody look so wounded by mere words— words that weren’t even harsh. Blinking at her, I understood: Lei didn’t have parents.

We never talked about her family. I would never know how to approach that topic— and I didn’t know yet that her mom was the idol who never debuted. I could just tell from her labored breathing that she didn’t have a father. That’s why she followed her mom everywhere. That’s why she sat alone at that table by the vending machine every day. That’s why she claimed Super Junior as her family, and that’s why they protected her: they were filling a void. 

Had I believed that an embrace could mend that kind of deep wound, I would have wasted no time in slinging an arm around her shoulders to brace her against everyone’s stares. I didn’t believe that, though, even if I wanted to, so I just laid my arm over the edge of the car, cutting my eyes at Chanyeol (because he was on my nerves, and we were only in this situation because he couldn’t be nice to Lei for five seconds) and Kyungsoo (because, despite his good intentions, he prodded at Lei’s wound and made it impossible for me to ever overlook the scar again). 

I said, “I don’t think we should rush to return Lei to whoever abandoned her at the concession stand.” I think I was angry. My hands were balled into fists, and my jaw was so tense that my words were almost unintelligible. I’m not sure, though; I’m not that experienced with anger. 

Even before her breathing hitched at the word ‘abandoned,’ I should have known that I said the wrong thing. I wasn’t trying to make matters worse. I didn’t know what to say. I could only grimace at my mistake after the fact— after I couldn’t snatch the words back out of the air. 

Luhan playfully tugged on one of Lei’s twin braids and, after earning the faintest grin, he said, “I think we should keep Lei! At least until the movie ends.”

Well. If you put me at that awkward stage— no, even me on my best night— next to Luhan, I guess it’s clear who any kid (or maybe any girl at any age) would prefer. We weren’t even in competition, and I felt like Luhan was winning. How stupid. 

Nodding enthusiastically, Minseok agreed with Luhan, Chanyeol groaned, and Kyungsoo insisted (despite the fact that the entire drive-in was a dead zone) that we should call Lei’s parents, but Lei didn’t respond to any of them. She didn’t even seem to hear them. She only looked at me with big eyes. 

Did she want me to tell her what to do? I guess that was something I did often enough without being asked, but— for the first time in a while— I didn’t know what to say. 

Unsure of what to do with the authority she always entrusted to me, I cast my eyes toward the screen and fidgeted with the speaker. “Hey, Lei.” I didn’t glance at her, but I could still feel her eyes watching me. I know she wasn’t looking for fault. I know that she was just admiring me the way only a kid can. Still, I squirmed. “Can you translate this movie for me?”

Once I looked at her, and she understood that I was encouraging her to stay— resolving within myself to help her find her mom and Heechul once the street lights turned on at the end of the movie— she smiled. Her gap was now replaced by the metallic glint of braces. I guess I was just glad that she could breathe again. 

Lei had just started to nod her head when a shriek broke through the quiet night. “Why don’t you shut the hell up? If you’re so invested in how this fairytale ends, I’ll tell you— the girl falls in love with the beast! He falls in love with her! And it’s beautiful! Now, get out of my way! I’m looking for my kid!”

In the moments before I realized that the shriek belonged to her mom, while the guys and I spun our heads in search of the conflict, I clutched Lei’s arm and pulled her behind me so I could shield her. In the event of a real emergency, I don’t know how effective my body would have been as a shield, but I wasn’t really thinking too deeply. At some moments in life, you act purely on instinct. That was one of those moments. My instinct was to protect Lei from the screaming woman. 

In hindsight, even now that I know that there was no real threat to our safety, I am proud of my instincts. 

Heechul’s voice preceded him. “Kimberly, you have to calm down.”

Recognizing Heechul’s voice, I figured that Kimberly must have been Lei’s mom’s name. My forehead wrinkled as I tried to fit the name with her face. It was weird, I guess, because I had never heard it before, just like I had never heard her yell. 

“Calm down?” She laughed one of those hollow laughs. The scary kind. “You leave my child all alone at the concession stand, and you have the nerve to tell me to calm down?”

Heechul must have been stupid to argue with a panicked mother. “I told you, she wasn’t alone! She was with two handsome young men—” Minseok and Luhan, I assumed— “and from how she lit up while talking to them, I assumed that they were friends!”

“So you just left her there?”

“I didn’t mean to!” I don’t know how Lei’s mom resisted the urge to punch Heechul’s face that must have coursed through both of us with comparable intensity. “Besides,” he added, “Lei is, like, a black belt in taekwondo, so if she was in trouble—”

“She is a little girl!” Lei’s mom screamed to drill the rather obvious reminder into Heechul’s thick skull. Some kind of desperation ripped through her voice and caused Lei to tense under my grip. 

Something about the frown I found on Lei’s face when I glanced back at her and the fear in her mom’s voice spurred me to action. “Come on, Lei.” I ushered her out of the bed of the truck, offering both of my hands so she wouldn’t trip. “Let’s go find your mom.”

Her small, cold hands trembled in mine, and as I opened my mouth to ask what was wrong, it dawned on me: she was afraid of the dark. She tripped once or twice because her eyes were fixed up on the sky, probably searching for the moon and stars. 

Once we found her mom and Heechul after a few minutes that felt like eternities because of the silence and her palpable fear, I thought they would never stop thanking me for being, as Heechul said, a knight in shining armor. 

“You’re welcome,” was the only thing to say. I guess I meant it because something like pride spread through my chest and pulled my lips into a smile even though it was dark and nobody could see it. 

When I released her hand, Lei mumbled, “Well, I guess you’re leaving now, right?” Although I couldn’t quite make out the features on her face, I imagined from her tone that she must have been pouting. Without even waiting for my reply, she said, “Goodnight, Sehun. Thank you for helping me find Mom and Heechul.”

Mostly because I wanted Lei to be happy— and I realized that somehow, just by being around, I made her happy— I raised an eyebrow at her. “What are you talking about? I told you— I need a translator, and nobody back in that truck knows English. Where you go, I go.”

Hearing my excuse for tagging along, neither her mom nor Heechul objected. Breathing another sigh of relief because Lei was safe and sound, they led us back to their car. As Heechul finally started to apologize for losing Lei in the first place, nobody noticed that Lei was bold enough to reach for my hand again with the whispered excuse, “I don’t want to get lost again, Sehun.”

I gave her a stern stare— the one I tried to reserve for the lectures about acting appropriately around boys— and I know she must have felt it. I know she must have been able to see it even in the darkness when she looked up at me, but she wouldn’t let me go. 

I guess because I started it by holding her hand first, I guess because I didn’t want her to get lost again either, I guess because I wanted to be some comfort even if I couldn’t cure her fear of the dark, I guess because I didn’t want to risk driving the smile from her face, I just let her do what she wanted that one time. 

That one time would become two times and then three and then a hundred and then a thousand and then a million until I didn’t know how to tell her no anymore, until I didn’t want to tell her no anymore, until I didn’t know what to do when she wasn’t bold anymore, until I didn’t quite know what to feel when she didn’t look at me first anymore. When I walked with her through the night that was too dark to find any stars or even the moon, I swear I never imagined that she would grow into somebody that I love in the heart-fluttering, gut-wrenching, world-changing kind of way. 

Then, Lei was just a kid who deserved a protector, and I was just one of many who tried to overfill the place of a father who never should have left her. 

As I walked with her, deciding what I would say to Chanyeol when he would inevitably curse me for ditching him (again) for Lei, I told myself that I wouldn’t have been able to find my way back to the truck anyway. And it wasn’t a lie, I swore as Lei’s translation of the movie— complete with unique voices for each character— captivated everyone in her mother’s car. 

[noiseartists]

The Academy Of Sun: Psychaedelic Pop from Brighton

Formed in Brighton nine years ago, The Academy of Sun is a four-piece comprised of Nick Hudson (piano, synths, hammon organ, harmonium, vocals, percussion, synths), Kianna Blue (bass, synths), Guy Brice (guitars) and Ash Babb (drums). Together, they present dystopian fantastic creations that combine the deeply personal and the poetically arcane. Dark yet buoyant, this is a controlled explosion of psychedelic and dark power pop with atmospheres couched in vast and expansive landscapes and cinematic arrangements.

Nick Hudson's musical juggernaut has been active in various incarnations since 2012, always transcending expectations. The Academy Of Sun has collaborated with Massive Attack's Shara Nelson, members of NYC's Kayo Dot, David Tibet of Current 93, Asva and Matthew Seligman (Bowie, Tori Amos, Morrissey). Hudson has also collaborated with Wayne Hussey of The Mission, as well as Canadian queercore icon GB Jones. Known for explosive and psychedelic live shows, The Academy Of Sun has performed in a medieval castle in Italy, a boat on the Thames, an abandoned railway carriage in Offenbach, colossal churches, The London College of Fashion, The Old Market theatre in Brighton, the MS Stubnitz in Hamburg, Brighton Dome, and a string of L.A. shows in 2019. Having toured 3 continents, highlights include appearances with Mogwai, Toby Driver and Keith Abrams from Kayo Dot, and Timba Harris (Mr Bungle, Amanda Palmer). 'The Parts That Need Replacing' is out now, available across online stores and streaming platforms such as Spotify. The full album 'The Quiet Earth' will be released in summer of 2020 on CD, as well as digitally.

THE INTERVIEW

Who are the group members?

Myself, Kianna Blue, Ash Babb, Guy Brice.

How did you meet?

A poet introduced Kianna and I. We ended up living together, In our modest cottage on the edge of a cliff we kept house goats. Guy was one of them. It became quickly apparent that if he kept his hooves pedicured, he had an incredible way with a guitar. Ash and I met in a local tavern, courtesy of a mutual online awareness via the blog of author Dennis Cooper.

How did you come up with your name?

I'd been reading literature on pagan sun-worshipping cults and came across Heliogabalus, the queer teenage anarchist emperor of ancient Rome. Artaud wrote on him. So I wanted to unleash and harness the unkempt nuclear blaze of that energy within a formalist framework.

What is your music about?

It's about invigoration and alchemy – stimulating the mind and soul in tandem with the body. Music to dance and cry to. It's about pole-vaulting transgressive and subversive narratives over the iron gate of mainstream normativity. Spiraling wells of energy and dynamism. Loud and shimmering vibrancy. “Did I really hear that?”

What are your goals as an artist artistically/commercially?

Artistically I just want to continually evolve my craft, critical faculties, and general state of awareness so as I can get ever closer to precisely articulating the atmospheres, geometries and ghost stories that circle my head like ever-mutating angels, day and night, on the brink of expelling light and form. And in doing so, to gather those who are similarly drawn to peering through the cracks. Commercially, I - and we - really just want to connect this with a bigger audience. We're aware that we're a weird band, and that it's a long game. So it demands stoicism, patience and persistence. The ideal would be to get to a level where we have sufficient economic backing to be able to actually deploy all the ideas we have without compromising on logistics or production values.

What are you trying to avoid as a band?

The music industry.

Why do you make the music you make? Is it in you? Is it your environment?

It's more interior than exterior. Albeit I respond very palpably to landscapes, just not the one that I'm writing this interview from within! Haha. I'm drawn to severe, wild landscapes, and likewise to art and music that evokes such landscapes.

What inspires you for the music or for the Lyrics?

I've always written prose and poetry, and so a key factor in my embarking upon songwriting fifteen years ago was preserving the conditions of unabashed literary aspirations in my lyrics. I like to think/strive to ensure that as much as they might stand successfully alone on the page they also transmit the melodies with ease. I'm drawn to art in any medium that explores and expresses extreme states of being – modes of transcendence, ultimately. Ecstasies, agonies, the uncanny, the transgressive, the sublime. Stillness can also be extreme. Lots of nature imagery. European cinema and literature.

Tell us what you are looking when trying to achieve your sounds. Do you experiment a lot or have a clear idea of what you want?

I think we all share a delight in unusual sonics – there were some genuinely experimental moments in the studio – for example, the first sound heard on the record is a drone created by my playing a pre-recorded vocal through the speaker of a cassette recorder into the pick-ups on Guy's guitar, which was then sent through waves of delay. We created a MIDI church organ by recording the bass pedals of the church organ of St Mary's, Brighton and turning that into a MIDI instrument. The idea of pitch-bending such a monolithic and defiantly analogue instrument was irresistible. There's one track where we recorded the drum part four times and placed each take peculiarly across the stereo field. And there are field recordings scattered throughout, evoking radioactivity and harsh landscapes. I usually, with each track, have a pretty clear idea of the aesthetic and formal parameters within which experimentation can occur, and we go from there.

Explain your songwriting process.

Sometimes I'll be improvising on piano and motifs will surface that later impose their will upon my subconscious, continually knocking until I open the door and allow them to become a song. Other times I'll have the completed lyrics and sit and just experiment with ways to place them, and edit, and edit until they're homed. Some songs arrive in one swift nuclear wind, and others take years to ferment. I keep a lot of audio notes on my iphone.

Describe your palette of sound.

Rich but not cloying, Psychedelic but not nostalgic. Adventurous. Green and gold. Complex but not arbitrarily technical. Deconstructing, rerouting and inverting obvious formal choices but not at the expense of comprehension.

Who would you want as a dream producer, and why?

Trent Reznor, Bjork, Tim Palmer, David Lynch, Danny Elfman. I thought I'd compensate for not saying 'why' by instead listing five, haha.

If you could guest on someone else’s album, who would it be and why? What would you play?

Well I know he's technically on the cusp of retiring, but assuming this questions dwells in an amorphous temporality (as we do ourselves under quarantine), I'd say Ennio Morricone. Because he's peerless. I would love to have played piano/organ on one of his sixties/seventies film works. To say I've been produced by Morricone and appear on, say, the Sacco and Vanzetti soundtrack, would see me fairly ecstatic.

What musical skills would you like to acquire or get better at?

I'd like develop further fluency in classical notation and orchestration.

Which other musician/artist would you date?

I don't really subscribe to coupledom or its rituals but maybe Jack from These New Puritans. NB. I would never, EVER date a musician. Haha.

Is there a band that if they didn’t exist you wouldn’t be making the music you make?

Probably Mr Bungle. In that they not only blew my mind at a young age with their own music, but laid breadcrumbs for me to explore the family tree of John Zorn, Tzadik, and the sprawling concentric circles of artists making up the experimental underground of LA and NYC.

You are from England. What are the advantages and inconvenient?

Hold my hair back. Well. Its primary advantage is its proximity to the European mainland.

Its disadvantages are manifold and voluminous – aside from a micro-percentage of wonderful, compassionate, intelligent and progressive entities and institutions, its a nasty little hotbed of misplaced Churchillian hubris and post-imperial egocentrism, ruled as a playpen by which neo-liberal public schoolboy millionaires can move their assets around and grow their wealth while 'ironically' masquerading a paper-thin veneer of concern for the public interest and welfare.

Boris Johnson and his monstrous cabal aside, the UK treats its musicians appallingly. I've toured Europe, America and The Middle East and it shames me to say that the worst treatment I've experienced out of any of the countries I've played is that of the UK. I'm not alone in this assertion either.

There are exceptions of course, but as a rule, this sadly remains the case. Ten years of Tory rule certainly hasn't helped this.

What are some places around the world that you hope to play with your band?

There's that amphitheater built into a rock face somewhere in Central Europe. I'd like to do a tour of churches and cathedrals. And acoustically-dynamic natural rock formations.

It's my dream to take The Academy Of Sun on an extensive tour of Europe, but we'd need solid economic backing to be able to do so with production values intact, let alone keep us all afloat while doing so.

So that's something to push for. There's a pueblo in New Mexico called TAOS – obviously it's pre-destined that we play there. I went to Svalbard in the Arctic last year, and there's a beautiful concert hall called Huset right between two glaciers. I'd love us to play there. (Johannes, are you reading this?)

When is the next album/EP due?

June! We inevitably had to postpone the release from its intended release in April, when the whole world went on pause. We're super-excited to have you all hear The Quiet Earth.

Some artists you recommend

I can't get enough of Oingo Boingo right now – Danny Elfman's band that split in 1995. Peerless songwriting, arrangement, production and performance. Otherwise, Arca is amazing. I'm listening to a lot of Nico. Devouring Clive Barker's early novels. Revisiting Diamanda Galas' earlier catalogue. Watching a lot of Chris Marker and Maya Deren. And I just read Marina Abramovic's memoir, which is profoundly inspiring.

Anything else you want your fans to know?

Mainly – thank you for your support, engagement and enthusiasm, especially during this wayward, hazy and anxiety-inducing time. We hope you'll enjoy the record, and we're super-psyched to play shows all over the place when concerts are indeed a viable concern once again. Stay well, breathe deep, and celebrate and nurture the connections that enrich, comfort, soothe and embolden you.

MORE ON THE BAND

Find The Academy Of Sun here:

bandcamp

soundcloud

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instagram

[rathertoofondofbooks]

  Today I’m thrilled to be taking part in the blog tour for Maria in the Moon by Louise Beech!

About the Book

Long ago my beloved Nanny Eve chose my name. Then one day she stopped calling me it. I try now to remember why, but I just can’t.’ Thirty-two-year-old Catherine Hope has a great memory. But she can’t remember everything. She can’t remember her ninth year. She can’t remember when her insomnia started. And she can’t remember why everyone stopped calling her Catherine-Maria. With a promiscuous past, and licking her wounds after a painful breakup, Catherine wonders why she resists anything approaching real love. But when she loses her home to the devastating deluge of 2007 and volunteers at Flood Crisis, a devastating memory emerges … and changes everything. Dark, poignant and deeply moving, Maria in the Moon is an examination of the nature of memory and truth, and the defences we build to protect ourselves, when we can no longer hide…

My Thoughts

I read Louise Beech’s first novel, How to be Brave, last year and it was my top book of the year. I still find myself thinking about the characters and the story. So you can imagine how much I’ve been anticipating Maria in the Moon and I’m so happy to say that this completely exceeded my high expectations!

Maria in the Moon is so beautiful and incredibly moving. There are two strands to Maria in the Moon – the book is predominantly set in the aftermath of the horrendous floods that hit Hull in 2007 and focuses on Catherine. On being interviewed for the Flood Crisis helpline Catherine realises that she can’t remember a single thing from the year she was nine. This sets her mind in a spin as she begins to think back over points in her childhood to try and remember anything from that year. Catherine has had a difficult life – her father died when she was young, as did her Nanny Eve and she doesn’t have an easy relationship with her Mother which makes it all the more difficult for her to find out about her past.

I adored this novel; it is simply stunning and so powerful! I found I could really identify with Catherine. There are parts of her story that were really hard for me to read, coming a bit too close to my own experiences, but the writing is so beautiful that I had to keep reading through my tears. I was willing Catherine to remember what happened and for her to be able to come to terms with all aspects of her childhood. As Catherine begins to have strange fleeting flashes of what she thinks might be her memories there is a sense that you know what it coming before she does and the tension that builds in the novel from there is palpable.

‘When you’re nine,’ he’d insisted. When you’re nine. He died when I was eight.’

I sympathised such a lot with Catherine over the losses she’d experienced in her life. It’s such a difficult thing to not only to lose a parent but to lose how your life may have been if they had lived longer. The death of a parent changes how people see you, and how you see them, and it breaks some things in a way that they can’t be mended. Sometimes you get lucky and find a new normal with people and sometimes you just lose. I was willing Catherine on to find a new normal with the people left in her life to the point that I wanted to reach through the pages and tell the people around her to listen to her more. Louise Beech captured this so well, with such compassion and empathy in Maria in the Moon.

‘The image made my throat ache. He was perhaps the age my father would have been if he’d lived; I felt a pang of affection.

The part of the novel that focuses on the floods was so vivid and realistic. I lived in Hull during the floods that this novel centres around and whilst my home wasn’t affected, quite a few friends of mine were badly flooded. It was an horrendous time for people and Hull seemed to get forgotten about during that time and the city was left to fend for itself. Louise captures this so incredibly well, there were moments reading this that just took me right back there. All the skips in the street, all the ruined furniture, the people not knowing what to say to each other – it was heartbreaking. It genuinely feels that for anyone who hasn’t seen the devastation of flooding with their own eyes will really have a sense of how it feels after reading this book.

I have to just mention that I loved the references to places in Hull that I remember going to back in the day – the Christmas night out in Sharkeys in the novel brought back some fond memories for me. It’s so nostalgic reading a novel that is set in a time and place you have lived, and it gave me that weird sense of maybe having passed Catherine around there somewhere. Maybe in another time.

‘Without strong foundations, no external beauty can survive. Paint can only hide so much before the memories crawl out of the woodwork.’

Louise Beech has such an incredible way with words – she constructs sentences that really get you in your gut. There were many moments when I was reading this novel that I had to stop and take a breath but then I was compelled to get back to it. I loved the way Louise weaved the grief Catherine feels for her father in with the loss she feels about her home being so damaged in the floods. There is a part where she talks about her dad’s coat being like a cape to keep her safe but someone got rid of it after he died, and how she looked for that safe feeling but could never find it. It’s how she feels now about her water-logged home – that sense of her home being the cape that her dad allowed her to buy, to keep her safe, and now it’s broken and she can’t live there for a while. She doesn’t know if she will ever feel safe, and it’s clear she’s displaced and lost and grief-stricken all over again. We bought our house with the inheritance from my mum and because of that our home has taken on so much more meaning, so I really felt for Catherine.

Forgiveness and acceptance play such a big role in this novel – the issues are very sensitively dealt with and you can see all of the ways we all try to make sense of the things that have happened to us. For Catherine there was the way she had to deal with her childhood and the way she had to deal with her present and while they seem very different they are actually very similar. She chose to try and fix the brokenness by volunteering for the flood crisis helpline and actually this becomes the thing that breaks her down but leads to a sense of possibility.

This is a novel that is still lingering in my mind days after I finished reading it – it’s one that I actually don’t think will ever leave me and to be honest I don’t want it to. This is one of those very rare and very special novels that will make you feel all of the feelings, it will take hold of you and it won’t let you go. It’s an absolutely stunning novel and I highly, highly recommend Maria in the Moon!

Maria in the Moon is out now!

I received a copy of the book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

About the Author

Louise has always been haunted by the sea, even before she knew the full story of her grandfather, the man who in part inspired novel How to be Brave. She lives with her husband and children on the outskirts of Hull – the UK’s 2017 City of Culture – where from her bedroom window she can almost see the waters of the River Humber, an estuary that inspired book, The Mountain in my Shoe.

She loves all forms of writing. Her short stories have won the Glass Woman Prize, the Eric Hoffer Award for Prose, and the Aesthetica Creative Works competition, as well as shortlisting twice for the Bridport Prize and being published in a variety of UK magazines. Her first play, Afloat, was performed at Hull Truck Theatre in 2012. She also wrote a ten-year newspaper column for the Hull Daily Mail about being a parent, garnering love/hate criticism, and a one year column called Wholly Matrimony about modern marriage.

Her debut novel, How to be Brave, was released in 2015 and got to No 4 in the Amazon UK Kindle chart, and was a Guardian Readers’ pick for 2015. This novel came from truth – when Louise’s daughter got Type 1 Diabetes she helped her cope by sharing her grandad’s real life sea survival story.

Her second novel, The Mountain in my Shoe, was released in 2016 and was inspired by her time with children in care. It explores what family truly means, and how far we will go for those we love. It longlisted for the Guardian Not The Booker Prize.

Maria in the Moon is out now.

(Bio taken from: LouiseBeech.co.uk)

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