‘Delving into the future and a possible authoritarian world’ – In Your Area

Mark Christopher Lee, right, with Noel Storey, his bandmate in The Pocket Gods

Kill The Giants began as a side project by Mark Christopher Lee of Hertfordshires John Peel-discovered indie band The Pocket Gods as a way of delving a little deeper into his musical well and fishing out influences from across the globe.

This year, however, it has taken on a far deeper role.

The effect of the coronavirus pandemic has been a hammer blow to many among them 50-year-old Mark, who talks openly about his battle with mental ill health and how lockdown has set him back.

As a result, Kill The Giants newly-released third album Three Word Phrase has acted as both a therapy and a release.

Kill The Giants I started off a couple of years ago and I wanted to keep it anonymous a little bit thats blown now mainly because people judge you, your background, what youve done before and your age to some extent, especially when Im doing cutting edge dance music, explained Mark, who settled in St Albans, Hertfordshire, in 1989 after attending what was then Hatfield Polytechnic.

Its reminiscent of when 80s cowboy punks The Alarm released 45 RPM under the name of The Poppy Fields in 2004 and hired a bunch of young trendies to lip-synch to the song in the video. It gave them their first UK top 30 hit since 1987.

No one knew who I was when I did the first couple of Kill The Giants albums, added Mark.

Its basically just me. I get an idea for an album or I find some samples to quote and create a proper, old-fashioned album by getting the music behind it.Its something a bit deeper to get into.

I make people think, too, I think when you listen to Kill The Giants you find unexpected stuff, and its all a bit out there and all over the place.

It is out there, thats the idea behind it. The previous one I did was Clones, Drones and Biomachines which is a bit of a sci-fi album looking into what AI will do or hopefully not could do to society, turn it upside down and things like that.

The latest one is a similar theme, its just delving into the future and a possible authoritarian world which it seems like were heading to more and more.

Its called Three Word Phrase because its based on the Governments use of it, trying to control the population to do what they want to do.

The Government justifies that on health and safety grounds but it has instilled mass fear in most of the population, who will go along.

The effects of lockdown have led to Mark taking time off sick from his day job as a civil servant and immersing himself in his latest project has proved invaluable to his mental health.

For me its a kind of therapy as Im off work sick, I make no secret of that, he said. I suffer from mental health problems and it got massively worse during lockdown.

I know a lot of people are suffering from mental health problems because of lockdown. Its not the virus that is scaring me, its the restrictions and the lack of freedom. Its affected me a lot.

An exciting and at times unexpected fusion of sounds and samples, what Mark produces under the Kill The Giants moniker crashes through genre barriers, sometimes without even noticing theyre there.Its thought-provoking too.

The album has a serious message as well, said Mark, which is that I do fear and this is my personal opinion and I could be wrong that we are giving up a bit readily too many of our freedoms and democratic rights which have been hard-earned over hundreds of years.

Im a fan if thats the right word of some of the great writers such as Adolus Huxley and George Orwell, who are sampled on the album. These are great thinkers, great minds, of the 20th century and they saw what was coming.

You cant argue with Huxley and Orwell being great minds so what about Donald Trump being sampled on Four More Years?

Im not pro or anti-Trump, Mark insisted.

Its a bit of a comedy track because its Donald Trump giving a speech, a very redneck, patriotic state of the address speech, and USA charts at the beginning.But if you listen to it, its surrounded by a Mexican wall of music.

Very clever!

Ill add different musical influences from around the world, he continued.I try to integrate a lot of world music into it and make it a global sound, not just some old guy in Hertfordshire making an album in his bedroom.

Im trying to make it appeal to the whole world because when you release music now, it goes out all over the world and so Im integrating a lot of musical styles.

I come from a classical musically-trained background I went to Huddersfield School of Music and I learnt about lots of different musical cultures and I wanted to integrate them a little bit more but then get a fresh sound in terms of using loops and beats and make it accessible to people younger than me.

The Pocket Gods havent been idle either, and have just released their new festive album No Room at the (Holiday) Inn a tribute to National Lampoons Christmas Vacation which features 2020-inspired songs such as Covid Christmas, I Saw Mommy Doing Track and Trace and a remake of the Jona Lewie classic retitled Stop the (Covid) Cavalry.

Its the cult bands 68th album one of which earnt them a place in the Guinness Book of Records.

We did an album of 100 songs 30 seconds long, Mark explained.

Its to highlight the lack of royalties from streaming, you get paid by Spotify etc after 30 seconds, so why write longer songs when they pay such a low amount?If you write songs that are 30 seconds long, you could stick 100 of them on an album and maximise the royalties. Thats the idea behind it.

Theres also a documentary on the band on Amazon Prime entitled Weird The Life and Times of a Pocket God, produced by Mark and charting the bands rise to, well, almost making it.

Its about the ups and downs of being in a not-famous indie band almost making it but not quite, said Mark.

One of the highlights of my life was wiring a song about a curry house up in Huddersfield. It was called Ballad of the Peshwari Naan and I thought John Peel is going to love this so I made a CD and sent it to him.

A few days later I got a phone call from him I thought it was a wind-up.He really liked it and gave me his home address but unfortunately he went on holiday to Peru and died about a month later.

Tony Wilson of Factory Records also took an interest, even going so fat as calling St Albans the new Manchester - but he too died before they could meet.

Tom Robinson, known these days for championing new bands, has also take a shine and fortunately hes still alive and kicking.

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'Delving into the future and a possible authoritarian world' - In Your Area