Ex-Cocteaus man Robin Guthrie gives the scoop on his unique approach to music, and how these days he’s just as likely to make an album in the back of a camper van
Renowned guitar-scape architect Robin Guthrie is best-known as a founding member of pioneering ethereal pop act Cocteau Twins. However, since the trio disbanded in 1997, he’s continued to produce music at a prolific rate. With a canon that includes multiple collaborations with minimalist composer Harold Budd, a few soundtracks, plus stints in the production chair for folks as diverse as Lush, Heligoland, and Jay-Jay Johanson, Guthrie has largely focused on an ongoing series of releases under his own name. The latest of which is titled Astoria.
Having worked with the major labels Universal and Capitol Records, as well as indies such as 4AD, Darla and Rocket Girl, Guthrie founded Soleil Après Minuitin 2005 to manage his own catalogue. Along the way, he’s started using Bandcamp as a direct connection to his fanbase.
“As an artist, it’s nice to have so much control over what I release,” he says. “I could have an idea on Thursday morning and it could end up in the store on Friday.”
An avid photographer, Guthrie also designs all the artwork, stating that “I really enjoy creating these series of interconnected things.”
On the surface, Guthrie’s music may seem unchanged from his days with Cocteau Twins, but he has a more nuanced view.
“My music does evolve, but just very slowly,” he says. “I don’t really try to force evolution – that’s what experiences in life are for. I interpret what I feel, but often using very different techniques.
“I studied and worked with computers in the late-70s and early-80s. I’ve always been a bit nerdy and had computers around, it just took me a while to integrate a good ‘computer-only’ music production workflow due to the limitations of the hardware of the time. The technology, whether old or new, doesn’t seem to make more of an impact than time itself.”
Guthrie’s process has shifted in much the same way.
“Technology has made it almost effortless to achieve sounds, the making of which used to be fairly complex,” he continues. “Now anyone can emulate sounds from any part of my past with plugins on a computer. On my own computer I’ve even created a ‘September Sound’, the Cocteau’s old studio. I collected all the equipment that I used back then and put virtual versions together. That’s not really for work though, it’s just showing off what can be done.
“The early computer sequencers were MIDI only, but hardware sequencers had been around for a while, like the Roland MSQ-700 which I used on ‘Treasure’. I then settled upon an EMU SP1200, and then the Akai MPC60, which combined sequencing with a sampler. This, though, lacked streaming audio, so I continued to use analogue tape. On ‘Heaven Or Las Vegas’, which was around ’89, I got a digital editor, but it was strictly 2-track, Digidesign’s SoundTools – the grandfather of ProTools – running on an Atari ST4 with 4MB of RAM… yay.”
“I’ve been one of the most privileged people in the world with technology, because I was able to ride a wave that started in analogue, all the way to us now making music on our cell phones. I really got to a place where I’d learned a huge amount about analogue recording, mixing desks and editing tape. Early on, when I was in a proper grown-up studio, like the BBC, I used to watch and absorb what everybody was doing. I had these big, thick textbooks of recording techniques from the 50s and 60s.”
Toward the end of the Cocteau Twins, in the mid-to-late 90s, technology was moving at a crazy clip and Guthrie’s enthusiasm attempted to keep up with it. As he divulges, that had its own repercussions.
“I had a stupid amount of equipment,” he admits. “I haven’t kept a lot, but I’ve kept enough to be encouraged by my family to get rid of some of it so that we can have some space for furniture in the house. I do go back to old equipment. I pull things out cyclically, use them for a few months, and then get something else out. I’ll think, ‘Ah analogue chorus. I’ve got a couple of them, that’ll be fun.’”
But Guthrie’s primary inspiration for music comes from his surroundings, scenery, and literature.
“‘Atlas’was obviously a travel thing,” he says. “I travel a lot. When I turned 60, I promised myself that I was going to travel more, however music is all-encompassing, and I never travel without a laptop.
“Many of my records have been travelogues. I made an EP called ‘Sunflower Stories’a few years ago in the back of a camper van in the middle of a sunflower field in Vendée [Western France]. Four days just sitting there recording. ‘Continental’was a transcontinental trip across the US by train, back in 2005. I wrote that album watching Texas going past really slowly. I avidly scribble down noteworthy things that I encounter, because my other pleasure is reading.”
William Least Moon’s ‘Blue Highways’ was the book behind the title of the Cocteau’s album ‘Four Calendar Cafe’,and the whole of Guthrie’s ‘Carousel’was based on a single tome.
“Yeah, I do find words and phrases worth stealing – I mean, inspiring…”
Guthrie’s worked on a variety of film scores, most notably with close-friend Harold Budd on movies by Gregg Araki, such as 2004’s Joseph Gordon-Levit starring ‘Mysterious Skin’. Since then, Guthrie has also soundtracked several shorts.
“I really love the process of putting music in a movie, because that’s where I get to take my skill set and use it within different parameters,” he explains. “I really like doing commercials – I’ve hardly done any – but I love the challenge of trying to make my thing work in 29 seconds.”
While currently working around remastering his own and Cocteau Twins reissues, Guthrie still manages to regularly release new music. ‘Atlas’hit Bandcamp in July, followed closely by the single ‘Mountain’.
With an album due in 2025, the current release ‘Astoria’is a “sort of conclusion” to ‘Atlas’.
“The two EPs were made at the same time, telling different sides of a particular journey,” says Guthrie. “The intro, the downtempo bit is ‘Atlas’. The second is a little more explosive.”
‘Astoria’ is out now via Bandcamp
