The Radio Station

Chapter One - Think About How to Think

6th of December, 2012

Adjusting the microphone in front of her, she watched while the last few seconds of the song played out. "You ready?" She asked the man sitting in front of her. He looked up from picking at the sleeve of his jacket, nodding apprehensively as she switched the microphones back on. "That was Sex by The 1975 - and as promised, we have here Matthew Healy of The 1975 with us in the studio this morning." She spoke, turning on the radio presenter voice.

He leaned towards the mic slightly before speaking, "Hi."

"How are you doing?"

"Yeah, erm... good?" He said with a small laugh, sounding unsure of himself. "A bit nervous." He admitted as an afterthought.

"About your show tonight at Barfly?" She asked, remembering her conversation earlier in the day. Her managed warned her not to drag the interview out too much as they had a gig later that evening to prepare for.

"Uh, yeah, that, and I'm still not quite used to these proper radio interviews." He said as he reshuffled the headset over his clean shaven mohawk. "It all... feels so professional." He shrugged, looking around the studio for the millionth time. When he'd come in, the process of actually having to check in through a receptionist and wait before he was ushered through was fairly intimidating.

She laughed in response to that, "Well, it's nice to know I'm doing my job right, then!"

She figured it would be best to just get the ball rolling to try and give him something better to talk about than his nerves, "So, you guys have two EPs out now. How many more are there on the cards before an album?" She questioned, glancing down at the sheet of question prompts in front of her.

He appeared instantly more comfortable as soon as the topic switched to something that he had better familiarity with, straightening up in his seat and looking more engaged, "There's probably another couple to come out before we bring out the full album."

"It seems that the band is getting some good traction with what you already have out." She pointed out with a nod. Over the last few weeks at the station she'd had a chance to hear the EPs in passing, and she thought that they were pretty decent. But the station itself had been receiving a fair number of requests for them and pretty good feedback whenever they were on the air.

"Yeah! We're really humbled that we've been given the opportunity to live this past year, and we're only getting closer as a band."

"Is there a strategy with how you're releasing things?" She asked. "Is this all part of some grand plan," She saw him smile at that, "or a secret to getting your name out there?"

He thought about that for a second, "Kind of a bit of both? When we wrote the first EP, shortly after we'd written the majority of the album, we kind of... I dunno, we just wanted people to..." He paused, taking a short breath as he recomposed his thoughts. "If we were gonna do it, it's such a personal endeavour, this band. If people are embracing the music, we wanna do it properly. We want people to fall in love with a band the same way you fall in love with a person – the more you know about somebody over a longer period of time, the more you both invest in the relationship." She was taken aback somewhat by his statement. For a band just starting their career, that was a pretty profound thought process. "That was kind of..." He continued, clearly debating over his words slightly. "We had ideas for a lot of material. We wanted records that went against the grain of most EPs nowadays that are just a single. We wanted to release these little records that kind of almost culminated in a debut record."