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Nick Hudson - My background is as much in cinema and literature as it is in music and within my songwriting I'm very cognizant of how I place color, texture, narrative, dynamism, Aanbevolen

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Nick Hudson - My background is as much in cinema and literature as it is in music and within my songwriting I'm very cognizant of how I place color, texture, narrative, dynamism, imagery etc


‘Front of Human Fractures' is Nick Hudson's first solo album. The release starts from the point of view of a queer man in the late 1930s. A melting pot of compositions for piano and two violins. Hudson is a prolific figure of the British underground scene. He is best known as the front man of the art-rock band The Academy Of Sun, which released the epic 'Quiet Earth' last year to critical acclaim .Hudson has also worked with Wayne Hussey (The Mission) and Matthew Seligman (Bowie, Tori Amos, Morrissey), NYC's Kayo Dot, David Tibet (Current 93), Asva, Canadian queercore icon GB Jones and Massive Attack's Shara Nelson.
You can read the review of 'Front of Human Factures' here.  
We had a nice chat with Nick about that release, how he survived corona times till now, his opinion about Brexit and the future plans.

‘Front of Human Fractures’ was you newest solo album , of course you already busy quite some years, tell us a little bit more about how it all started? And more about yourself?
It just happens to be my first solo album in around five years.  I'd finished a five-album cycle called The Phoenix Archaeologies in 2016, with a record called Ganymede In A State Of War, which was based on an unproduced play I wrote in Berlin earlier that year, after falling for one of the ushers at The Berliner Ensemble, where I was spending time with Robert Wilson's entourage.  I'd spent the subsequent five years developing The Academy Of Sun and after having toiled for twenty months on our vast double album The Quiet Earth, I felt compelled to work smaller and more intimately, and thus Font Of Human Fractures was teased out of the vapors.

Next to working together with big artists, you also well know as lead singer of The Academy of Sun, how is it with the band right now?
I don't know!  Half of them moved to a different hemisphere at various points throughout the pandemic and I myself am currently somewhat nomadic so even getting in a room together would require military strategizing right now.  That said, we've had an incredibly active few years in both live and recorded output so I think that entity can relax a little while.  It'll re-energies at some point.

What are the low and highs true all this years?
Of the pandemic years?  The highs were constituted by the forging of deeper, more compassionate friendships, and by subjecting myself to over a hundred films in the first lockdown.  And finishing a novel before I turned forty.  For which I'm still pursuing a publisher.  The lows were, as for many of us, innumerable: risking bed sores by embroidering the seat of my armchair to my rump as I stared forlornly at one of four walls in sepulchral silence for months on end, empty buckets of ice cream swooning a sad lament; missing my family, missing performing and playing music with people.  I did manage to issue a phenomenal amount of music though, which I guess suggests that creating is a necessity.  I didn't, nor did any of us, need such a harsh task master to hammer home this point, though.

This COVID got us all, but how did you ‘survive’ it?
Ice cream. Cinema. Cooking.  Whiskey.  Writing.  Studying.  We're all irrevocably changed by it, even if present circumstances propose a simulacrum of the before-times. 

You have made your solo album right in the middle of the pandemic, why not wait any longer?
I recorded most of it before.  And there was nothing else to do.  In times of duress and instability, artists create.  It's not a vocation as much as it's a compulsion.

I thought it was a very beautiful record.  A record that sounds fairy-tale like and shows some mysticism, darkness in a melancholic, alienating framework. Colourful and visual even. It is all very sophisticated. You are confronting light and darkness, is that conscious or not? What is your opinion about this?
Thank you very much indeed!  My background is as much in cinema and literature as it is in music and within my songwriting I'm very cognizant of how I place color, texture, narrative, dynamism, imagery etc.

What was the general reaction to the record
Honestly, I'm humbled by the response.  It seems to touch people very deeply.  I've had some very personal messages stating that certain songs have kept people going through awful times.  What better response could one hope for?  The Quietus declared that there's nobody around making music quite like this right now, which was a beautiful and kind sentiment to behold.

You have not been idle, meanwhile there is already a new record, ‘K69996ROMA:EP’ Can you tell us more about it? Is there a story behind it?
Artist tend to function reasonably well in isolation. They need it, in fact.  So dare I say many artists may have fared better during lockdown, given the conditions were close cousins of their natural state anyway, haha.  I had long wanted to sharpen my skills with MIDI and so during Lockdown One I threw myself into programming and found it a conducive tool for exorcising the more aggressive, rhythmic side of my compositional interests.  Plus after years of collaboration I wanted to make something entirely hermetic.  I'm a scholar of European cinema. Via all of these strands the tapestry that became the K69996ROMA:EP was woven.  The title tracks addresses the death of Pasolini. We Darken Horses casts Chris Marker's La Jetee under a quasi-pornographic light and If I Get Killed... is an abstract framing of the allegations that Alain Delon had a direct investment in the death of his bodyguard in the sixties.  (I'm not adopting any particular stance in this mythology, lest I provoke the ire of Mr Delon.)

Why a new album so soon after the previous release?
I have a huge backlog of music courtesy of being incarcerated in my studio flat for two years.  Plus the two releases share a gene pool.

What was the general reaction to the record
Confusion, excitement, fear.  Haha.  Adria Goycoolea, a magnificent filmmaker, created an extraordinary video for the Pasolini track, which has met justifiably rapturous responses.  He's brilliant and you should check out his other work.

Besides the pandemic, there is also the Brexit, which is causing some problems I heard in the news. How do you feel about this Brexit?
How do I feel about Brexit?  I feel like dragging down the sky with a net of poisoned fishhooks and pulverizing with thunder clouds the duplicitous and racist disaster-capitalist sewer-dwellers who brought it into being, alongside their tech-bro enablers and all the Bannons and their kin.  It's a wrecking ball.  I hate it, and I hate its lieutenants.

Does it make it difficult for you to gain a foothold in the rest of Europe? 
I'll find my way to Europe regardless.  But yes, there is extra bureaucracy.

It’s something I have read in an other interview. Can you tell me more about your interest in the former Soviet Union?
It sprang from my love of Tarkovsky.  Plus being born in the eighties one was very much aware of The Cold War in the air, even as a child.  Then I was continually drawn to Brutalism.  And I'm something of a low-key scholar of nuclear history.  I taught myself how to read the Cyrillic alphabet in between flipping burgers as a chef a few years back.  And the landscape, the cinema, the sheer vastness of the landmass, the fact it encompasses over ten time zones, the autonomous regions and their shamanic traditions, and all of this aside from but in addition to a beguilement at their political history, especially over the last fifty years.  You may have noticed there's a track called Surkov's Dream on Font Of Human Fractures.  Also my ex- was related to Tolstoy.

Let’s talk about the future, what are the future plans for you and other projects you’re doing?
I've just moved house so I'm deciding where to go next.  I'm developing a graphic novel with a Norwegian artist, based on a short script I wrote.  I'm in the early stages of developing a commission with a Moscow-based dance company.  A film I scored will have premiered by the time you read this.  I'm stepping away from music for a while to repair and recover from a densely hectic few years and to focus on writing.

Next to solo album and The Academy of Sun, are there any other projects anyway?
Aside from the above, I intend to get a film made and gradually evolve my Tarkovsky opera, which has been glacially forging itself since last summer.

To end this interview, what are your future ambitions , and do you have something like an end goal?
I intend to move to Europe, work more in theatre and film.  I would like to write for full orchestra and/or choir at some point.  Get novels published.  I'll likely live in Russia for a time.  I want to make crocodile ceviche.  Live in the Arctic for a while in total isolation.  Scott Walker reEnd goal?  Nah, there's no destination, just a journey.  Maybe I'll adopt the Peter Cook method and cease all activity save for phoning into regional radio shows as a fictional Nordic mariner.  Thank you for the awesome questions!

Thank you for answer them, hopefully we can see each other soon in better times,  and drink a couple Belgium Beers instead of Corona ?

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