Lonely Robot
John Mitchell brings his space trilogy to a close with Under Stars.
“Looking back, Lonely Robot’s the best thing I could have done, as it gave me the confidence to know I can do stuff on my own. It’s so enjoyable when you’re not writing music or making decisions by committee.”
Akey aspiration of our times is to be portrayed as busy. There are assorted progressive musicians who indubitably are genuinely busy, as evidenced by regular studio album releases and/or tours with a single band. But for the vast majority, economic reality presents a stark choice: find gainful employment in a variety of bands in parallel or maintain a ‘proper’ day job.
John Mitchell chose the former over a quarter century ago, although a day job does feature briefly on his CV.
“I signed on with a recruitment agency when I was about 20 and worked in insurance in Reading for
six months. I soon realised that I couldn’t do it. I know it sounds like a spoiled brat talking, and perhaps it is, but I used to turn up at 7am, and then sometimes I would turn up at 10am. Before you knew it, I was turning up at midday and leaving at one!”
Having decided that he was not designed for piloting a desk and shuffling endless paper, the insurance and financial services sector’s loss was the catalyst for music’s gain. “It forced me to train myself into what I’m better suited to do, which is making music and producing bands.”
Mitchell first came to prominence when he joined Arena as a fresh faced 23-year-old in 1997. And after what Mitchell describes as a tough start running his own recording facility, the advent of digital recording caused his Outhouse studio to take flight.
As such, over the last two decades he has kept occupied as a musician and producer without recourse to a ‘proper’ job, busying himself with a dizzying array of projects. A few of Mitchell’s earlier endeavours may now be half forgotten – a couple of albums with The Urbane; playing bass for alt rockers A – but over the last decade he has juggled playing in Arena, Frost*, Kino, It Bites and Lonely Robot with assorted production and engineering work, plus live shows. Already this year he’s made two transatlantic return journeys with Frost*, first to play Cruise To The Edge in February and then a couple of concerts in Canada supporting Mystery in March. He has also just schlepped around the UK, Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands with Arena.
“I’m extremely obsessive, compulsive and impulsive, and I’ve got a very short attention span. When I do something, I put myself into it 120% or I lose interest in five
“I have a lot of fond memories from doing It Bites, but it was also a poisoned chalice in some ways because of people’s expectations. Nostalgia is a very powerful emotion.”
seconds. But the only thing I don’t have a short attention span for is music. When I start producing a band or recording, it’s like a strange, almost zombie-like state comes over me.”
Mitchell has enjoyed success, including producing and engineering bands outside the prog rock realm. But it’s clear that Lonely Robot is both his greatest passion and a cause of some retrospective frustration, having realised that he had spent insufficient time working on his own music prior to the advent of the first Lonely Robot album, 2015’s Please Come Home.
“That’s my biggest regret really, and it’s been a real wake up call. Obviously I’m not a spring chicken any more and it’s a shame I didn’t have this realisation before. I’ve always been in bands, and being in bands can be quite frustrating and demoralising.”
Although Mitchell is now in his third decade with the band, Arena is driven primarily by its founders, keyboardist Clive Nolan and drummer Mick Pointer, while Mitchell regards his tenure with It Bites as a very double edged sword.
“After the first Kino album I got sequestered into doing It Bites. I have a lot of fond memories from doing It Bites, but it was also a poisoned chalice in some ways because of people’s expectations. Nostalgia is a very powerful emotion, because if it falls short, the audience are divided. Francis Dunnery is a very charismatic individual and he was an outspoken and confident frontperson. I’m no shrinking violet, but It Bites was his band and he was its face. As much as I had some great times and made two decent albums with It Bites, I was treading water for a long time doing things that I should not necessarily have been focused on.”
With It Bites effectively put on ice after 2012’s Map Of The Past album, Mitchell conceived and has since devoted considerable time to his own Lonely Robot alter ego. He admits candidly that at the outset he had no great masterplan for the project.
“I started Lonely Robot slightly cynically, because there wasn’t going to be another It Bites record any time soon. Thomas Waber at InsideOut suggested I should do something else. Looking back, it’s the best thing I could have done, as it gave me the confidence to know I can do stuff on my own.
It’s so enjoyable when you’re not writing music or making decisions by committee.”
Mitchell stresses that he maintains ‘a wonderful writing relationship’ with It Bites keyboardist John Beck and enjoys collaborating with Frost* keyboardist Jem Godfrey. “Jem and I have a whale of a time. But Lonely Robot has re-energised my love for making music. I’ve wasted a lot of time not tapping into that, although I was investing time being a music producer. That was still a creative outlet, but it was a means to an end. It wasn’t as if I was sitting around playing Xbox!”
Excepting his membership of Arena and Frost*, and after two albums with each of The Urbane, Kino and It Bites, Mitchell revels in the fact that Under Stars marks the first time that one of his own projects has made it to a third album. What’s more, it’s a third Lonely Robot album in only just over four years, with Mitchell taking a single minded approach during its creation.
“They say that the devil makes work for idle hands. That applies to me more than anybody I know. Making music is a good way for me of avoiding mischief! No one saw me for the best part of five weeks and I just got on with it. I don’t think I’ve ever hit a deadline before,” he reveals. Mitchell’s prodigious work rate may well have the bi-product of his enthusiasm for Lonely Robot.
“I don’t want to deride anything else I’ve done, but Lonely Robot is closest to my heart because it represents everything I like in music.” Mitchell clearly relishes being part of Frost*, both musically and in terms of the band’s self-evident camaraderie. However Lonely Robot affords him the opportunity to write and make music that combines elements of the music he loves: he namechecks The Police, U2, Coldplay and Rammstein alongside film soundtracks. “I like things with an ethereal or ambient quality and that sound extraordinary. If you chuck all that into a blender, that’s pretty much the sound of Lonely Robot.
“When I made the first Lonely Robot album, initially I had no idea what kind of music I was going to make,” Mitchell continues. “It was refreshing. With It Bites, whenever we used to do a song, we’d ask ourselves whether it sounded ‘It Bites-y enough’. And of course, that’s a hiding for nothing. You shouldn’t be that philosophical about music; it should be more instinctive. The best stuff that we did with It Bites was probably the stuff that didn’t sound much like It Bites.”
Equally Mitchell recognises what he doesn’t want to make musically with Lonely Robot. “I’ve never been into particularly complicated music like jazz fusion and have no interest in writing overly complicated progressive rock. You should never avoid the chorus. I grew up listening to rising choruses and I don’t see why we should suffer for the sake of technicality! The essence of music is the old classical adage of theme and variation. A lot of progressive rock doesn’t actually adhere to that structure. Some prog rock music goes from one wayward section to another, sections that bear no relation to each other and are glued together for the sake of it. That just doesn’t make sense to me. Lonely
Robot technically is quite simplistic in terms of its arrangements.”
Mitchell’s ethos, and evidence of the freedom of being the sole Lonely Robot writer, is at its most overt on the ear worm Icarus, one of Under Stars’ stand out tracks and inspired by the 2007 film Sunshine.
“Icarus is a bit of a musical departure as it’s just a pop song. Growing up
I was always a massive fan of a-ha and recently I’ve become very engrossed in the synthwave genre. I wanted to do one song which referenced my love of that. But it’s not like I’ve suddenly got a wedge haircut for the duration – it’s just one song! It was a fun track to work on and isn’t that what music’s supposed to be? You don’t have to take it that seriously.”
As it continues Under Stars becomes considerably proggier, but Mitchell remained keen to explore some new musical avenues throughout. “You can’t just keep writing the same album again and this Lonely Robot album is a bit of a departure from the other ones. I decided to play some synth solos instead of guitar solos, which amused me. It’s about trying to do things slightly differently.” Mitchell harbours no fears that Icarus will put off existing fans. “You have to trust in your ability to do something that you like. If you enjoy doing something and you like it, it’s likely that other people will go along with it, because they can tell.”
Thematically the millennial generation attracts the focus – and sometimes ire – of Under Stars.
“In simplistic terms, it’s me bitching and moaning about the millennials,” he laughs. “I find it increasingly frustrating, having to deal with that generation and keyboard warriors.”
The album’s title was inspired by Mitchell returning home with his girlfriend after an evening out. On noticing a beautifully clear sky, Mitchell got out a telescope and a lunar lens and took some photographs.
“When we woke up the next morning we looked at the pictures of the stars and the moon, and they were absolutely breathtakingly amazing. I remember thinking that we spend so much time staring at devices and missing all of this. I find it depressing that people walk around staring downwards and can’t communicate properly any more.”
So is his glass half full or half empty? “Half empty,” he chuckles. “I’m dewy eyed and nostalgic about simpler times. But obviously everybody becomes their dad in the end.”
Under Stars is out now via InsideOut. See www.johnmitchellhq.com for more.