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Humphrey Astley

Humphrey 'Huck' Astley is a writer and musician based in Oxford, England. In the '00s, Astley founded Rain over Bouville, a poetry press, and was a member of the much-loved noise-rock group Sextodecimo (Oxford's greatest ever metal band, according to the local press). He has since graduated with Distinction from degrees at Ruskin College and the University of Oxford, and his poetry has appeared in a range of British and North American publications. His 2014 pamphlet 'Stones through the Windows to the Soul' is downloadable from this site. In 2010, Astley's short-lived gothic americana quartet Huck & The Handsome Fee embarked on a US tour that would inspire his three-part narrative album 'Alexander the Great: a Folk Operetta', which he describes as "A queer runaway myth of two young friends and their fall from grace in Dixie." Then, in 2013, Huck & The Xander Band partnered with PinDrop Music and adapted 'Alexander the Great' into a stage-show, which was hand-picked by The PRS Foundation for their New Music Plus development scheme. The show debuted at The Cambridge Junction in 2014 and has since been described as "Raw and powerful... an impressive display of visual flair and mesmerising songwriting." (The York Press) Astley is also a member of alt-pop group Crandle and indie-folk band The Epstein, who have just released their third album, 'Burn the Branches'. In the meantime he is writing for Sabotage Reviews and The Oxford Times and is a member of the Oxford Writers' House.