#not as easy as beacon theatre stage doors

[carcarrot]

hollywood bowl btw. if you even care

my most expensive event ever??? no one ended up buying my extra tickets. and i flew here and got a hotel room and the shoes and etc but concerts are forever!!!!! especially this one

friend and i worked HARD to nail our ron and russ looks. so many people complimented us and took our picture

got TWO official sparks shirts and the socks. they didnt have the pins :(

also got a hollywood bowl christmas tree ornament :)

tmbg show was SUPER FUN. but also very loud and a little harsh sound wise. they thanked sparks twice for having them open for them

sparks don't address tmbg at all when they come out lmao

the energy for the sparks show was insane from the start they were really giving it all

really hoping theres video of this little hip sway move russell did near the end of so may we start. really enjoyed it

he did a similar move during the groovy instrumental part of when im with you think. he was selling it

unlike ny this time i managed to remember to watch for russells shirt unbuttoning during shopping mall of love. all thoughts are redacted

the concert goes by so fast!!!! but what a time

stood up for music that you can dance to and just kept standing/bouncing for the rest of the show

no escalator :((((((

russell's weirdly long intro to we go dancing. thanks for the intricate context abt north korea

russell saying 'that looks beautiful!' in between lyrics of all that when everyone held up their phones w the flashlight on

edgar taking the band photo :)))))

weird al was also allegedly there (did not see him) and christi haydon was there (i was too shy to talk to her but she looked so fab)

just a general incredible energy of the show you could tell they made the hollywood bowl show so special

got a weird bootleg sparks shirt after the concert from a weird guy

[eccentricpony]

Here are the imagines for Tenma, Misumi and Kazunari directly following a production of The Great Sardine Search with a reader s/o who loves their cat ears!

This was written in the timeframe of play revival 2-3 years after its premiere, with the reader assumed to have met them after the original production took place (so they’ve never seen the costumes).

Mildly steamy content towards the end of Kazunari’s. Each of these three will have a continuation with varying degrees of NSFW content at my NSFW blog. I will reblog this post with a link once the NSFW content is posted. Follow me to stay updated when that hits!

If you’d like to read the Muku + Yuki imagines for this request (which will not include a NSFW follow-up), check them out HERE

Note: I created all the character headers for these and would appreciate proper credit with a link back to my blog if they’re used elsewhere.

·        When Tenma was immersed in a role, it didn't matter if he was playing a busboy, tourist #3, or a damn stop sign, he would put his all into that role.

·        The old Tenma may have raised his nose at the very idea of portraying an animal on stage, but the new Tenma embraced such challenges.

·        So when Tenma played a cat, he was a veritable twitchy eared, pouncy, laser-pointer-chasing feline.

·        He was still coming down from the endorphin high when you entered the backstage. He was already rather sweaty from grueling stage lights and a high energy performance, so he was hoping that the perspiration caused by your presence wouldn’t be too apparent.

·        “You didn’t tell me you were actually going to have cat ears!” With a crooked grin, you sidle up to him, poking fun at him in a rhythm that you had both perfected over the course of a year.

·        You waste no time before standing on your toes to accost his ginger kitty ears, scratching behind one and looking at him expectantly as though you’d elicit a purr any minute. You had no doubt that he would find this situation mildly humiliating, but after being together for so long, rare were the opportunities for you to see him squirm like this.

·        “Uhh, well I am playing a cat. Cat’s have… cat ears?” He grumbled, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. But he didn’t stop you, stealing a side glance at the room to see if his fellow troupe members were witnessing this mortification. If anyone else had rushed at him, gushing and teasing him as you had, he would not have accepted it nearly as gracefully. But you weren’t anyone else, in fact you had a way about you that turned the normally acerbic Tenma into warm putty.

·        Removing your hand from his ear, you reach over to slide the side of your finger down his nose playfully to which you receive a flinch. If you didn’t know the cat ears were fake, you’d expect a hiss on top of it.

·        “You were really great, Tenma,” you offer in another tone completely. “You’re always really great.”

·        And like clockwork, Tenma became butter. You had a way of speaking that was… and you were so beautiful, and he had worked with plenty of beautiful costars, but something about you was just… 

·         He just didn’t understand what made you such a singular wonder, and he didn’t have to; he was crazy stupid into you and hearing you praise him like this was all the validation he needed.

·        “Thanks for supporting me,” he countered sincerely, lifting the corners of his mouth.

·        You mirrored his fondness with a smile, and the two of you share a moment free of pretense. Although initially you had never sought a relationship with him because of his career (and in truth, your first impression of him found his attitude positively grating), you were now unquestionably his biggest fan. You patiently endured any duration of time where his filming schedule required you to be apart (though he tried to keep this to an absolute minimum) and you gently talked him down from any of the inconsiderate tirades he spewed, insulting the “incompetence” surrounding him at work. You were both learning patience, and simultaneously growing a healthy mutual understanding.

·        Your eyes suddenly perk up. “Hey, don’t you have a tail?”

·        He swats at your hand as you try to look at his butt tail.

·        “What?! Wait, y- you’ll pull it, s- stop!” Once you’ve stopped the grabbing, he dutifully turns to his side.

·        “Yeah I have a tail. Happy?” A knot in his throat develops as he watches you check out his “tail,” feeling quite the fool once he realizes he’s showcasing his backside for you, and he immediately faces forward.

·        “I like your tail,” you flirt with an overzealous Kazunari-caliber wink, and your boyfriend grows as red as a fire hydrant.

·        “Yeah, yeah… can we go?” he blusters with phony irritation, grasping the crook of your elbow and escorting you towards the door.

·        Misumi broke into a run the moment he glimpsed you backstage, lifting and spinning you in the air with such gusto you could have easily injured a 4 foot radius if you didn’t have the wisdom and experience to tuck in your legs during Misu’s hugs.

·        Once he finally returned you to the ground, you took his face in your hands, beaming ear to ear. “You were so amazing, Misu! I had no idea you were such an incredible actor!”

·        “I just act the way I think gramps would act,” he shrugged with the sincere modesty that you found so endearing, eyes gleaming the way they always did under your gaze.

·        “Is there anything you can’t do?” you praised, moving your hands from clasping his cheeks to holding his impossibly soft hands.

·        “I can’t fly,” he laughed, shuffling his feet at the compliment, swinging both your arms with his movement. Misumi’s easy-going nature made it challenging to take him off guard, but any attention from you made him uncharacteristically shy, even after the many months you had been together. You took this rare stationary moment to asses his adorable wardrobe.

·        His costume could not be a better fit to his personality. Your boyfriend was a bouncy ball of positive energy, and you had difficulty keeping up with him on most days. But you could never say that it wasn’t worth the extra effort to maintain his stride. As a boyfriend, Misumi was caring, affectionate, kind, and uplifting. His eccentric obsession with triangles only made him all the more endearing to you, and you swooned whenever he brought you an “extra special super” triangle. Sure, sometimes it was public property which you had to awkwardly return later, but you’d never refuse a gift from your starry-eyed sweetheart.

·        Also, you think you might have heard him talking to a few cats on occasion, and you could have sworn they replied in meowisms… but maybe you were just letting your love for him cloud your better judgment? Either way, dressed as he was at the moment, he was the human embodiment of his furry brethren.

·        As he swayed, the tan cat ears poking out from his hood caught your eye. You let go of his left hand to point at your discovery.

·        “Misu, your ears are triangles!” you exclaimed, hoping that he hadn’t noticed this yet (of course he had) so that you could see the adorable expression of joy he made whenever he found a new triangle.

·        “I know! Triangles you can wear are the best triangles!” He reached up and lightly clasped the headpiece with his free hand, fingers tracing the triangular shape. His eyes flicked to the crowd of his fellow troupe members leaving the room, and you both said your goodbyes to each of them in kind. 

·         Misumi had been staying at your place most nights as of late, though you insisted that opening performance night would be the last one he’d spend apart from his theater family until the conclusion of the play’s run. You knew you’d miss him tremendously, but you’d never want to negate this opportunity for him to truly bond with his fellow actors. Therefore, you had every intention on making this night special.

·        Now the only two in the room, you gently squeeze his hand and step forward to kiss the tiny birthmark under his eye. “Misu and me time?”

·        “Us time,” he concurred, responding in kind with a kiss to your cheek, nose brushing past your ear and giving you chills with the ghost of his breath. “Maybe also origini?”

·        “Of course! I already have some waiting for you, my Misu!” you happily acquiesced, swinging his hand in yours along your side as you bounced out of the room.

·        “You likey?” Kazunari leaned forward to allow you proper access to his head.

·        With a brief squeal, you lay the tips of your fingers upon the vertex of a little navy cat ear. “Oh my God, Kazu, how are you this cute,” you simper.  

·        How you got like this, you’ll never know. Well, yeah, actually you do know – Kazunari happened to you. You were never the type to be so lovey-dovey, but then again you had never been with a guy quite like Kazu. His upbeat, welcoming, sociable personality was infectious, and he never failed to make you smile, even on the darkest of days. It was highly appropriate that the seasonal theatre troupe he belonged to was “summer” because to you, Kazunari was sunshine.

·        “Not as cute as you, babe.” Head still inclined, he glanced up at you with bedroom eyes and a grin. Kazu was even more uppity than usual, if possible. Despite some physical fatigue, he was running off an actor’s high. With you in his presence to top it off, looking so very yum, his whole body was buzzing so much he thought he might burst. Likewise, you were exhilarated seeing the love of your life up on stage, receiving the spotlight and praise you always felt he deserved, shining resplendently like the beacon of light that he was.

·        Removing your hand from his head, he returned upright, eyes never leaving yours which further provokes the unspoken spark now kindling between you.

·        “Want to see my tail? How freakin’ cool is this?” Kazunari throws out a shoulder and wiggles his butt a little more provocatively than necessary, the tip of his tail swishing violently side to side.

·        You swiftly offer the playful butt tap that you assume he was aiming for, praying the fabric abuse would go unnoticed by a certain salty costume designer.

·        “So awesome, I don’t know how Yuki does it,” you said louder than necessary, for good measure.

·        “Yeah, dude, this costume is lit.” Gleeful from the attention his feline adornments were receiving, he surveyed his clothing with renewed appreciation for the garments he wore. Not to mention looking for other accessories that might gain him more touches from you.

·        “Sick palette, too” you contributed with a grin, knowing that your artist boyfriend would hugely appreciate your comment on the color scheme.

·        You can see a glint in his emerald eyes as he registers your comment. “Right!?”

·        You had always praised his artwork with genuine adoration, and he enjoyed talking to you about color theory and his favorite artists. He simply appreciated the fact that you listened to him; to hear you reference something you had learned from your exchanges made this already very smitten boy simply ravenous for you.

·        “Got this dagger, too,” he adds with a devious tilt of his lip, shifting closer to you and pressing the hip that dons the blade against your lower belly.

·        “Yeah, yeah, keep that bad boy sheathed for now,” you jest, pushing him apart from you playfully, though his flirtation has catalyzed the heat pulsing through your veins.

·        “So later then?” he was drawn back to you like a magnet, wrapping an arm around your middle and nuzzling into your hair. Much like a cat, you thought to yourself with waxing desire. “Let’s go to your place.”

·        “Am I pulling you away from your troupe?” You leaned back just enough to meet his eye, your own arm claiming a spot in the middle of his back. “I don’t want to steal you from your friends…” 

·         You always tried to be respectful of his affable nature and took no issue with his lively social circle. Ever since you had been together, you found yourself chatting with an incredible variety of strangers with whom you would never have had the courage to initiate conversation. He thrived off the energy of others, and he deserved to celebrate this accomplishment with his theater fam.

·        Kazunari dismissed this with a casual wave of his hand. “Nah, no partying tonight. We’re all exhausted, everyone is going back to the dorms to sleep.”

·        “Then you should be going to bed, too! I don’t want you to get sick.”

·        “I am going to bed, babe…” Kazunari reasoned.  “I’m just taking you with me,” he added, coaxing you to the exit and finishing the proposition with a rare sexy wink designed solely for you.

[writeanapocalae]

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7

The image changed behind him, the light changing to a deep deep red. Sebastian truend to it, away from the images of gore. “That’s Lily,” he breathed, looking at it. It was her, with one of her dolls in hand, running through a large red canvas. She was turned away from him, but there was no way that he could be wrong. “This guy’s playing with me.”

He turned around. If this guy loved anything, it was making Sebastian turn around. The hall was different though, all of the photos on the walls gone and there was a pulsing red light. He remembered the hallway from Beacon, the one that shuddered and seemed to go forever, the door at the end opening into a wave of blood. He shook his head, thinking of Beacon wouldn’t help him here.

The hall didn’t look like it would change in length, it was already long enough. Still, it shuddered when he was half way along it and a voice came from the walls, deep and muffled. He could find a way through, to the owner of that voice. But no, he had to keep moving.

“This one’s perfect, naturally so,” the photographer mused and Sebastian hoped this was a memory, not something happening now. If he was saying all this about Lily… he couldn’t think about what he would do. “it is my work, after all. Death preserved on silver nitrate. Like a fly in amber.”

Sebastian kept moving, he was going to get to that door. It wasn’t moving, it wasn’t leaving him behind.

“Beautiful.”

The door opened and he could see the man, standing there, taking photos. He didn’t seem worried about Sebastian’s gun, trained on him. He was so close to pulling the trigger. He wanted to pull the trigger. He couldn’t hurt Lily if he was dead.

The photographer took another shot.

Sebastian couldn’t shoot him, as much as he wanted to. The man had Lily, that was true, but Union was a big place, Sebastian would need him to lead the way to her. He’d already promised the man to that doctor guy, too. It might be easier to just kill him then hand him over, but Sebastian didn’t want to kill anyone if he didn’t have to.

The man chuckled to himself, turned on his heel and led Sebastian into a deep red room.

 ------------------------------ 

Something was coming, both through the horrible headache trying to break through his skull and the through the building. He could feel it, setting off his traps, the memories he had stored in this place. He had had an exhibit here, something small, and it was easy to put his energy back into the work he had lent City Hall.

Lily was drawing, he’d at least gotten her out of her corner, and Obscura was sitting around her, watching over her shoulder. The girl was talking to her, not bothered in the least by Obscura’s moans. The noise was nice, grounding. There was a torrent of sound in his head, such an urge, a need, to create, that he could barely hear anything else. But that voice cut through it so easily.

He could feel it, the power, coming over him in waves, hers and his own, intermingling into a new sensation. It was a drug, heightening him to so much more than he’d ever been, making him more than he’d ever thought. It was so very very tempting.

He had had a drug take him over before, he did not want it again. Even with the flair of originality it promised.

“Obscura, would you take Lily to the theatre?” he asked, his voice trembling, starting to rise. He shoved it down, slowed it, tried to mask the strangeness that was forming in it.

Lily stopped talking and he could feel her eyes on him, “Is something wrong?” she asked. He’d never met a child so observant.

“I’m not feeling too well,” Stefano admitted, knowing that lying to her would just lead to more questions. He was an artist, fantastic at allowing his emotions to come forth, to do the speaking for him, lying was not something he was good at. “and, I fear something is coming that would threaten you and this place. You would adore the theatre, Lily, the feeling of being on that stage- it is magnificent.”

She didn’t seem convinced, “What about you?”

He didn’t want to admit that he was one of the threats, but he could feel it, racing through him, focusing on the space where his eye used to be, the veins there filling with poisonous intent. “I want to know this enemy. Obscura, once Lily is safe, return here. I am going to need you.”

[joshuazev]

On the learning curve:

The other day I helped out a buddy of mine with a scene he was shooting for his movie reel.  He had wanted to move to LA, took a trip down there for a week, scheduled some meetings, and by the time he had returned he found a manager, a beacon of hope, and had bought a one way ticket to Los Angeles, bringing all of his New York belongings along with him.  He was a cool guy and I was happy to do the scene with him.  It was about a young rapper from the neighborhood, who owned a big shot hustler some money.  The hustler stops in to a recording studio, catching the rapper off guard, and threatens his mother if he doesn’t get his money by the following day.  I played the rapper and my friend played the shark.  It had been a while since I worked on camera.  I found out the hard way that I had a good amount of rust to fight off.  Before we even stepped on location we had about three to four rehearsals going over the lines, working with an acting coach, and getting the story down to the nitty gritty.  I never really thought the story was crazy complex, but like the acting coach demonstrated, there were always more things to uncover if you looked deeply enough.  

Maybe it was because the scene was so intimate and there wasn’t much space that we were covering.  Maybe it was because a lot of the shots were medium close ups and extreme close ups.  When the camera started rolling I had no problem locking in, but the hardest thing for me was to get used to the unbelievably limited amount of space within the frame.  Personally, I think a lot of it had to do with a relative lack of experience because as the shoot went on I became more and more comfortable.  I stopped holding my breath (a habit that I’ve unfortunately developed in a variety of tense situations) and took time to relax.  Another thing that took a while to get over was how we transitioned from the studio rooms and apartment we rehearsed in to the actual space that we filmed in.  Now I understand why some actors are such sticklers for seeing the location ahead of time.  The more I work on film the more I appreicate the greats and how much they can make you forget that they are working under such constraints as well.  Whether they are playing someone intense or sedated, the greats make it look easy.  

I was asked today about the last thing I had done, a short film called, “A Prayer” and I wondered whether I felt the same way during that shooting process.  Oddly enough, the one thing I feared before honing in on how comfortable or uncomfortable I felt was whether I thought I had done a good job in the movie and whether this good or bad job would add or detract from the overall product.  Unlike some of my theater work, I’m way more self conscious of my individual performances behind the camera.  There is a liberation in being able to use space and the entirety of a stage that I haven’t been able to translate thus far to cinema.  For one, what the camera captures is so minimal, it picks up every thought, every mannerism, and physical facial choice.  In theatre you can bypass some of these obstacles; there are ways to compensate.  

I just got done watching the movie “The Past” today with Berenice Bejo, Tahar Rahim, and Ali Mosaffa.  Like the director’s other movie I had seen, “A Separation,” this was a piece that was driven by an incredible story, but also several actors—young and old—that had a command of the reality the story produced.  Some of the moments were intimate and close and others were longer shots and from further away.  I’ve seen many performances where people overact—both on stage and on film (I’m sure I’ve been guilty off it as well), but this was exceptional.  The more I see really good acting, the more I have the desire to ask these actors (if the opportunity ever arose) how they get comfortable, how they get loose and what there methods are for staying in the zone throughout the takes and on set where there are more than enough distractions ready to take you out of the story.  

There are times where I’ve worked on projects and noticed that my body was locking up.  Other times—also locked up—that I’ve been so invested and focused on the scenes that they’ve worked, but not as smoothly as they could have been.  That’s the middle ground, the balance, that I’m constantly looking for in this medium.  How can you take someone like “Daniel Day Lewis,” who manifests these incredibly intense characters, and mix it with a Marlon Brando/Stanley Kowalski, who looks like he’s damn near floating in “A Streetcar Named Desire”?  Sometimes I look at actor stills from my work and wonder why so many of the photos show me having the same expression.  It’s funny, some times.  I’ll look at one still and say, “That’s despair Josh.”  Then another, “That’s manic Josh.”  And lastly, “That’s elated Josh.”  I can’t blame the photographers for making me look the same.  No, that’s a craft problem.  A range problem, maybe.  The journey and the learning curve is taking those broad strokes and big strokes and getting more specific and learning what is really bubbling below.  The appearance can change all it wants.  The haircuts, the costumes, whatever, but to this point I’ve never worn a mask, so there is no getting passed it.  The face tells the whole story.  

To this day, there was one exercise that I found to be incredibly liberating as far as working on behind-the-camera skills.  When one of my teachers left suddenly during my senior year of college, another one filled in as Acting professor.  He gave us an assignment called an Etude, which would be a silent 3-5 minute story, no speaking, clip of us telling a story.  He gave us some anecdotes of his time in the Actors Studio and another of James Dean’s etude when he was there.  Apparently James Dean did his etude as a matador.  He was fully costumed and he went all out.  Either it didn’t go very well or it did, but nobody responded to it well.  The story goes that he was humiliated and “Rebel Without a Cause” came later.  I’ll have to double check to see if that isn’t a complete myth or not.

The etudes that were presented in class were awesome.  Some were incredibly detailed, some were very daring, and others were wonderfully simple.  It was an exercise in story telling, specificity, and problem solving.  When I went through the process of deciding what I was going to do I was faced with a lot of difficulties.  Since it was a silent cut I didn’t know what to write as far as a script was concerned, so I ended up writing a specific sheet of just actions.  There were no questions really, but every subsequent action was tied to the previous and answered any question that people might have had.  “Man walks into house with a letter in his hand and closes door quietly to not make too loud of sound.  Man looks towards back room where his wife is located.  Man goes to the couch and sets his letter down.  Man takes off his shoes one by one.  Man reviews visit he just got back from.  Man looks at letter and reads the information again.”  

When it became a matter of just piecing the points together and connecting the dots, the work became so much easier.  It was all in the head, but not too heady to where my body was responding in a negative fashion.  Actions.  Answering questions.  Problem solving.  Acting simplified.  Now, if only I could remember how to do that all over again.

[alhorner]

Zayn’s R&B pop machine is too big to fail

There’s a cop pacing the pavement outside Tribeca’s iHeartRadio theatre, barking into a walkie talkie. The ground beneath him is lit up like a colouring book in bright red and yellow chalk, and he looks unsure what to do about the teenage girls continuing to etch odes and illustrations into the sidewalk further down the block. “We’re proud of you Zayn!” is the recurring message: Zayn being, of course, Zayn Malik, the former boy band superstar currently inside the downtown venue preparing for his first ever solo live show and album release party.

“About 40 of them have been here over night,” a venue worker tells me, nodding towards the shrieking queue as show-time nears. 23-year-old Zayn quit talent show conquerers One Direction on this day 12 months ago in search of a new career as an R&B sophisticate; swapping breezy PG pop and mountains of merchandise including officially-branded 1D children’s duvet sets for tracks about his life between the sheets, steeped in sex and haze and produced by Frank Ocean collaborator Malay. As the doors tonight open and a screaming stampede into the theatre ensues, it’s clear that though Malik may be done with the hysteria of his former life (“I want to be a normal 22-year-old who is able to relax,“ he said upon leaving One Direction) the hysteria of his former life is not yet done with him.

This was the scene a fortnight ago as ZAYN – as he’s now singularly known – made another step in a not-easy transformation from reality TV talent show graduate to “credible” crooner, in the mould of stars he grew up adoring in his Bradford home: Donnell Jones, R Kelly and others similar. How that transition is going depends on who you ask. His army of fans – many of whom turned up without tickets to his debut show, happy simply to press their ears against the walls of the building to hear the rumbles of his soundcheck, parents waiting patiently in their cars – will point to his simultaneous number one spots on the UK album chart and Billboard 200. ZAYN’s the first British male solo artist to have an album debut at number one Stateside, they’ll remind you too.

Cynics however will suggest the reported 23k copies sold in the UK and 112k in the US of debut album Mind Of Mine probably didn’t exactly have champagne flutes clanging together in celebration at his Sony record label headquarters, given the massive sense of expectation around the record. The press campaign had all bases covered. No doubt lusting after the same crossover success enjoyed last year by Justin Bieber, whose Purpose album simultaneously straddled young pop fan markets and an older demographic in a moment of what you might call peak poptimism, ZAYN preceded Mind Of Mine with select exclusive comeback features with “grown-up” press like The Fader and NME. The campaign was shot almost exclusively by Nabil, the art director who’s had a hand in the recent aesthetics of Lana Del Rey, FKA twigs and indeed what sound on Mind Of Mine like ZAYN’s two beacon modern musical inspirations: Frank Ocean and The Weeknd.

But critics to a degree shrugged. Bogged down with “tepid” ballads, said Rolling Stone. Unable to shake himself of “years making mercenary pop,” wrote the New York Times. “A definitive step away from One Direction towards nowhere in particular,” argued Pitchfork. The overall feeling among reviewers seemed to be that Mind Of Mine has a marathon 18-track run-time in which to say something but ultimately came up mute.

All of which misses the main merits of the record. For a start, its songs are cleverer than many have given credit, zipping from Autre Ne Veut electronic melancholy (the Kehlani-featuring ‘Wrong’) to amorphous, elegiac soul on ‘Blue’ and genuinely heart-bruising gospel on single ‘It’s You’, a ‘Bad Religion’-like ballad lined with organs that tremble like bottom lips in a break-up.

But as importantly: the modern pop album has become a beast increasingly burdened by context, constantly carrying and negotiating the baggage of that singer’s celebrity. From Taylor Swift’s dissection of her man-eater tabloid image on 1989 to Justin Bieber’s pleas for redemption after his many public spirals on Purpose (whose big single, just to hammer it home, was called ‘Sorry’), pop has been in something of a feedback loop of late: artists’ public images bleeding into their music, their music bleeding into their public image.

Mind Of Mine, like the Donnell Jones and R Kelly R&B classics it looks to ape, is in stark contrast almost defiantly blank: simple songs of love and lust (especially lust) devoid of meta bullshit. Where fans might have braced themselves, or even longed for, shade thrown at his former One Direction band mates, or nods to his model girlfriend Gigi Hadid, Malik steers clear of navel-gazing dissections of his own media narrative. Like Frank Ocean, the man whose Channel Orange he looked to emulate on Mind Of Mine (“obviously it was that album that made me want to work with Malay,” he told me when we met in March), ZAYN’s solo debut finds itself instead listlessly searching for meaning and feeling amid evenings and early mornings numbed by drugs and privilege. On Ocean’s ‘Sweet Life’, it was under the cooling gush of a fancy bathroom shower head. On ZAYN’s ‘Lucozade’, it’s between sips of energy drinks and hits on a blunt, too stoned to do anything about the paranoia creeping in. “I’m trying to fucking scream but the words won’t come out,” he repeats.

The band with which Malik made his name are arguably the biggest British pop cultural export since Harry Potter, and there’s interestingly a sense of a similar approach to JK Rowling’s book in the 23-year-old singer’s first solo steps. Rather than a clean break from the bubblegum sheen of his old band, Mind Of Mine retains a sizeable deal of ZAYN’s pop past, on tracks like ‘She’, interspersed between more experimental, darker, lustier moments such as ‘Flower’, an ambient acoustic amble sung in Hindustani Urdu. It’s a gradual evolution: as if young One Direction fans are being invited to grow with his sound, like how fans of the Harry Potter series grew with its progressively darker, more adult books.

“You don’t just want to dismiss or turn your back on that audience,” a member of his team confirms to me at the show at the iHeartRadio theatre. He plays just three songs – ‘Truth’, ‘It’s You’ and the clubby, Disclosure-lite ‘Like I Would’ – during which he’s barely able to register his delicate falsetto above the din of screams, before exiting the stage as sheepishly as he came on. ZAYN’s debut solo show has lasted all of fifteen minutes. His fans though don’t seem to care, and bound out as excitedly as they rushed in. Leaving behind a boy band is easy. Taking your old fans with you as you court new ones, that’s the tricky part. Malik, like the slow drift of the drugged R&B songs he’s growing towards, though, isn’t in a hurry. Whatever his sales figures, ZAYN is playing the long-game.

FACT, March 2016