A Chat with Mark Remmington (26.08.2022)

OSR: Your latest album Sofanauts, is a loosely sci-fi themed alternative rock and pop adventure. Can you tell us a little more about the story you have woven through the tracks?

Remmington: Yes, I’ve kind of gone out of my way to add sci-fi/space themes, and it was really fun doing so. Although there’s a couple with non sci-fi stuff in there, but I did still squeeze some space stuff into the videos.

In my head, the opening track ‘Space Person Blues’ immediately launches the listener into space. It’s a play on traditional blues lyrics in an alt-synth rock package, and it’s really a song about love and the desire to give your all to your significant other, but it also set out the stall; like, “Welcome to Space dudes! Hope you enjoy the show”

That continues with ‘Radio Escape’, which whilst being a song about the frustrations of being an independent musician, it also has some abstract two-hand guitar taping combined with audio snippets of NASA Mission control from the Mercury 7 Space Mission, 1962, which was the US’s mission to get a human into orbit.

Then I have songs like, ‘Let’s Forget We’re Animals’ which is really my commentary on the way we as humans, in the main, have separated ourselves from nature, from the animal kingdom. When you say the word “animal”, you would automatically think of every other mammal and assume humans are excluded from that. We are taught by society, a very human-centric way of seeing the world, it’s looking down and reflecting on that.

Others though are far less politicised, and just fun. ‘Red Planet’ is really a song about how we change from our twenties to our 30’s, 40’s and yada, yada, yada, yada; we all get old right, if we’re lucky. You go from being your wild reckless self, to well for me at least, someone more focused on home, more focused on doing the right thing, rather than trying to be the best thing.

So there’s a journey in every track, and the album is a kind of journey; but the closer of ‘Ride Through the Atmosphere’ is an upbeat, almost Motown number, that kind of says, “don’t stop here”, carry on, have goals, live it, love it, crack on. It suggests a continuation, in a positive way.

At least, that was my intention.

OSR: The album takes a different route to your last which had a more singer-songwriter style. What prompted the change in direction?

Remmington: Thanks for noticing! This time I guess I just had something to prove. I wanted to remind everyone that I’m actually a progressive musician, I love beats, I love weird noises, I love my electric guitars; I love my Wah Wah pedal!

My last album was much more singer/songwriter styled because I did it all at home for the first time, it was in lockdown, and I was with my kids home all the time. I was just on the acoustic guitar and piano more; that vibe just fitted with what I was feeling at the time; plus I was keeping things simple.

Overall, the things that move me to write are still the same. I write songs very much centred on the human journey, the things we experience, the things we learn; or more I should say, the things I learn along the way.

This time I just wanted to challenge myself to go further and make a sound more like some of the great bands I’ve been fortunate enough to be a part of over the years.

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OSR: Through the tracks of the album, you are blending synths with rock guitars. Was this something you found easy to do?

Remmington: Yeah, that was new for me! Also, I have no idea what I’m playing when it comes to keys/piano, so I really am just messing around. It’s actually very tricky to balance the two I found, because a lot of synth sounds exist in the same mid-frequency range as electric guitar, and can cancel each other out, especially for production novices like myself.  But every song would start on either guitar with a beat, or with a synth patch and a beat, so from there, it was a matter of thinking like a band. What would the keys player do against this guitar part and vice versa? So it was easy when it worked! And if it was not working, if my inner voice piped up and said “hey buddy, this kind of sucks, stop trying to show off”, then I’d quite simply drop it and move on to the next thing. But it’s the first time I’ve used Midi synth sounds to this extent and it was so fun; such massive sounds that can occupy a space in a way that guitars don’t. I loved it.

OSR: There is more than just you on this album as it features some collaborations and musical contributions from your friends across the world. How do you feel this collaborative effort has impacted the sound of the album?

Remmington: Oh man, I wish I could have done so much more collaborating than I did; originally SofaNauts was supposed to be a band with two great, lifelong friends; an incredible guitarist/musician Mark Hung, and Kelly Brown who is a beast on drums, but also a bit of a multi-instrumentalist. But the distance and balancing other commitments didn’t work out, so the whole thing was put on ice, then it froze, then there was a fire, and in the end, I decided to go it alone and just get as many collabs in as I could. This basically meant two other great mates coming on board; Tor Bjarne Bjelland (drums also) and Stevo-The-Bass who plays, well he clearly plays bass doesn’t he.

So the few collaborations I managed, worked amazingly; these guys are all experts, really experienced, all players who know how to be sympathetic to the song. They all just did their thing, and it was always so different to what I might have done without them and unique to them. It’s my favourite and the best thing about this whole project.

OSR: What was the process for collaborating with people across the world?

Remmington: Well it’s pretty simple, in fact, it’s better I found for me to not be there, as the temptation is to try and get people to do what I would have played or programmed in their absence. For example, Tor Bjarne provided drums on ‘Space Person Blues’ from a colleague’s studio in Bergen, Norway. I sent him my initial demo and like a whole page of description of how I felt the drums should go and develop through the song. He just texted me back within 5 minutes and said “shut up twat, I’m playing this”, then sent me a photo of like a napkin where he’d written the music notation for the entire song’s percussion, with a follow-up message of “I’m doing this”. What an asshole; he knows I can’t read music lol. So I basically said “yeah that looks superb to me man, record it.” This guy is a career session player, with impressive world-class names on his CV, and what he played was just spot on; that’s a progressive track really, 6 and a half minutes, and the progression is all in the drums.

OSR: There are some seriously epic guitar solos sprinkled throughout the album. Did you plan to have these moments or did they come about organically as you created the tracks?

Remmington: I can’t explain how much my ego is revelling at the way this question is framed, thank you for listening to the tracks, and it blows my mind that you find the guitar playing “epic”. I just always try to play what the song is asking for. I heard a sculptor say once that when they work a piece of wood into a piece of art, when they are finished, they feel as though the sculpture was always there, they were just slowly chipping away, revealing what was already waiting there to be seen. I feel the same way about songs, it’s like they already exist in the cosmos somehow, and you are just tuning into them and laying them down. I guess there is some deliberation though; my track ‘Brand New Arpeggio’ is a tribute to my lifelong friend, also on the album, Mark Hung. Man, we’ve been friends since kids, since before we even played guitars, but he is an epic, and very capable, fast, solo player. So on that track, I had to shred a bit. To be honest I played it how I thought he might.

Mark Hung plays the solo on the last track ‘Ride Through the Atmosphere’, and I haven’t asked him, but I think, in the same way, he performed it he thought I might have, but better. Anyway, it’s a great solo; I mean my bass playing underneath it is pretty decent too, you know if you want to focus on that go right ahead; ha!

Then there are other tracks like ‘Coming Out of Stasis’ where I really wanted to keep it simple in terms of notes and be a bit more like The Edge on U2’s ‘Achtung Baby’, and focus on atmosphere and melody. So when I played I really tried to leave space and let that do the talking as much as what I was actually playing. There are a couple of songs with synth-led solos too. In fact, one of them ‘Let’s Forget We’re Animals’, the solo is my 8-year-old daughter singing through autocue with an envelope filter; obviously the autocue kept it in tune, but she was still making musical decisions and singing against the track, and the result is, well to me it’s beautiful.

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OSR: The release of the album was accompanied by a lyric video for ‘Boom Knock You Down’. Why did you choose this track?

Remmington: I just think that’s a song for the summer, it’s funky, it’s fun, it’s BIG BEAT. It’s probably not the best representation of the album as a whole, but I’d already released a couple of teaser singles earlier this year, so I think everyone that’s paying attention already knows what it’s about. ‘Boom’ has been very well received by everyone that’s heard it in advance, so it seemed like a good choice. Hope you like it!

OSR: Are you planning on releasing any more videos for the album?

Remmington: Yes! I’ve got a video ready to go for ‘Oh Life’. The song itself is about how life takes unexpected turns. Very much in the spirit of the Rolling Stones lyric and song “You Don’t always get what you want; you get what you need!”. Or John Lennon’s lyric from ‘Beautiful Boy’, “Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans”. There’s so much wisdom wrapped up in those lyrics, so I elaborated on those themes in my song “Oh life, we asked for Stars, you gave us Moon, Oh Life, We asked for wine, you gave us flowers in full bloom”. Life is unexpected. So in the video, I have footage of this astronaut guy in unexpected scenarios, sitting on a park bench, bored, hitchhiking, surfing in full space gear, it’s fun. I think I will do a final spacey video for ‘Coming out of Stasis’ in a month or so and that I think will close the book on this album.

OSR: Each of the tracks is like another chapter in a slightly spacy novel, but which would you recommend if people could only listen to one?

Remmington: Thanks so much, that’s absolutely what I was hoping people would take from the album. If you listen to just one, listen to ‘Space Person Blues’. It’s everything I wanted to achieve in one song. It has a groove, spacey synths, and a big ole guitar solo. I really enjoyed incorporating traditional blues lyrics with my own and into a synth/guitar rock song, plus if you listen to it, it’s a song about moving forward positively, in partnership, looking to a brighter future.

OSR: Given the difference in style and sound, was your creative process different for this album compared to your last?

Remmington: Yes and no. It’s just a choice of what tools you decide to use. If I sit down with my mandolin, I’ll probably make an American folk song, if I sit down with a piano, for me that usually means a ballad. So for me, I just had to remember to go to the electric guitar, or if playing with synth sounds, to immediately incorporate beats. I’m so eclectic and my interests move fast. I just find it best to work with a brief, have some idea of what the project should be, what I’m aiming for, and choose my tools accordingly.

OSR: What else can we expect from you in the next 12 months?

Remmington: Well I also play lead guitar for Nix Dadry, a hard rock affair. I basically do my best stab at Slash/Zack Wyld playing, and what comes out is nowhere near them, but it sounds cool enough, and sounds like me; check out ‘World Goes Round’ with Nix. It was a really well-received release; also featuring CiCi Powell who musicians will recognise from the very well-known Andertons Music YouTube channel and gear demos. It’s a good’n basically, and we plan to do some gigs as a band with this material.

Otherwise, I’m wrapping up this album, the extra couple of vids for sure, after that I plan to do two things. Join/start a really heavy band and do a load of gigs (already in motion, watch this space), and start work on my next album which will be a very acoustic guitar folky thing. I know that sounds schizophrenic, but I’ve got a bunch of tunes recorded as demos that I want to share, so that’s what I’m gonna do.

Hey, I just want to say thanks again for the interview, you’ve really listened to the album, and asked questions accordingly, and that means the world. In its first week the streams and downloads have already exceeded what my last album did in its first four months, so thanks to anyone else whose reading this and has given the album a spin.

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Thanks to Mark Remmington for chatting with us! You can find more about him on his Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Spotify.