EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH

t (Thomas Thielen) May 2022

Lazland: Thomas, thank you so much for agreeing to this interview.

To kick things off, the artist information on Giant Electric Pea, to whom you are signed, describes you as a control freak. Please provide my readers with examples of how this manifests itself in the creative and recording process.

Thomas: Well, it is all over the place. I do everything on my own, so actually there is no field that is not under my control... I play all the instruments myself, I write every note and every word, I do the mixing, the mastering, the artwork and I coordinate most of the promotion myself. I had a casting for a live band myself, do the live sound programming myself (of bass sounds, electric drum parts, every keyboard note and of course vocal sound and guitar sound) and own the complete stage environment we use except for the drum set and the bass guitar itself, that Camil built himself.

Would you consider that a proportionate example? I could go on, though...

Really, I deliberately chose to go that path. I never understood the band thing, really. Think of Picasso discussing with Dali what they want to paint together? Might work, but not as their default modus operandi. In music, it seems to be obligatory because of the instrumental mastership that it takes to be a one-man band – and that changed recently quite a lot. So, as I am rather a composer than a musician, in my own book, controlling the artistic process is just the natural perspective.

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Lazland: 2022 sees the release of Pareidoliving, your eighth studio album. In my review, I advised listeners to immerse themselves in this intense world of yours. Please provide us initially with the genesis of this album and the ideas behind it.

Thomas: Pareidoliving is yet another layer to a holographic storytelling idea that was kicked off in Fragmentropy. Sounds pompous? It certainly is, but I was interested in that new movement of voluntarism (“I think so, thus it is so.” - “I want gravity to not exist, therefore it doesn't” - the whole alternative facts bullshit) that I came about in one of my other lives (I work as a discourse analysist and teach dialectics): And that idea just had just so many sides! So, I decided, very much like Paul Auster's New York Trilogy, to tell a story again and again, namely: What happens in relationships when one of the partners drifts into voluntarism, authoritarism etc? Into the nonfactual bullshitting manipulatory pseudo-reality?

Pareidoliving is the part in which the ego of this partner is central: Choosing the patterns you categorize the world by enables you to define good and evil, right and wrong, existent and nonexistent according to your own criteria, i.e.: You become the god of your own world. Only you don't and the world does not care about your wishes – but for a certain time the illusion that you actually have God-like status can be held up. Ask Mr Putin about it!

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Lazland: I provided a definition of pareidolia in my review, but I and others would love to see the t definition, particularly in the context of the “living” part.

Thomas: I think I just gave it: Living after a certain pattern that you impose (!) onto the world. Pattern-seeking is the way human beings perceive, nothing wrong with that. But that means that these patterns must be empirical in nature: They have to be dynamic, not static, and they have to be ever-changing according to new data we get from our environment. If you go the other way around: if you say, “This is my pattern, deal with it, world!”, then that is what I mean by pareidoliving.

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Lazland: I dislike it intently when critics and fans try to pigeonhole artists and their music into strict “sub-genres”, and, indeed, received a lecture a number of years ago from a famous musician who absolutely rightly chastised me for asking him how he approached his “neo-prog” music. He made a point of stating that the music he wrote is simply that: music. So, if I were an absolute newcomer to the music of t, how would the man himself describe it?

Thomas: Pop songs that lost their way in the forest and have trodden down many weird paths into said forest so that they have become entangled into their own motifs (the songs, not the paths) and might be mistaken for long-tracks, but really they are as short as this sentence could have been, had I not chosen to allow myself to include so many second thoughts and, following Terry Pratchett's reasoning, third thoughts into it that its grammatical structure has become very weird indeed although it could have stopped after eight words already.

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Lazland: I have always thought that the finest vocalists use their voice as an instrument. When people ask me what I mean by this, I often refer to the classic Concert in Central Park by Simon & Garfunkel. Looking at, and listening to, that beautiful voice of Art Garfunkel, it is an instrument as important in its own right as any guitar or synthesiser. Power, fragility, moods, and the ability to direct the music itself. This is what strikes me so strongly about you listening to your work. Not only do you play all the musical instruments, but the whole recording process and in particular your voice and effects create a whole musical experience. A fair assessment?

Thomas: Too much honour. Although I have had a lot of training as a singer, I still consider myself a bad novice in that field. Actually, in all fields. But I know what I want to do, and sometimes I even know what I'm doing as I do this, so yes, the vocals are another way to colour compositions. If you know a bit about technique you can choose the resonances you want to enhance your voice by rather freely, and then you can sound quite differently from bar to bar by just thinking of different parts of your head and “putting” your voice there. When I just think “I want to place that note in my forehead”, I sound a lot different from “Let's have the back of my head resonate with that one”. The better you are, technically, the more freely you can use that colour array across every octave you have. Basically it’s a cooperative movement of three main muscle groups in your throat, and if you know how to control each of them, you can create quite a lot of different sounds.

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Lazland: Who are your biggest influences musically, and why?

Thomas: I’d say that is The Cure. I cannot quite answer why! I just grew up with them, and I remember the day I bought Disintegration and changed from child to... older child. The sound and the feel of that album is all over my albums, at least in the good parts.

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Lazland: You play all the instruments on the album. I believe that you started off as a keyboardist in your youth. It would be of great interest to us if you could list all the major instruments played on Pareidoliving.

Thomas: Things that go boom, ching, splash, wroooom and weeeeep weeeeep in different forms, with strings, keys and dangerous edges, sometimes. The most important instrument I play is called “sonic studio”. Many sounds are layers of guitars that are then played in a keyboard after they have been sampled. Or keyboards that have been triggered by a guitar to midi synth thingy. Or delays of sounds that have been pitch shifted so much their mother would not recognise them. I made a drum loop from a laughter that I found on a vocal recording. I made a vocal from a reversed cymbal. Some of that even intentionally.

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Lazland: The Covid pandemic was a hugely stressful time for all of us, and, indeed, tragic for many. Did the lockdowns, restrictions, and overall pandemic “experience” have a bearing upon the nucleus of Pareidoliving, and, if so, how, please?

Thomas: It did indeed. The album was composed in a far bleaker mood than ever anything I did before. You can see that from the happy melodies. My music seems to be a sort of counter-life to my actual state of mind. If I am happy, I tend to make albums that explore “What, if I wasn't?” and vice versa. I need those escapes, because my actual life is quite normal, but it seems my mind is not. So I build my own worlds into a place where there are no consequences.

Take the lyrics, too: I am happily married, and even more happily with each year, and I have the most intelligent, erotic, beautiful, witty, funny wife I could have hoped for. This was even stressed during the pandemic: All the couples around us had grave problems in their marriages – we had not, and I’m proud to say, we rather grew fonder of each other. But the lyrics of the album? Wow. There are lines on there that would make you think we had been fighting, literally, to the death (that is where it ends...). Another stroll down the rabbit hole.

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Lazland: The photograph on the album sleeve is yet another powerful and evocative image. Firstly, can you please explain how the model and the lipstick application fit in with the concept of the album, and secondly provide us with a history of the artists responsible for the sleeve artwork over your discography?

Thomas: No, I cannot. Well, I could, but explaining art means making art a statement, and art is the opposite of a statement: It is a gap between what was said and what can be understood, for the reader to fill. As soon as you close that gap, art stops being art. Maybe that is why German artists, at the moment, so often make fools of themselves when they speak about politics. We had those daft idiots with their Covid19 videos who wanted to use art to convey a political statement – a contradiction in itself, idiots! And at the moment we have that open letter to our chancellor in which – among others – actors and comedians try to say that the Ukrainians should simply sit down and find a compromise with the Russians and we, the world, should not interfere. Because war is bad. Sure, it is, you suckers, but next time you’re being beaten up I’ll come over and tell you not to fight back the blows and indulge in peaceful thinking? Get a grip. So, no, art should be art, and when I make a statement out of it, I deprive it of the artistic.

The photographer always was my wife, Katia Tangian, though. I did the artworks myself with her material of a good friend of ours as the model. I adore those photos!

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Lazland: Let’s move onto the live experience with t. I understand that your live debut of t material was in 2019, so a full 17 years after the release of Naïve, and this was at Night of the Prog? Why did it take so long, and what persuaded you to take the live plunge?

Thomas: Well, actually Win (the head of NOTP) did. I was asked to front the Allstar Band that German prog magazine Eclipsed had their readers set up, and for some reason I still do not understand, I was chosen to be a vital part of that. I had not thought before that that there would be lots of an interested audience for me. Well, and if you have an idea of the complexity of the music, also I would not have thought it was even possible to do it justice live. And I was so lazy, I did not want to explain and teach the whole thing to other musicians... rather write on.
But when I was on stage there, the response was laughably positive. I was then asked by a friend if I wanted to open for them, on my own with a piano, and I responded: “Well, how about a band thing?”. When I said that, Mike Holmes of GEP and Win were in the room. The rest is, well, history, albeit a part of history not too relevant.
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Lazland: Please provide my readers with details of your band members and their role on the live stage.

Thomas: I can't, really, as they change all the time. As we speak, I am preparing a completely new band for the autumn dates... or maybe some members will stay and play, or they will mix... it really is quite uncertain. But it works. It’s a miracle, probably, or quantum.

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Lazland: I note from your website that you are playing a further four dates in 2022, October 1st in Russelsheim, October 8th in Volkmarsen, November 5th in Dortmund, and November 19th in Trier. Do you have any plans to take the t live show outside of Germany? (I would pay some serious money to see you in Wales!!).

Thomas: If you paid serious money, I would seriously arrive. Yes, we played France, Belgium, Holland already, we were invited to Poland, but Covid came, and we were pondering on that Cruise to the Edge thing, but Covid came, and then there was that festival in Italy that wanted us, but Covid came, and of course the one in Barcelona, when Covid came, and there was an offer for Prague, but... guess what? Covid came. So yes, we’ll travel, if we can make it work financially, which usually is the case, as I am quite good in getting on sponsors' nerves so badly that they hand me endorsements just to stop me from calling them (I guess).

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 Lazland: I would be fascinated to learn just how you and your band approach playing such intense and truly eclectic music live. Is there a wish to recreate as far as possible the recorded tracks, or to completely throw away the rule book and improvise live, a la King Crimson certainly in their 70’s pomp? I ask this, by the way, as someone with all the musical ability of my dog, and someone who merely writes about it.

Thomas: No. There is just the music and my fingers, and they simply do weird things. I have certain ideas, and I always reach them, but sort of their evil twin brothers and sisters, and they have changed gender or species or skin colour or at least the centuries they were born in. Pareidoliving, e.g., was written under the impression of adoring Thom Yorke's Anima, and I wanted the album to go that path. It did, if you know what to look for. In this case: I used a few very similar synth sounds. See my point?

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Lazland: Two of the dates have Marillion tribute act, This Strange Engine, as support. In addition, you supported Steve Rothery Band in Dortmund recently and shared a fantastic anecdote about the great man when we commenced messaging prior to this interview (which I reproduce below together with the photo of the “star of the show”). One of the things I admire deeply about Steve and the band are their refusal to be pigeonholed, how they are truly progressive in the absolute meaning of the word because they develop, they move on, they always want to do something new. It therefore strikes me that you are just about the perfect artist to be touring with their guitarist. So, please provide us with your thoughts on the man, his band, and your live experience on that night.

Thomas: Steve Rothery is just the guitar player to me, a capital THE necessary. Of course, Robert Smith and Johnny Marr and Mark Knopfler also were THE guitar players to me, but Steve is the THE guitar player (although THE THE would rather be appropriate for Johnny, but that aside...). I like Marillion and I really adore Steve Hogarth as maybe the best singer in the business (along with Joe Payne, in my book!). I learned to play the bass with Pete's basslines as my training material, when I was 10 or something. I simply refused to stop practicing Misplaced Childhood in my bedroom, on guitar, on bass, on keys, on vocals (a drum set was not to be had back then!). When the Steve Rothery Band performed after my supporting starter set, I was able to air guitar, air bass, air keyboard and air sing (does that exist?) the whole set and had anyone fallen off the stage for some reason, I’d have been there as their replacement.

A brief anecdote about The Idiots Prayer: I was playing with that certain Mr Rothery lately in Dortmund, and while I was setting my stuff up, he was still behind me on stage. We were starting our set with Idiots prayer and I was checking the status of my kemper (digital) amp, and switched through the sounds needed for the song. I played the first notes of the solo and Steve sort of jumped a bit. He turned to look, but no, I was not using his gear. He came back to stage, and he said that I had nailed the tone from that small box, that he d been trying to achieve for live with his neural dsp equivalent, but had not quite got out of it. I asked him back on stage and showed him the name of the preset I had programmed. "Rothery"

So yeah, Marillion and me, we go way back. Also, I had that famous discussion with Fish in the Freaks Mailing List that ended with him calling me a founding member of the world of wankers, Mr Thomas Tealeaves, and I responded with a rather doubtfully elegant “Derek the Double-YOU-DICK!”, and then fast forward a few years and find Derek and me in an Irish pub opposite the Luxor in Hannover that he was going to play, drinking and laughing and me under the table with half the amount of alcohol in my body from what Fish did to himself, while he performed a full set like nothing. “Professional Scotsman”, was his comment later.

Those were the days. I was, unfortunately, too stupid to enjoy them enough.

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Lazland: I would like to concentrate on the past now, please, with a “potted t history”. As with many musicians, you were part of a few bands as a young man before becoming part of Scythe. When that band broke up, you then took the decision, which can’t have been an easy one, to branch out as a solo artist, as opposed to looking for another band to join. I am particularly interested in the reasons for this and your thinking at the time.

Thomas: Actually, was it neither a decision nor difficult nor did Scythe ever break up. In the words of Joe Walsh: We never broke up; we just had a 14 year vacation. After a gig in Cologne, we went to Burger King, had a brilliant night with a few legendary scenes (“Can I get a coffee, please?” - “Sorry, we don't have any hot drinks at this hour” - “Ok, can I get a cold coffee, then?” (Udo Gerhards)) and a great laugh, and then we never met again. Just like that, it seems that the spirit had evaporated. But we never spoke about breaking up.

So I was simply left with all those ideas that were not complex enough for Scythe or did not fit into the band setup (you cannot actually produce anything that has neither live drums nor bass, but loops and synth pads, in a youthful four piece, e.g.) and recorded them: Rather for myself, in my little student's flat in Trier, with zero acoustical treatment, zero idea of sonic engineering and zero equipment apart from a few stock plugins, Cubase SX (?) and a Shure SM58. It is hilarious, how good songs like “About us” or “She said” on NAIVE actually sound, given that they were recorded that way: Just sing, press REC and have someone – me – without a clue turn knobs until he likes it.

So no, that was not hard. It was just that what was.

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Lazland: Further to the above question, I noted in my review of Pareidoliving the jazz riffs on drums on The Light At The End Of The Light. To these ears, the underlying rhythm on that and other pieces stands comparison with the likes of Bruford or Collins in performance and approach. I am aware that you are a classically trained musician, but I think my readers would be fascinated to read of your learning process on playing all these differing musical tools to such powerful effect.

Thomas: Most of it is, sorry to say, trial and error and impro. It does have a plan, most of the times, though. E.g., on Pareidoliving you’ll find multiple patterns being “almost” established. In “Tell the Neighbours”, there’s an 11/8 rhythm in the middle, only it is only sometimes, because sometimes, it is 12 or 10. So the album mocks its own title. Same goes for The Light at the End of the Light: The jazzy part contradicts itself in many ways, most of all to those trying to count it...
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 Lazland: I have enjoyed listening to previous albums very much preparing for this interview, such as Fragmentropy, an established favourite, and others, such as the second album in 2006 Voices, for the first time. Many reviewers like to put into words their interpretation of the evolution of an artist, but to begin this section I would like to know your thoughts on how you feel you have evolved as both a musician and concept artist.

Thomas: I really have no idea. I’m trying never to make mistakes twice, but apart from that, I cannot judge my own work. Suffice it to say: Had I not completely liked it, I would not have put it out. I do not need money from music, so I have the freedom to go for a very strict quality control, however long the process might take...

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Lazland: My feeling is that on Voices, the building blocks to what followed are so clearly there. It is plainly a rather personal piece (although that is a description which could be applied to all your work) and I really love the delicate August In Me. Curtain Call is simply achingly sad and beautiful, whilst Ghosts has such a gorgeous minimalist jazz feel to it. Tell us a little bit about these, please.

Thomas: Curtain Call was written when I walked back from bringing what I thought was the love of my life to the train station to watch her leave Germany and, resultingly, my life for good. She was a French student in Trier who I had met just 4 weeks before that, and we had this real love at first sight moment in the middle of a students' party in Ex-Haus Trier (a legendary venue, really) in which we spotted each other across a crowded room. I smiled, she smiled, then she floated across the room and simply kissed me. It took a while until we first talked, but it seemed our attraction had been correct in assuming we shared a certain sense of humour, style, intellectuality and the rest.  So, we, on the whole, spent 4 weeks together, and I really MEAN together, as in: every day, almost every hour. Then she told me, one Tuesday, that on Wednesday she’d leave Trier to live in Vietnam where she’d been offered a job and a life, long before we had met, and had signed a contract and such.

So, Curtain Call was written on several benches on my way back from Trier station to my flat nearby Trier University, and it really captures what I felt back then, and so well that there are gigs when I cannot sing through it without my voice breaking. It’s about loss, irreversible loss.

That walk was quite productive. The song “On the day you leave” (on a Clouds Can album) also dates back to that night, and it was written just after I had finished Curtain Call.

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Lazland: It’s strange, but a lot of my former colleagues on Prog Archives compared that album to Marillion. Well, yes there are clearly similarities, but, to these ears, much of the record sounds like Happiness Is The Road, which was released two years later by Marillion. Therefore, one can make a very cogent argument that Marillion sounded like t, as opposed to the other way around! Such comparisons can be both difficult and misleading at times, don’t you agree?

Thomas: Actually, as I have yet to listen to Happiness is the Road, that might be the case... Likewise, I am often confronted with influences that I then google only afterwards. I found Gazpacho, a great band, from checking out what some reviewer clearly spotted as my key influence.
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Lazland: Let’s jump forward to 2012 and Psychoanorexia. First, the title itself and the concept behind the work. Anorexia is, of course, an eating disorder, so is Psychoanorexia a form of mental disorder, a fear of growing “fat” mentally or socially?

Thomas: This album deals with the Bologna Process, meaning a revolutionized view on education, Bildung as we say, and university systems. I am still furious on how free research and the studium generale have been made impossible by that new system. I coined the term to describe the view that Bildung must have a certain aim, else it was pointless. This was a sort of economic view on art and knowledge, cancelling that which makes humans human (the ability to re-think themselves at every moment anew, which, by the way, is the definition of a term often used, but rarely ever correctly: human dignity (no, that s not something else according to who uses it. It’s this. and then there are many people not knowing what they are referring to, when using it.).

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Lazland: It is a huge slab of music, and noticeably more expansive in parts, but still carrying with it those moments of beautiful fragility, especially vocally, which I regard as a trademark of yours. Where does this album fit within the t musical evolution?

Thomas: It was my first completely self-made sonic engineering, so I treasure it very highly as such. Also, “The Irrelevant Lovesong” reached heavy rotation on many stations, so it might be responsible for however little fame I could gather around me.
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Lazland: The Irrelevant Lovesong is a magnificent creation. To start, just you, a gentle piano, and bass before it explodes into life. Those drum patterns underpinning the voice and guitars are so clever before we get what can only be described as a somewhat menacing passage before the reprise of the start segues into a glorious, but disturbing, rock epic with the denouement simply sublimely beautiful with its strings and voice. There is one hell of a lot within eight minutes here, and all rather magnificent. Please tell us a little bit about this track.

Thomas: It was written and recorded in about 2 hours, because I thought Psychoanorexia needed a lighter, easier piece in the middle. It was supposed to be a sort of pause in the complexity of the album, and it worked quite so well as this that listeners don't want to get back to work, so to speak, but remain in the pause. It’s a live killer, really, and I reprogrammed the guitar sounds on the whole. With my Kemper Amp (thank you for the endorsement, Christoph!), I can line up up to four guitar amps where, in analogue mode, I’d only have one, and I can actually keep it completely silent where I’d have those 4 amps to be so loud (for that sound) that in small venues sound mixing would be made impossible. So, The Irrelevant Lovesong rather was an accident, or at least: the least thought-through piece I may ever have recorded.

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Lazland: Fragmentropy from 2015 was my personal introduction to your work. I found it immensely challenging, moody, beautiful, and atmospheric with what I believe are fragments of songs or more to the point themes contained within the songs on the traditional cd track order. Subsequently, I believe that Pareidoliving is the fourth concept of the journey which started with this album. Please tell us your thoughts about your approach to this album. In particular, what the thinking is when we go, on Brand New Mornings, from a barbershop quartet type passage to a gloriously expansive voice and keys in the space of a mere couple of minutes?

Thomas: It is there, because the idea seemed good to illustrate that which the song wanted to convey. Simple as that. Musical genres are often used as hints to their usual occurrence, to certain moods and environments. So, when barber shopping, I might be hinting at a certain type of movie etc. and so on with other genres.

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Lazland: During Uncertainty, there is a plaintive cry of “I’m Sorry, I’m Leaving You Now” and this leads into one of those achingly lovely sad passages of yours. It is the burden of the interviewer to ask the artist to explain the story behind this (and, naturally, for the artist to tell said interviewer to go away and mind his own business if he wishes!!).

Thomas: and it is the burden of any artist, as stated above, to refuse to explain art.

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Lazland: The English word description for The Black of White is, I believe, bonkers, and I mean this in its playful definition. From putting a revolver into one’s mouth, to inviting such an action, to stating one is not going back home with passages of music which range from a sort of post-punk sensibility to more traditional rock, via spoken narration, this is just about as varied a piece as it is possible to get in nine minutes. In many ways, not musically, but in its execution, it reminds me of the eccentricity that Genesis brought to the second side of Nursery Cryme. What is this all about?

Thomas: It is sort of the culmination of the whole album. The idea of putting the revolver into your own mouth to practice for the time you might be inclined to actually use it for suicide was stolen from Stephen King (sorry, Steve!) and his Mr Mercedes trilogy. The Black of White is my attempt at depicting a borderline train of thought, so bonkers is quite accurate...
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Lazland: We are living in very challenging times. War, poverty, populism, climate change, and other dangers to our accepted way of life and the type of humanity we want. However, in cultural terms I am what the British call a “glass half full” type of person, as opposed to “glass half empty”. In other words, I am basically optimistic. In musical terms, I think that in 2022, intelligent, well-performed, challenging and ultimately deeply satisfying or rewarding music has never been in such rude health, and Pareidoliving is at the apex of what I mean by this. So, how does t find the modern musical (and not exclusively progressive) scene?

Thomas: I frankly don't really care about this too much, if I consider my own situation. I am extremely privileged, as I don't really need any money out of music. But, and that’s a big BUT, I do care about all those colleagues fucked by Brexit. I do care about all those venues fucked by energy prices and covid. I do care about all those live staff people who lost jobs and had to run off to other sectors. So, yes, the times have a grave hardness to them, but no, you will not find me whining about my situation. I’d rather like to promote the ideas of buying tickets to support the venues etc!

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Lazland: I am aware that you teach in the world outside music, but I am interested in whether you feel that the modern music recording scene, especially with the preponderance of streaming services, presents exceptionally difficult financial challenges to artists such as yourself. Would you, for example, ask your listeners to “try it before they buy it” on, say, Spotify, but make sure they actually buy the physical product instead of continually streaming?

Thomas: Yes, totally so. As with any competence, qualification, product etc., in a capitalist environment the way to evaluate efforts is – among others – with money. And as other people, like my lawyer, my doctor and my supermarket, also want money and not nice feedback when I evaluate their effort, I don't see any bad in me acquiring the potential to pay what their expertise is worth. So, of course, Spotify is a very big bullying asshole with an asshole as CEO, and of course, while I can't afford ignoring it, I tell everyone out there: If you adore the artist and love the music, buy the CD. Else you’ll bankrupt the artist.

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Lazland: The natural progression from that question, of course, if you will pardon the pun, is to ask you what you see the future of t as being?

Thomas: That is a very difficult question. I wish I could simply get better, more sophisticated. I’d love to be somewhere between Thom Yorke and The Blue Nile, but I cannot seem to target that area. I tend to get in my way.

However, I am not sure how long there will be music coming out of myself. It is a very hard road to take, at the moment, and what Anathema, e.g., experienced in the last months is severely problematic to many of us. The post-covid concert landscape is a barren wasteland bitterly fought for, and I am feeling the winter in my bones from too many too long nights alone in my studio, being my own energy and idea pool and think tank as the album drags me further. I am thoroughly exhausted with both dimensions, organizing live gigs, forming the live band, looking after the mindscapes of its members, while bleeding lines on to white papers to make records that I am not sure anyone will notice.

Too much whining? Certainly. So, you see my point? I don't really know how much longer I want to take that road, if it leads to that kind of emotion.

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Lazland: Do you see Giant Electric Pea as an important part of that future? Does having a well-known and respected label take the commercial aspect of the music to a different level?

Thomas: I am not sure about this, as I am not sure about the level I have reached or could have reached or should have reached or will reach. All I know is that I am allowed to make music by our arrangement, and that it is transported outside. I’d like to say something more romantic and stuff, and “part of my brain tells me now: Come on, say the right thing!” (Robert Smith at the Hall of Fame Introduction), but honestly, I am far too small to be in a position to actually judge the actions of the label. I guess it helps, I think they are doing a good job, but I cannot say if, in prog, there IS such a thing as “new commercial level”. Maybe it gives you some insight when you read Mark Kelly's book: Marillion have been writing red numbers only until 2015.

I don't. But that also means I do not take the risks that would let the opportunities arise that the guys, then, reaped their success from. I just do not / did not have the guts for that. So, I am absolutely ok with those who had having every inch of success that they have. Their courage earned it even more than their talent.

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Lazland: To close, thank you so much for agreeing to do this interview. I, for one, cannot wait to see where the next stage in a fascinating musical journey is going to take you.

Thomas: Thank you. Neither can I.

Closing comments.

I first contacted Thomas after reviewing Pareidoliving, and it was he who very kindly offered to do an interview for this site.

As you can see, he has put a great deal of time and energy into providing some detailed answers, and I am very grateful to him for doing so.

I am not in the habit of adding my own interpretations to direct answers provided by artists, and will not do so here, but what I will do is to echo the comments made by Thomas regarding buying the product: If you adore the artist and love the music, buy the CD. Else you’ll bankrupt the artist.

Steve Lazenby

30th May 2022