Eloquently Put..

After leaving Threshold earlier this year, Pete Morten is back with My Soliloquy’s second album. He discusses what made him want to leave the band, his robust work ethic and being immortalised by a fiction-writing fan…

This year two pivotal figures left Threshold: Damian Wilson and their long‑standing guitarist Pete Morten. The latter – and the one who finds himself having a chinwag with Prog – is in a relaxed and chipper mood. He’s just released his second album as part of his own project My Soliloquy, an album he started working on two years ago amid the first rumblings of discontent inside the Threshold camp.

“I’m very proud of the time I spent with them and I’m very grateful for everything

I’ve experienced with those guys, but there just came a time where I wasn’t feeling happy about it any more and there are a multitude of reasons for that which I don’t need to go into,” says a tight‑lipped Morten. However, as the conversation progresses, an insight crops up.

“I want to prove to myself that I can do it. Threshold are so great at what they do that despite people saying, ‘Oh Pete, you’re so great,’ I always felt like they were carrying me, and maybe that’s more to do with me because I know I’m capable of quite a lot.” He pauses for thought. “I wasn’t always fully able to express [myself] in the band… I don’t know. It’s quite complicated.”

What’s clear is that his departure wasn’t a knee‑jerk reaction: Morten took two years of careful consideration to come to the point where he felt comfortable in walking away from Threshold, and he has no hard feelings. Since February he’s been working solidly on finishing up My Soliloquy’s Engines Of Gravity, which was composed, written and recorded entirely by himself, bar the drums. Oh, and he designed the album cover and he’s released it on his own label. So when Morten says he’s capable of a lot, he means it.

“Above anything that anyone might say about my abilities or talents, my strongest personality trait is my work ethic,” he states. “I’ve just got a really robust work ethic and that will see me through. That’s what it comes down to at the end of the day. It’s not that I’m more talented or gifted than anyone else – I just work really hard.”

Engines Of Gravity is Morten’s second My Soliloquy album (following up The Interpreter in 2013), but the first released outside of Threshold. Between numerous house moves, a struggle to find a full‑time band and a label signing that resulted in Morten releasing the record himself, it hasn’t exactly been easy, work ethic or no work ethic.

“On the first album I realised how painful it was doing everything myself so I resolved not to do it again,” he remarks. “I can hear you asking, ‘Well, why did you do it again for the second album?’ That was because I didn’t have a band! I told the live band that I had at the time, ‘Look guys, I’m writing a second album, let’s get some ideas together,’ and no one had anything. It was literally like tumbleweed down a lonely desert road. So I said, ‘Right Pete, it’s down to you again, mate!’”

After dusting himself off and with a strong resolve he cracked on with recording the sessions at home while drummer Damon

Roots laid down his beats, and they sent the tracks off to Rob

Aubrey for the finishing touches.

“Rob Aubrey, having worked with Marillion and Spock’s

Beard, knows what he’s up to,” says Morten, who also used the producer on The Interpreter after his first choice, ex‑bandmate Karl Groom, was busy at the time. “I just go down and stay in his spare bedroom for two weeks and we mix it. It’s really pleasant – it means I don’t have to spend lonely nights in a hotel room. He doesn’t drink tea but I poured him lots of glasses of water and orange juice while I was there.”

After the influential A‑ha phase passed, Morten discovered Iron Maiden and Dream

Theater and so began his love of power metal with a progressive edge. It can be heard on Engines Of Gravity, which propels his lofty vocals to the forefront while exploring the machinations of a hard‑ hitting prog record occasionally daubed in melancholy. “I’ve done my therapy by doing the album,” Morten opens up. “Particularly Darkness Is Gathering – that was written in a pretty bleak period of my life.”

A graphic designer by trade, Morten also designed the cover. “When I was growing up I’d fascinate over the artwork of bands like Iron Maiden, Dream Theater and Rush.”

When asked about the image that adorns Engines Of Gravity he defaults to a succinctly written synopsis that he has to hand: “The rooms represent the self and the stone figures surrounding the room represent the aspects of personality exerting influence on the self…”

It’s deep, but then Morten’s candid approach to his self‑exploration is a sign of confidence, and a symbol that leaving Threshold was the right decision. For a long while it looked like an (unnamed) label in Canada would be releasing this album, but after “a year of procrastination and feeling like it wasn’t going anywhere”, he did it himself. “I achieved in two weeks what the label were seemingly failing to do in the eight months. I essentially just took my power back.”

It’s an inspiration to anyone looking to do things on their own terms, although there’s a little bit of luck thrown in. Morten ends on a story of how, through serendipity, and an ex‑drummer with an ardent love of fantasy novelist Robert Rankin, My Soliloquy ended up in one of the author’s books after an innocuous meet‑and‑greet.

“Robert Rankin is a fan of rock so Andy, the old drummer, gave him our first demo and he ended up inviting us to play at a charity show at Brentford Football Club,” he recalls. “We played the show and not long after we ended up in his book. He liked us a lot.”

With a (you guessed it) self‑produced music video on the way and two new albums already in the pipeline, My Soliloquy are ready for yet another chapter.

“At the end of the day, it’s not that I’m more talented or gifted than anyone else – I just work really hard.”