It really was a dark and stormy night. The weather and the trek down to the church of St John the Evangelist might in fact have contributed to heightening the audience’s expectations of what was already a relatively ambitious programme. Performed by the Oxford-based string ensemble Corona, Benjamin Britten’s musical adaptation of French poet Arthur Rimbaud’s visionary collection of prose poems, Les Illuminations, effectively added to the gloomy atmosphere of the evening by its intensity and the nine contemplative texts’ underlying tensions, which it translates rather accurately into another form of art.

Conducting the formation which mixes period instruments and the more usual selection of strings, Janet Lincé equally directs soprano Erica Eloff for the central piece of the evening. Elgar’s Serenade in E minor, his Opus 47 Introduction and Allegro and John Ireland’s milder Concertino Pastorale come to complete the programme built around Britten’s work and the general theme of early 20th century “Englishness.”

One of the peculiarities of this ensemble is the wide range of sounds it covers. Larger than a chamber orchestra and far too experienced to be compared to a single instrument-category band still focusing on its coherence, Corona makes being constituted exclusively of diff erent types of strings an original advantage among Oxford’s many quality classical formations. The depth of the sound produced by two basses easily balances the absence both of wind and percussion instruments. They achieve a particularly rhythmic eff ect when playing pizzicato, almost bringing too much of the audience’s attention to their part. Although not the subtlest of associations, this combination of short, deep notes and longer strokes of the bow from the violas and violins avoids all monotony and successfully renders the mood and tempo contrasts in Britten’s intense suite of pieces.

Erica Eloff ’s strong presence and full voice resonate under the beautifully painted ceiling of St John’s with an air of dramatic authenticity well suited for the third part of the lluminations, ‘Royalty’. After the intellectual, persistent style of Britten’s composition, Ireland’s piece comes with its pleasingly lighter mood, toying with the artistic cliché of pastoral scenes full of warmth and gaiety.

Reflecting the evocative imagery of the poems which go from mentioning fantasised historical settings such as “old craters, surrounded by colossal statues and palms of copper” to the freer “streams of the barren land and the immense tracks of the ebbtide,” Corona delivers a colourful performance.

The formation demonstrates its own capacity to switch rapidly from a series of musical interjections to the longer, lighter phrases of John Ireland’s rarely played Concertino Pastorale as well as Elgar’s oscillations between mellow and troubled themes

Nick Power contemplates time. “We’ve gone up to four, four and a half minutes, which is like prog for us,” says The Coral’s Nick Power ahead of the release of new album Distance Inbetween, the first after a five year hiatus. Speaking to me from home in Hoylake on the Wirral Peninsula, The Coral’s keys-player muses on the idea of timing from two perspectives on the new record – for this will mark the quintet’s eighth studio album – as well as Power’s intrigue in each individual track being longer than ever before. “To do a four and a half minute song is quite unbelievable for us.”

It is this balancing act between pop and tame psychedelia that makes The Coral. Renowned early single ‘Dreaming of You’ is a mix of woozy psych groove moulded to a tight pop tune, much like 2005 hit ‘In the Morning’, which inhabits, too, a vocal familiarity ahead of disjointed guitar. Power explains this marriage of pop and psych simply: “We just try out our maddest ideas and turn them into a three minute little crafted song”. In an age where internet-friendly attention spans are short and listening options are endless, perhaps it is for the best that The Coral have more or less maintained this temporal sensitivity.

Looking back on how the industry has changed since The Coral formed in 1996, Power grows bold in his speech for the first time. He describes this shift to the age of the internet vividly. “It did completely turn on its head, this ‘industry’. It’s no exaggeration – there was two or three years, I think, when people were sort of just wandering round going ‘what the fuck do we do? How do we … What is this business anymore?’”

But this technological upheaval was liberating for a band like The Coral. Power speaks faster as he expresses the sheer excitement this freedom brought. The independent thrill of the internet meant the band could move away from a major label, where they had had to “fight to do our own videos and artwork”, and finally get the chance to be in charge of their whole artistic output. “Now we get to do more stuff that we always wanted to do. We always wanted to put records out all the time and just be the master of our own world.” The Coral haven’t quite been putting out records “all the time” – a five year hiatus followed 2010’s Butterfly House and former The Zutons’ Paul Molloy now joins them on guitar – but surely this opportunity to break and do their own thing is an even larger part of this free- dom than Power could iterate. I ask what the band was up to during this time, and what strikes me about Power’s reply is the broad, open-minded range of the members’ artistic pursuits: “Ian [Sully] has always drawn and painted comics. Paul [Duff y] did some soundtracks. I released some books. This album is a kind of weird marriage of all those things.”

Whether the casual listener hears these intelligent cross-media references in the woozy guitar of new singles ‘Miss Fortune’ and ‘Chasing the Tail of a Dream’ is another matter. Power talks too of writer Richard Yates, film maker David Lynch and photographer Gregory Crewson, embroidering the ideas of these creatives together to form his own definition of psychedelia: “It’ll be like a nondescript mundane event or relationship – a description of that. But it’ll be so heavy in the person’s mind that it’s apocalyptic. And it’s the juxtaposition of the two things. And that’s a kind of psychedelia in a way.”

If what Power says is true, fans awaiting the ten-date UK tour will not be disappointed. The desperation of such a long wait this time around gives Power a stark sincerity as he says “I don’t think we’ve played like this live for about ten years.

It’s basically the hungriest we’ve ever sounded: we want to make these shows sound loose and angry.”

“The fact is that every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future.” – Jorge Luis Borges

In this week, in this month, in 1972, Apollo 18 was meant to launch. It never did, due to budget cuts under Nixon’s administration, but also because Apollo 13 cast a long shadow over future space missions. As the closest shave in NASA’s history, Apollo 13 made the dangers of space exploration apparent to captivated worldwide audiences; so apparent that they could not be ignored. Better to spend the money on the Vietnam War than risk American lives in the cosmic void.

I can sympathise. I experience my own version of Apollo 13 every Fourth Week of term. As JFK famously said, we do not book Black Tie Formal because it is easy, but because it is hard.

Mission launch is 4.30pm, Thursday. (This doesn’t correspond with Apollo 13 – I can only make this comparison so believable). Weather is good. Wind is low. No sign of rain. T-minus 3, 2, 1. Initial launch is successful. Formal booking website loads successfully, and login details are correct. So far, so good.

Suddenly, an external oxygen canister explodes/login stalls under the weight of college traffic. Shit hits the fan. Houston, we have a problem. The damage is catastrophic and chances of survival are dropping by the minute. Quick, shut it down, shut it all down! Turn off your internets, your Snapchats, your Buzzfeeds. If the Russians can shut off radio frequencies to avoid interfering with Apollo’s transmissions, you can stop clogging up the internet with all of your duck face pics – I want fucking Oreo cake.

There’s only one chance of getting back/ back in alive, and it’s hella risky. It’s not as risky as building a makeshift carbon dioxide filter in space, but it’s as brave; log back out and back in. There’s only limited voltage (laptop battery is low). We have to give it a go, failure is not an option. Cut to montage of prayers being said, pained expression on family members’ faces, visible clouds of baited breath. A long, ominous radio silence. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Odyssey, this is Houston, do you read?

Hello Oliver, this is the Merton Formal Booking System, it’s good to see you again. YYYYYYEEEEESSSSS. My meal booking splashes down just like the Odyssey module did into the Pacific. It’s a perilous business, this formal booking malarkey. But God, it’s exciting.

The moment I enter the Union I realise that Marina Lambrini Diamandis, better known as Marina & the Diamonds, is quite literally two steps ahead of me. Having exited the chamber, I hear laughter as she bounds up the stairs enthusiastically. I catch a flash of short, dark curls and sleek blue velvet before she disappears through the imposing archway of the Gladstone Room. I hurriedly follow her in and Marina’s eyes settle on me in delight: “You must be the student press!” The notion, clearly, is an exciting one. And with such a unique reaction to my arrival, it takes no less than an instant to warm to this energetic and engaging woman who, it becomes quickly apparent, is fully deserving of the international recognition she has received.

It is easy to assume that Marina, so animated and well-styled as an indie pop-star, has always lived a life similar to the fast-paced environment that she finds herself in now. But Marina’s international fame and widespread musical influence did not come to her instantly or without a lot of hard work and effort. “It’s funny when you’re going through it, it doesn’t feel like there are any sacrifices, or that it is all particularly hard.” Marina settles into her chair and her expression grows grave. “But looking back at it, I definitely knew that there were some terrible periods. It wasn’t quite that I was depressed because I always knew I was going to make it. But life in general was, well, hard.” She shakes her head as she recollects her post-school years. “Coming to a new city and not knowing a single person there is actually pretty tough. I was on my own in London to start with.” She gestures to her surroundings. “Being a part of a university is so important to make those kinds of connections. Without being connected to a university, I didn’t have that social environment.”

I find it hard to imagine that this openly friendly woman was on her own for too long, however. Her carefree demeanour is highly charismatic and there is a noticeable awareness of her presence from all the members in the room. “Honestly, it took me so long to find people who I really liked”, she tells me. “It can take a while to find people who are like-minded individuals. I actually really felt that the creation of Marina & the Diamonds was a way that attracted certain individuals into my life and that is how I saw music. It was very much a way of uniting people and doing the whole likes-attract.”

Success, when it did inevitably happen to Marina, didn’t come as much of a surprise. “When I got signed I simply wasn’t that jubilant. It solved my financial problems pretty much instantly.” She smiles at me coyly. “But I didn’t celebrate or anything. It was more of a case of, well now that that’s done, I’m able to do this and that. And of course, I’m able to create an album. So there was never much pause for thought. It’s actually only really been in the last years, especially with Froot, that I’ve been able to enjoy everything. I can see what I have been able to do and I know that that’s not ‘the norm’. Whereas at the time it felt like I was just really blinkered.” She laughs at her own words and the gaiety of her expression returns.

We fall onto the topic of her highly original 2012 album Electra Heart, famously known for its conceptual caricatures of American archetypes. Despite its purpose to imitate, I ask her whether she feels that she can personally identify with any of the themes that her album approaches. She throws her head back and laughs aloud – “Absolutely!” she cries, “Absolutely! The aesthetic side of it was driven by the fact that the sound that I had acquired for that album wasn’t really true to me, but it was a result of working with a lot of ‘big-name’ producers. I was being encouraged to take that pop route and to come out as a pop star. Yet I didn’t feel that was really ‘me’ so adopting a different guise was my way of dealing with it. Lyrically, it was different. That was totally authentic; songs like ‘Primadonna’ and ‘Heartbreaker’ are really just me mirroring what I saw in terms of female archetypes in our society. It’s like the Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton effect. That’s what pop is for; it’s a mirror. It’s telling you about a certain moment that you’re living in, be that bad or good. But then there were songs like ‘Teen Idle’ and ‘Starring Role’ that were more simple and not at all multi-layered.” ‘Starring Role’ is one of a string of songs that lament love and reflect on emotionally damaging relationships, adding to the complexity of the album’s fictional alter-ego duality. “There has been a lot of heartache” Marina adds, “But it’s not necessarily because of boys or love. I think one of the main themes throughout all three albums is to do with identity. In my first album, The Family Jewels, it was me figuring out my identity. Electra Heart was questioning it, and then Froot confirming it. Identity is definitely one of the central themes. Questioning who you are and why you are that way, I suppose.” She pauses. “Everyone will have events in their life that will influence the things that they do. For me – well, I can’t think of anything precisely. There was a lot of stuff from my upbringing, it was happy but also it wasn’t. I guess like everybody, there are things that will mark you for the rest of your life, and definitely form your story. Everybody has their story in life, don’t they? I don’t know what mine is. I guess you probably know better than I do.”

We laugh as I point out that the more I listen to her music, the less I understand her. The lyrics from her songs sometimes cover intertwined topics and as a result present conflicting stories. It is perhaps this complex layering of personalities and experiences that make Marina’s music so elusive and unique to the music industry. Marina’s music is encouraging in its self-acceptance as her confidence in herself also embraces a range of themes that are not classifiably black and white.

She tells me how now she feels that she can explore other things, specifically particular social concerns of hers, her song ‘Savages’ being demonstrative of this. “A lot of it is actually just me being curious, asking why human beings are the way that they are. We are so complex, and I don’t like approaching something from a role of condemning it, it’s not me having to reinforce that war and rape are bad because they obviously are, it’s more of a question of ‘why?’. You know; why is that ingrained in us? And acknowledging the fact that we have an animalistic side and that yet we still think that we are civilised human beings.”

Leaving these dark topics behind, the conversation turns to synaesthesia. I ask Marina if and how her personal experience of synaesthesia ever manifests itself, be it lyrically or visually within her work. “I’ve heard a lot of varying accounts from other people who have synaesthesia,” she tells me, “Accounts where people smell colour, or they actually see it, but for me it’s not that at all. It sounds weird to everyone else, but I associate colours with days of the week, and numbers and musical notes. It’s not something I actually see, it’s more of a colour sensitivity. And that definitely affects the way that I have worked visually. Each album creates a world in which fans can immerse themselves. It’s not just an MP3. I have a huge role in the direction of the music videos.”

As the interview draws to a close, Marina leans in towards me. “It’s such a pleasure to be asked real questions by you.” Her eyes shine playfully. “Really, I’ve been so impressed by everyone in Oxford. There was even a little nine-year-old girl in the chamber who asked me about how I could help her to be a heart breaker and why I wrote the song.” She does an imitation of the girl’s voice and chuckles in amusement to herself. But doesn’t she live by that? “Not any more, but at the time I ferociously did!” Poor men in London! She grins, “But it didn’t last long though.” Oh we know, Marina, we know.