There are many combinations of people involved with all this: a Robert Sotelo interview

The month that his new LP Infinite Sprawling is released on Upset The Rhythm, Robert Sotelo is interviewed by Andrew Doig on life, the creative process and new release anxiety.

Andrew Doig: How do you feel about your new record coming out?

Robert Sotelo: Anxious. I spend a lot of time refreshing windows in the hope of updates. It’s a curious augmented reality. I think I might have more important things to do, but I have forgotten what.

Tell me about the new LP

It’s a collaboration with Ruari Maclean (Vital Idles) and Edwin Stevens (Irma Vep) who play a lot of the instruments on the record and also recorded it. It expands on some basic songs structures I found on my voice recorder. I have thousands of song bits documented; sometimes I take these further. It was all recorded in Glasgow last year with Ruari and Ed, who then took them away and built them up. They brought in Joan Sweeney from Current Affairs to play violin and do some extra vocals. Gemma Fleet my(our) fiancée also sings on the LP.

In general, it’s a short guitar record. Eight melodic pop songs and two ballads, hand-picked from the archive. Are they my best? Who knows? I probably missed a trick and chose the wrong ones. Somewhere in there might be the hit, but I’ll be damned if I can tell which one.

You release a lot of albums, why so prolific?

It just works out that way. I have one almost complete keyboard album and a gestating guitar album also coming together, both in the works. As stated in previous interviews, I now hate playing guitar — so there won’t be much more of that. I am quite old and I don’t drink, so it’s fairly easy to make music. I don’t ever have a hangover, so think about the amount of time I save.

How is life in Glasgow?

I walk around Govan in the rain a lot, and sit in cafes wondering what it would be like to be popular and live in LA. I am thankful for all the nice people I have met and who have given up their time to help me with my music; which is often thankless for them, I imagine. There’s a real spirit here for that.

What are the songs on your album about?

Nothing, as previous stated elsewhere, the songs are about nothing. I like language that sounds like it’s about something, but is really about nothing. I feel I have a gift for meaningful meaninglessness. I like to apply this to all facets of my creative endeavour. I hope in years to come I will be recognised for this talent.

Why have you interviewed yourself?

You have to imagine, I exist in a limbo of semi-mediocrity whereby most content I manage to generate about myself requires a degree of plea and insistence with others on my part. With that in mind, it’s easier to interview myself, rather than convincing someone else to do it, who doesn’t really want to do it anyway. I can sit here and write this quite efficiently, and the information remains more or less the same. 

You come from Peterborough; what’s that like?

It’s a terrible Brexit Party-riddled cesspit and I haven’t been there since 2012. Sometimes I imagine that I stayed living there and made music alone in my room to nobody and wrote interviews with myself, by me, about me and recorded loads of albums. Actually, in a sense I would describe my musical life as “Like having lived in Peterborough the whole time anyway”, but with actual records coming out on the excellent Upset The Rhythm. 

What’s your current creative process like?

I have a cupboard with a desk and an assortment of keyboards. I try to hide my guitar. I listen to Robert Wyatt and try to figure out where the longing comes from. I am not sure it’s fashionable to be earnest, so I try to seem less so. Every now and then I write post-punk or just punk songs, and try and make demos of these, then just end up deleting it all. I can’t scream, so everything always ends up sounding the same anyway.

Do the many formations of Robert Sotelo make things confusing?

Everything is confusing. I have attempted to create three bands currently around Robert Sotelo. I am not even sure the people involved realise this. I keep it like a secret, so to speak. I can’t even face up to my own multitude of guises. Some people think it’s interesting, others are indifferent. Eventually I will retire though, probably next year. I want to see the world; I know it’s a cliché. 

Before that though, I look to resolve something through music, maybe just a basic ability to write at least one song that is popular to some extent. It’s crazy really, you go in with an idea to write a catchy pop song, but you can’t escape your natural characteristics and limitations. 

Ultimately having three versions of the same project makes the likelihood of success greater: “if you don’t like THIS, maybe you’ll like THIS’.  But it’s all a delusion. Like right now, one of my friends is in the hospital. I should give him a call or go and visit him, but instead I am just refreshing the page in case I got played on some radio station in Germany or somewhere; and news flash: I didn’t.

Any closing thoughts?

Despite what I just seemed to be saying, it would be nice if you checked out my new LP. The artwork is great and was done by Caio Wheelhouse. It sounds good because Ruari and Edwin are really talented people. Ross McGowan, a very friendly guy who runs Chime Studio in the city, mastered it.

Apart from all that, I am reissuing my previous album Botanical on a lathe-cut 12”, so buy that too. The band I play my keyboard songs with: Celia, Iain and Gavin, are the best. Iain’s going to make a film that I hope to do the soundtrack for, plus Celia might get her script picked up by Amazon Studios. It rains a lot in Glasgow, but these guys are making some serious moves. 

We are playing Infinite Sprawling out and about live with Ruari and Ed, and are joined by Neil Robinson from Buffet Lunch and graphic designer Musho Hernandez, along with Ollie Hawker from Decent Sweets. We went on tour a couple of weeks ago and it was fun! My final guitar album, Many Thanks, is slowly plotted with help from Caio, Jody Henderson and Gavin Murdoch. 2020 could be the year, as they say. I play in Order Of The Toad with Gemma and Chris Taylor also. There are many combinations of people involved with all this.

Recently, I reconnected with my old friend Steve, so I am buzzing about that, it’s far more important than new release anxiety and that’s helped me through this phase. Each year something new of mine comes out and I spend the month prior to it feeling let down. I wonder if this is a modern thing?

Anyway, I am spoilt brat in that regard. If I retire before you read this, please find my records and don’t review them on your blog. I don’t mean Freq. Thanks again.

Pre-order Infinite Sprawling here.

-Photo: Beth Chalmers-