1. We opened our shows with this one too. Synths swelling like an abcess, Marco’s murderous fills on the toms, the Adam Curtis sample. And Clay’s scream a minute in, turning heads, furrowing brows. We were playing at deep thinking. Clay insisted the lyrics were an attack on state repression, but realistically, if we’re being honest, they were about fucking. I knew him better than he did.
2. We wrote this after a house party. He’d just bought that third-hand Honda and felt like writing the millionth song about speeding down an open road. We hummed out a two-part harmony, or the bones of one. Our bleary-eyed duet was whispered from a floor strewn with cans and gorgeous bodies. We fell asleep as the sun slicked through the window, with his chin on my shoulder. Sprouting stubble scratching my ear.
3. Title track: inspired by a marathon Curtis doc about mind control. Once we'd hammered out the structure at the studio, Marco and Alfie left to get tins and my hand crept towards his. I asked him, when our lazy eyes locked, if he thought free will was an illusion. At first, I took our heady, hungry embrace as his answer, then he sent me that message hours later. That never happened. Love you, bro. I decided, yeah, freedom's an illusion, and illusions are cruel.
4. My fiancée and I are decluttering and I find this EP. I stick it into an old laptop, skipping straight to this closer. The quality’s poor, like the song’s being gargled, but that riff’s still so inevitable. I funnel a friendly ember from my throat. I stretch an arm outward, my opposite hand balled like a mike, and from somewhere underground he grabs me close and we holler our hearts at the wall.
Nick Havergal has written for theatre and radio having had work produced by Bristol Old Vic and BBC Radio 4. In 2024 he was listed in the Bridport Prize, the New Writers Flash Fiction Competition and twice in the Bath Flash Fiction Award.
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