Hotblack Desiato

Artist

Hotblack Desiato was an artist. And a technician. But mostly an artist. Crafting a decent rock song, he liked to think, was just as much a feat of engineering as it was an art form. Pulling notes out of thin air, combining them into phrases, riffs and hooks, structuring these into verses, choruses, bridges, instrumental breaks, and such-like, this was all part of a technical exercise. Fashioning these elements into a rock song about boy-beings meeting girl-beings, or exploding silvery moons, or any combination of the above, even that was the job of a construction worker; lay the foundations of this riff, build on it with that solid rhythm section, bolt this verse onto that anthemic chorus, whack that guitar solo in there, second-fix the lyrics. Yep, that was all standard song building practice. But making it rock, really rock, now that was the artistic bit. That, and coming up with an ending. A cracking, head-nodding, ear-bleeding ending - that really was the artistic bit. Endings were Hotblack's speciality. The rest of the band didn't call him Hotblack 'Endings' Desiato for nothing, you know.

And so it was that as the songs got rockier, the silvery moons became more geologically unstable, and the endings became increasingly volatile. One night - in fact, very early one morning, if Hotblack remembered correctly - after a heavy session on the Arcturan Mega beers, Hotblack had hit on an idea. Let's actually blow-up a moon during the stage show. An actual moon. Actually exploding. An ending to beat all endings.

Next day in the back of the Disaster Area tour bus, Hotblack the technician was already working out just how much Arcturan Mega nitro would be necessary, whether they should bring their own moon from gig to gig (if only the Magratheans were still doing business), what orbit would give the best post-explosion meteor shower, etc, etc. Hotblack the artist just knew that it was going look and sound great. Heads were going to nod. Ears were going to bleed.