NICK HUDSON

[ Interview with Nick Hudson by Diego Centurión. ]

We have the opportunity to ask Nick Hudson a few questions, who in addition to being the lead singer of the band The Academy Of Sun, is about to release a solo album called "Font Of Human Fractures"at the end of April. But first, since you will be performing at the NMER Festival, we have several questions to ask you at this time. To begin with, I would like to thank Shameless Promotion PR for this opportunity and thank you for your involvement. In 2020, we spoke to you Nick about your latest album by The Academy Of Sun. Readers can find it at : https://issuu.com/revistathe13th/docs/the13th_n_62/18

The first question has to do with these rare times that we are living in. How are you making it through this pandemic / lockdown?

At this point, in all honesty, it’s really starting to drag, for all of us I’m sure, so it’s really a dayto-day appreciation of present-tense joys that are keeping me going through each day. I’m grateful to have creative projects with which to keep me focused, and for friends, loved ones and my community of artist friends around the world. I have a magical entity dwelling with me at the moment which is definitely softening the exposed nerve-endings in a manner for which I’m exquisitely grateful.

That and drinking, cooking, and reading Herzog’s memoirs.

I have done some research on your solo career and it is so wide and dispersed between Bandcamp and Spotify that it is difficult to put together a chronological order, can you give us a brief review of your work and those that have meant the most to you?

My first solo album proper was TERRitORies of disSENT in 2009, which Julian Cope, in a profanely glowing review described as “highly fucking beautiful”. Then I issued four others in rapid succession - the best-executed of which I think is Letters To The Dead (2012) - verging on neo-classical - which was also a short feature film (and my only vinyl thus far until the imminent Font Of Human Fractures). In between the solo records I’ve also written and recorded hundreds of songs that remain either unreleased or scattered across a raft of “Basement Tape”-style digital releases.

I have been particularly fascinated with the 2020 album "Night Sweats And Fever Dreams" that you have made with Oli Spleen. Tell us what this album is about.

Ah, Oli is a dear friend. And he won’t mind my saying that twenty years ago he was very close to dying of AIDS. Fortunately for us all his diagnosis fell on the cusp of a turning point in terms of medication and thus he is still with us today. He asked me to compose and arrange and co-produce the music for Night Sweats And Fever Dreams and the writing partnership has become one of the most joyous, freeing creative collaborations of my life. Oli is a rare jewel. We aim to make more records together.

2020 was a Lockdown year. But you have taken the opportunity to release accumulated material from your archives. In the midst of all these releases, you also released an album as The Academy of Sun, which we have already talked about in another interview. Tell me how much saved material do you have that has not yet come to light?

Enough to fill three juggernauts, the pit of Sarlacc, the Mariana Trench (which incidentally would be my drag name), the Yamal sinkhole and The Sorbonne.

I keep finding truffles I forgot I’d foraged. For instance there are around six tracks we recorded for The Quiet Earth that have yet to see the world.

You have just released the single "Surkov's Dream", the first taster of your new album. Can you tell us about this song and the video?

I’d long fetishized the notion of pitch-shifting the most robust of instruments. A church organ is architecturally integrated, so to make malleable something so anchored in solidity held a compelling charm for me. We did it - by creating a MIDI instrument out of the organ bass pedals. I wrote, recorded and mixed it at home over a 24-hour sleepless period of intensive obsession. The lyrics are patchworked from accumulated poetic fragments that may not even have anything to do with Vladislav Surkov, in much the same way that he denied authorship of his own novel. The video was filmed in Bulgaria. I spent a month there writing my novel and took a transcendent road trip with friends across mountains and monuments. I’m definitely channeling Andrzej Żuławski here.

Your music is very eclectic and very exquisite. But you write so many different

songs for each of your projects. Do you think of songs specifically for each project?

Yeah, I write specifically for each project. Some songs are definitively for the band, some obviously solo, and some less-easily housed. And thank you.

How does it feel that you’re close to releasing your album? Has it been a challenge to get the word out about this new solo music (or your latest TAOS album for that matter?

I finished the record a year ago. Music moves so slowly. I’m excited to liberate it.

When you make art that cannot help for the insistence of its conviction but go against the grain and the zeitgeist it is always a challenge to have it connect with large groups of people. Instead, smaller communities are forged, and with a stronger and more meaningful resin. I couldn’t be more excited when I hear from people with whom the work deeply resonates. Like some samizdat, backroom faction of wonderful, strange people. I’d like to have a drink with each of them.

For our readers, perhaps also tell them why they should listen to "Font Of Human Fractures". Tell us what feelings does the new album "Font Of Human Fractures" generate in you?

Catherine of Siena once said “the human heart is drawn by love.” This of course lends itself to many readings.

As for what feelings the record generates in me - on an emotional level it embodies a cathartic and brutal self-scrutiny. On a musical level it’s one of the few of my records that I can actually bear to listen to for enjoyment. So that’s something.

To end this interview, we’d like to thank you for the time you have spent with us.

Thank you very much indeed!