Interview by Victoria Llewelyn / Photos 2-3 (C) Adrian Hextall / MindHex Media
Steve Rothery, the founding member and quintessential sound of Marillion, has been known to spread his creative wings from time to time with different projects – The Steve Rothery Band, solo enterprises and collaborations with other progressive icons. On this occasion Steve has teamed up with electronic composer Thorsten Quaschning of Tangerine Dream, with drums expertly covered by Alex Reeves of Elbow. The album my raise a few eyebrows with those that consider themselves the ‘Prog Police’ since it’s an interesting new direction for Steve and not quite what you’d expect. Which makes it all the more intriguing. Bioscope, literally meaning ‘a view of life’, consist of five individual tracks, each one delving into a different aspect of visual image.
MGM – Steve, it’s lovely to talk with you again! Last time we spoke around two years ago you briefly mentioned the Bioscope project but were very cagey about the details and not giving much away! The album, ‘Gento’, is now due for release and the concept is quite fascinating – exploring the enchantment and fascination mankind has with moving images. How has it been for you in getting to this point?
SR – I didn’t say too much about it beforehand as I wasn’t sure if it was going to be finished, if truth be told! Thorsten and I first talked about it in December 2018 but getting us actually together in the same room – if you added that time up it probably took us about five weeks! We did two days on it in Berlin in February 2019, then an afternoon at The Racket Club (Marillion’s HQ in the UK) then I flew out to Berlin again early 2022. Then Thorsten was touring with Tangerine Dream so we had to work around that. So it’s taken a long time, but not, if you see what I mean!
MGM – How did you and Thorsten come up with the idea to do an album together? Your musical styles are quite oppositional – you’re a prog guitar hero and he’s an original pioneer of ambient sounds and electronica. What made you decide that you could marry these sounds together successfully?
SR – Tangerine Dream played on Cruise To The Edge in 2014, and I used to listen to them when I was a teenager in Whitby, usually the Ricochet and Stratosphere albums, so the idea of working together was something I thought could be really interesting. As to whether it would be successful – you never really know in this situation whether it’s going to be amazing or a waste of your time, but we had a great chemistry.
Thorsten is a great Marillion fan and he saw us on pretty much every tour whenever we played Berlin, so he was very familiar with what I do. We didn’t really know each other beforehand; we’d just been for a coffee and said it might be fun to work on something together one day. Anyway, on our most recent trip to Berlin, last December, I started to actually name the tracks – and once you name something it becomes real. That’s when the whole concept of Bioscope and all the tracks being tied together in terms of the visual themes.
When we had our first proper session at The Racket Club – that’s when I could tell it was going to become something, because it was such a different way of working than with Marillion where we all get in the room together, jam and improvise. This was one person setting up all these rhythms and moods, atmospheres and textures that I then come and do what I do on top of. We both thought it was something really cool and different, it doesn’t sound like Marillion, it doesn’t even sound that much like Tangerine Dream because the emphasis is so different.
The only track that I think may not be a million miles away from something Marillion might do is Kaleidoscope, but then there’s be vocals over it so the emphasis would change. The guitar takes on the role of the singer in a lot of ways on this stuff because it’s playing melodies. Thorsten says I sing with my guitar, which is very nice and poetic of him! A lot of my favourite music is instrumental, I like to listen to a lot of film music, evocative soundtracks, that sort of thing, so I never saw a reason to put vocals on these tracks.
MGM – You recruited Alex Reeves from Elbow to take on drums for you – given Thorsten’s usual work uses mostly programmed drums and loops, it’s interesting that you decided to go with live drums for this project. How did you decide Alex was the man for the job?
SR – We thought some of the material we had might benefit from having real drum sounds, that it would add to the identity of the project. After several hours of looking through YouTube videos of different drummers until my friend Matt who plays guitar with Bonnie Tyler, recommended Alex because he’d done a few sessions with him, and told us he was an amazing musician and a lovely guy. He was in Australia at the time so I sent him some music over and he pretty much did backflips! He really wanted to be involved. So, in March of this year, Thorsten flew over from Berlin, we both went to Alex’s studio in North London, it’s very small, and very high tech! He recorded all the drums for the album in two days, from ‘cold’, didn’t learn anything – it was almost like a jazz improvisation. Then spent another day editing them and we’d added a whole new layer to the music!
Alex is very high tech, he would try different things, stop the track, go back again, change the drums, changed the cymbal, get a fire extinguisher down from the wall and start hitting that haha – all this weird stuff that drummers do to get the exact sound they want! We are both really excited to be playing with him when we come to do the live shows in December.
MGM – Speaking of live shows, you’re planning to take this music on the road in a few months’ time. Given the music is so immersive and unusual, how do you feel it will translate into a live performance and what do you have in mind for it?
SR – We already have amazing videos for all the tracks, so the idea is for us to have a huge screen behind us that we will be showing all these videos on, and we will combine this with an amazing light show as well, by the same guy that does the lights for Tangerine Dream shows, so it’s going to be a very special visual experience. Also – Dave Foster is joining us on second guitar as there’s a couple of tracks that have at least two guitars playing, and Alex will be on drums. I’d describe it as going to be quite trippy!
At the moment we are only playing them in Europe – I have to shoehorn it in straight after the Marillion weekend in Utrecht, literally starting the next day and running five shows. These will be showcase gigs really; hopefully we will be doing some more including some in the UK next year, around April time if we can. A lot depends on what happens with the next Marillion album, and how quickly that comes together.
MGM – What is your favourite track out of the five on ‘Gento’?
SR – I’d have to say Vanishing Point. It’s 20 minutes long (laughs) but it’s such a journey – all the different places the track goes and all the different textures and moods we’ve used. There are a lot of very unusual sounds, not all of which are keyboards. I think some people will listen to it and think ‘oh yeah, well – where’s the guitar?’ And there is a bit of guitar playing, but these weird noises you’re hearing – they are in fact guitar sounds through different pedals.
The way I describe it is like icicles. It is a strange sound that you wouldn’t normally associate with a guitar, but for me that’s one of the things that’s interesting. We didn’t work with a producer – Thorsten and I were the producers and the arrangers. We are trying to paint it in all these different colours to keep it interesting, especially through 20 minutes of track! So you are arranging as you go along. The way that I work is to take the basic idea and try out lots of different sounds, different ideas, and then cherry pick the best moments, and that is how you gradually build it up, like a patchwork of sound.
MGM – Would you work with Thorsten again and might there be another Bioscope project in the making?
SR – I can’t believe how easy it has been to create this record. Thorsten and I – we don’t argue, we are both very polite, we have a similar sense of humour and we get on really, really well. It’s effortless; we have a musical conversation if you like, and it all comes from that.
I have a great relationship with Ricardo Romano from my solo band – he’s going to be playing keyboards and doing some engineering for me on the Steve Hackett album, we have a great chemistry. I have the same great chemistry with Mark Kelly and Steve Hogarth as well because they are both incredible keyboard players. But Thorsten is coming from a different angle. His love of analogue technology and sounds gives a different soundscape than I would usually hear. Mark (Kelly) likes to use a lot of virtual instruments, sometimes stacked up together which makes a very lush and interesting sound – Thorsten is a lot more old school really. He does use modern technology as well so it’s like a marriage of the two worlds. He’s known for his sequenced, pulsing basslines that repeat and repeat – and there’s some of that in what we’ve done but it evolves and moves from one thing to another a lot quicker than Tangerine Dream would.
Would we do it again – I like making instrumental albums! We haven’t really decided on anything but there is a piece of music I want us to write for the opening of the very large telescope in the observatory in Northern Chile in a few years’ time. That’s a concrete idea I have for a theme, but that’s all I have for now!
MGM – You’re going straight from Bioscope into starting work on the new Marillion album at the end of this summer, and then there’s your project with Steve Hackett in the pipeline too. Over the fifty plus years of your career do you ever feel you’ll get to a point where you’ve achieved it all – the bucket list is complete and where do you go from here?
SR – No! In terms of travelling, there’s still places I’d love to visit. We haven’t been to Australia, New Zealand, a few other places. But you never get bored or tired of music because it’s what you are. It’s what you live and breathe. It possesses you. Maybe you are slightly dysfunctional as a human being because your focus 24/7 is music and it’s all you’re really good for! I’m lucky that my family are on board and do stuff with me – mu daughter Jennifer made the video for the single ‘Gento’. Jo (Steve’s wife) and I will be performing a couple of songs together at Dave Foster’s house concert at his place near Cambridge. At the end of one of the tracks I’ve done with Steve Hackett everyone sings backing vocals – including myself – my son, daughter and wife, it’s a whole family thing. Steve and his wife are included too and it’s a really beautiful moment. It’s at the very end of the album, at the end of a track that’s very, very different, lie a pastoral thing with acoustic guitars and all these voices – I think we will definitely have the Prog Police round to us on that!
BIOSCOPE – GENTO IS RELEASED ON 21st AUGUST 2025
https://bioscope.lnk.to/GentoPR
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