Robert Sotelo: it’s like I am stamp collecting

A quick catch-up with Robert Sotelo

Dan Bolger of The Pheremoans and The Bomber Jackets talks to Robert Sotelo about his new cassette and digital release, Botanical.

I first met Andrew Robert Doig (AKA Robert Sotelo) in 2004, when we moved in to the same flat in Dalston. He was in what seemed then to be about a thousand bands, playing guitar mostly, facing an amp. He was hardly the responsible, mature songwriter penning heartfelt, empathetic music back then – but he was a great guitarist, with an ear for an unpredictable melody, and his bands always had something interesting about them.

In more recent years, Doig has been quietly learning to write songs on his own, to sing them out loud with his own voice, and to generally be a bit more responsible about stuff. As part of this story arc, he left London last year for Glasgow – where he now lives and works, making exquisite minimal pop in his spare time.

I managed to come up with a few questions for him to answer on the eve of his holiday (they were answered on an aeroplane), and in time for the release of his new record Botanical.

Dan Bolger: I read a thing online describing you as “Glaswegian artist Robert Sotelo” the other day. Can you confirm whether there’s any truth to this rumour? Speaking more seriously, do you consider that you’ve made a home in Glasgow after fifteen (?) years in London?

Robert Sotelo: Home is where the heart is, Dan, as they say, and my heart will always partly be in London, although mostly in a London that doesn’t exist any more, I suppose. Glasgow is my heritage though really, and the Doig Buses chain confirms this with their continuous advertising of my name around various transport routes within that city and beyond.

Being serious, also, it’s pretty weird not being in the capital and hard not to feel sentimental about it all, but Glasgow explodes with so much musically, artistically and socially, that there is barely time to recollect any more, which is refreshing in itself.

As an adjunct to the previous question, please supply a revealing personal anecdote which tells us something important about your new home, its music/arts scene etc (particularly in contrast to the capital).

Most Glasgow anecdotes are food-based so far. Discovering the greatest biryani I’ve ever tasted at the village in Tradeston, marvelling at the double-sized lamachun via Istanbul on the Paisley Road West, like a mutant supersized version of the mangal ones we first discovered in Dalston a decade ago. The curious haggis nachos I ate at the Ibrox climbing centre café. The always appetising morning roll, black pudding and egg combo available practically everywhere. Hopefully this reveals that food is much more important to me than the music scene, which is great also, actually. Unfortunately in contrast to the capital, the lack of legitimate Turkish food is crushing.

This record is a departure from the rock and roll “format”, in that you’ve dispensed with trad “band” instruments and recorded using a cheap keyboard in a very minimal way. There’s something very delicate and measured about how you’ve orchestrated this record. Is this it for you and the guitar, or was it more of a formal decision to make something using restricted tools, just your keyboard/drum machine thing and saxophone?

I hate playing the guitar, Dan, and have done for some time. Also about seventy per cent of me hates all guitar music; but I come from Peterborough originally, so there is an ingrained sense of early noughties nu-metal propulsion lingering on, stemming from my youth there, that manipulates me into trying to create slightly conservative styles of music. So firstly it was trying to get away from the guitar for awhile. I got too much into the Beatles for a couple of years around the creation of my previous album, remember when I got into them? I avoided them for years and then got obsessed and tried to hit that stuff too hard, so I needed to get away from those kind of melodies, that style of thinking, and since I love David Sylvian and Japan almost as much as the Beatles, I thought I had better try synthetic pop music instead.

I am happy with the reserved nature of Botanical, the delicateness you describe. I am not sure where it comes from, maybe an avoidance to try anything too obviously banging, as if I could do that kind of thing anyway! Also it’s a result of the limitations of my keyboard playing, nothing too crazy can really happen. Of course it sounds nothing like Japan, it just sounds like my guitar stuff, but with keyboards. I love the sound of a sax and was put in touch with the exceptional Iain McCall, from Glasgow also, who recorded those parts and now plays with me live. I have already recorded another guitar album though, to answer that part of the question, so I am still dysfunctionally drawn to its usage.

These conflicts of styles, parallel paths and strands make life ever so confusing; actually, I just want to be everything for everybody, know what I mean?

I think so. Certainly Iain’s sax adds a luxurious sheen. Out of interest, did you have to hum what you wanted him to play? And will the next record have a full Noel Gallagher string section?

No, his parts come from him, I asked him to mirror certain bits maybe. I am actually talking to a trombone and clarinet player for further recordings such as these. I would like my part to become so minimal that its almost just my singing, with the classical instruments providing the main backing, that’s how I imagine a style that would keep it weird.

Writing and recording alone is obviously different to writing in a band. Do you enjoy the freedom? Are there problems associated with going it alone? How do you finish something, or know when it’s finished?

Yes, I like writing on my own, it’s like I am stamp collecting or indulging in any other solitary hobby in a room, left to potter around and make my own mistakes. Bands are a young person’s game, too volatile and dramatic for me. The process of writing is my favourite part of all this and I don’t want to share it, I am grumpy and borderline elderly. The song’s finished when it’s finished. I know people struggle with completion, but everything I do is based on many limitations, so it’s clear to me when I can’t do anything further with it. Song structure is puzzle building; I like to get back to the start of a song via some interesting tangents and then it’s over.

Lyrically, I’m baffled how anyone writes lyrics without hating and scrapping them before even going near a microphone… but what’s your approach? Do you write stuff down and put it to music, or make music and then hum along until it becomes “words”? Something like “Mary” is a story about a person; is this drawn from real life or just sort of riffing on a character/set of ideas?

Hum along until it becomes words, yeah. Or just sing mumbo-jumbo and then finally convert these into words. I actually copy someone I know’s method, which is to write down the words that the mumbo-jumbo most resembles initially, then swap in stuff that makes a little more sense; you’ d be surprised how legitimate it ends up sounding considering it’s often truly meaningless.

I really don’t consider the words enough to scrap them; often the completion of the song is compelling, so getting some lyrics down helps get you to an exciting stage. There are exceptions though and “Mary” is one: yes, a real person from my support work days in Stevenage, a very interesting person who saw some bad times but remained optimistic throughout, so this song has a real and thought-about meaning.

When you write songs with a specific person in mind, do you feel weird about sharing details of that person’s life? I mean, while “Mary” on this record and “Alan Keay Is Fit For Work” from Cusp come from an obviously sympathetic place, did you worry about borrowing details from real people in your care, or is the “meaning” you mentioned the most important thing?

With Alan he actually died and, not to get too heavy, had basically no friends or family and supposedly no one went to his funeral, so I was less reluctant to mention him by name as it I wanted him to live on in the song, and I dedicated the album to him. Mary’s stuff was way more severe and so her first name is all people are getting, but of course I don’t want to breach confidentiality, so I do worry a bit, and maybe it’s inappropriate, but I kind of went with it. I didn’t want to pretend they were characters that I changed for the benefit of keeping them anonymous. They are people that totally changed my view on the world, utterly profoundly in some ways, completely detached from my creative life, but fuelling it in ways they’ll never know.

Was that question a slightly more adult version of the student paper interview question ‘”where do you get your ideas from”?

Perhaps it was, Dan, I am not sure. If you are now asking me where I get my ideas from, then I would say I get them mainly from food and places.

Who do you make music for? Yourself? An audience? Your peers? None of the above?

This is a great and complex question. I am not sure anymore. It’s too easy to say I make it for myself, it’s a lie. I make it for an audience, but since I already know there IS NO audience, really I suppose I continue to make it for myself. I am not being self-defeatist in saying that in the tidal wave of continuous audio output that is the world of music, my work is not credible enough or stand-out enough to catch the interest of more than a handful of people. I don’t have the social media savvy or patience to eternally wave for attention with content. I simply DON’T have enough content.

I make music and I barely know how to do that, so everything else required to capture an audience is lacking. I tend to avoid music scenes or much socialising between peers and this insular stance defeats me. So I will simply lie and say I make it for myself, ultimately, and that it’s a question of legacy. If I can create a body of work that says something, anything about who I was in existence, when I am long gone, and any curious party that comes across anything I ever did gains an insight into what an utterly charming individual I was in life, then success come find me.

Botanical is out now on Nicey Music.