Mark Mills

You'll get your ass kicked or burst into tears. Either way, Mark Mills will help you work through some deep-seeded issues...

By Scott Wood

When I received a few emails from Calgary-based, ultra-sex-positive, dance music maker Mark Mills (who is also a sexy Dad), I decided to change my usual focus. Typically I use my space here at earshot-online to give the campus community radio community the chance to get to know some of Vancouver's most interesting, up-and-coming bands. Calgary is almost a sister city to Vancouver, right? Besides, after I listened to his latest record Triple Fire Sign, how could I say no?

Here is my chat with Mark Mills.

Scott Wood: Your new record is called Triple Fire Sign. I'm a Sagittarius. What's your sign? How will our signs interact? Will this be a good interview? Where does the album title come from?

Mark Mills: When I was born, the sun was in Capricorn, the moon was in Cancer, and Leo was on the horizon. I was born on the full moon, and my birth chart eerily describes me quite accurately. I would have to look at your birth chart to get a better idea of how we would get along, but intuitively I feel we interact smashingly. I'd rather not project any particular outcome upon this interview, or judge its result as good or bad, it just is!
My wife Annie was the inspiration for this particular album and her three main astrological elements are fire signs. Her ways heated me up immensely as I fell in love with her fiery disposition, so Triple Fire Sign best described the album.

Scott Wood: I've read your music described as "scrappy, sex-positive synth pop." This quote made me chuckle. Although I haven't heard much sex-negative music out there, can you talk about your spin on sex-positivity?

Mark Mills: I feel like there is a lot of music with a "sex-negative" spin as they exploit and disrespect many sacred elements of sex, promoting identification with lower frequency interactions. Yes, sex was meant to be suuuuper amazing and pleasurable, but there is a way to be reverent to all aspects of sex, honouring your partner and the intimate connection. Not to say sex is only meant for reproduction, but that sex without some level of love leaves you feeling shitty, at least in my experience.

Scott Wood: Right now you're doing something called "Project Beyoncé." What is this? Why did you decide to do it? And can you introduce you favourite video from it?

Mark Mills: Project Beyoncé is like the minor hockey week division 3 novice semi-finals of the entertainment business. I had this idea to make a music video for every track on the new cassette and release it to YouTube. I was telling my pal Tristan from (Vancouver band) BESTiE about this idea, and he said "oh, kinda like Beyoncé", and so the project was named. The inspiration came from feeling limited by budget, and finding videographers that could get things done without pay, so I decided to make 11 of the shittiest music videos of 2014, and possibly of all time.

Also, so much Art is hyped so hard, so much Art focuses on production "VALUE", so much Art waits around to become something that it is not, or to propel its creator into some kind of dream like success and fame. Fuck that.

The purpose of the project is to create within a limited boundary, for the sake of expression and bringing ideas to fruition, no matter how good bad great or terrible they are. After 6 videos, my favourite is "Work Group", a simple perspective of what I may do on a sunny day, smoking some herb and flexing out some interpretive dance.
.... - www.earshot-online.com

Mark Mills embraces the positive on debut album
Published December 12, 2013 by Mark Teo in Music Features

DETAILS
Sean Nicholas Savage with Calvin Love
Republik
Friday, December 13

More in: Rock / Pop

There’s an easygoing earnestness to Mark Mills that’s evident even at the beginning of our conversation. And while much has been written about his scrappy, sex-positive synth pop, we quickly veer off into other topics: The source of his admirable-but-not-grating positivity (he attributes that to self-awareness), his energizing diet (these days, less focused on superfoods, more focused on locally sourced goods) and Kelowna metalheads. “They’ll come up to me and say, ‘It’s not necessarily for me, but I can appreciate your stuff.’”

Eventually, though, we circle back to the topic of his posi copulation pop. He named his debut album Go Love Yourself, and while that title might sound hokey and new-agey, he makes it clear that his music is the product of self-enlightenment. “I wasn’t in a dark place in my life, but more of a grey area,” says the Edmonton-via-Calgary songwriter. “I had an engineering diploma from SAIT, and a high-paying oil and gas job as a technologist.

“I was living a life based on what others thought would be my best bet. Growing up in Calgary, everything was driven by status, money and approval from your peers. I had a lack of resolve. I was spending more time sitting in a cube than I spent at home. It was counter-intuitive to who I really was.”

Who Mills really was, then, was someone far more interested in art than engineering, a fact that he knew even as he played in Calgary guitar-based acts like Life Like Cobra and Needy Cat. Eventually, though, he resolved to pursue a full-time career in music. After pondering a move to Vancouver and Montreal, he eventually settled in Edmonton, living in a subsidized space catering to low-income artists.

It was a change from a high-paying career in oil and gas, but Mills never looked back. “I embraced the fact that I wasn’t going to find fulfilment if I didn’t follow my intuition,” he says. “It all stems from self-awareness. I’ve always had strong gut feelings about certain situations, and the closer I came to my gut feeling, the closer I came to [myself]. Also, being a father, I started to analyze what I’d want my son to do in certain situations, and acted on that. Life’s been very rich since.”

Indeed, Mills credits having a son — and being a role model — as the source of his positivity, energy and newfound productivity. (Along with Go Love Yourself, for example, he pounded out the I See Sprouts EP for his wife’s birthday in an afternoon.) But there’s likely another source of inspiration behind his music: by moving to Edmonton he placed himself in a scene that birthed swaths of synth-minded troubadours, including Arbutus mastermind Sean Nicholas Savage, Born Gold’s Cecil Frena and the ever-shirtless Renny Wilson.

In particular, though, he tips his hat to Calvin Love, whose scrappy, late-night approach to synth pop has evidently rubbed off on Mills. “There’s a real strong-knit group of performers who’ve stayed home, stayed by themselves, to produce music in Edmonton. I’ve sat in on some of Calvin’s sessions, and he laid down some bass on my tracks. It’s been a wonderful opportunity to live in Edmonton, and draw inspiration from [similar-minded] artists.”

Accordingly, Mills is elated to share the stage with Love and Savage in his hometown — especially because for him, coming back to Calgary is special. It’s where he grew up. It’s where he honed his chops as a musician. It’s where he spurred an impromptu C-Train dance party while shooting the video for “Body Break.”

“That was probably the strangest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Mills admits with a laugh. “I had to commit to that, because if you step on the C-Train with a boombox, you can’t just slouch in the corner. It was probably the best performance experience I’d had, and there was only one person upset with me — lots of innocent bystanders were surprised by it. But I’d just gotten home from a tour to Montreal, and it was like, I had to show Calgary who I was. It was like me saying, ‘Hey, Calgary. I know you might think I’m a nutjob, but this is who I am. So we gotta do this for the sake of both of us.’” - FFWD Weekly

As soon as we sit down for an afternoon interview at 510, Mark Mills pulls out a bag of misshapen treats. “Raw treats with coconut and hemp hearts,” he tells me, handing me one. Later, as I sip on a tall PBR, he’ll pull out what looks like a grinder and sprinkle in an esoteric powder made out of black ants, Cordyceps mushrooms, green tea pollen and “super boner” Jing herbs.

This is a brand new chapter for Mills. Though he is no stranger to the music scene, having played in Life Like Cobra and Hot Sweet Noise, his solo project represents a departure for the tall, clean cut, vibrant musician in more ways than one. For the first time ever, he’s stepping out from behind bandmates and other support systems to take the limelight on his own, flexing, preening and stretching his ’80s-inspired, disco-fuck electro-pop. You can’t help but be dazzled watching him perform: he exudes vitality and confidence, radiating pure, raw sexuality in ways that rock and roll’s usual drive towards self-destruction can’t really match.

This strong sense of inner peace and confidence is key to Mills’ solo work. “I get so excited playing in an environment in which I’m not comfortable, kind of like that ‘Body Break’ video,” he explains, referencing the music video he released a couple of months back, which features him holding a ghetto blaster and dancing for unsuspecting audiences on the C-Train. “I’ve always shied away from awkward situations, but it felt so liberating to fully commit. Going on a train and gyrating and rocking out was so liberating.” He is remarkably candid throughout our hour-long interview, speaking of his past insecurities and the deep soul searching he underwent in the past couple of years. “I was so impressionable to the people I was playing with because I wasn’t sure of my own inspiration, my own vision.”

On stage and on record, whatever insecurities may remain vanish with the thrust of a hip, the drive of a drum beat. Free from the structural constraints of a band, he’s able to loop synth lines overtop drum machines, layering in guitars and vocals whenever necessary, to drive the dance party forward. To hear him tell it, he’s found the path towards his own true expression, a direct conduit to his subconscious.

“I’m a musician,” he admits, both to me and to himself. “The only thing that’s been constant in my life has been lyrics and melodies popping in my head, since I was a little boy. Once I connected with that, I went from a hobby musician to this, almost immediately.”

Finding himself and his path was not without its trials, however. The catalyst for his self-discovery ended up materializing in his son, Jacob.

“It all happened after the baby mama separation. It was just a huge eye-opener,” he says. “I realized that, for so long, I had been living a life that other people wanted me to. I seriously had all these girlfriends since the time I was 12 — pretty much since I started playing bands. I was always so focused on the woman in my life, on them: it was up to them to make me happy… I started addressing all these insecurities, asking why there were there, where they came from, why they developed. I started becoming a confident and independent single dad — it was mostly fuelled by doing the best I could to take care of Jacob.”

Now, with a healthy body and sound mind, he is able to focus on channeling that kind of positivity into both his art and his life around him, to say nothing of raising his kid. With the release of his debut cassette on the horizon, a tour out to Toronto for NXNE, a slot at Sled Island and a 12? on the way, he can’t help but beam with giddy anticipation.

“I want to have the whole [Broken City] patio as the stage,” he eagerly grins, talking about his release. “I’m hoping it’ll be a beautiful, warm summer evening and we can get sexy and sweaty on the patio.”

Mark Mills will release his debut solo cassette, Go Love Yourself, on May 31 on the Broken City patio.

Story and photo by Sebastian Buzzalino - Beatroute

Rock and roll has always been a surefire way to start a party, but when you combine these explosive elements with the sweat and sultry seduction of '80s electro-pop, the party is evolves into a total celebration of the transformative properties of the body. At the head of the party, Mark Mills stands vigorous and proud, chanting his holistic rituals for a new dawn. - www.sledisland.com

I listen to a lot of different music. To old school metal, dirty swag hip hop and classic bluegrass to jazz standards, post-punk and French house. There isn’t a lot of music I won’t at least give a chance to. One genre I’ve been giving the time of day to lately is alt-indie-dance-pop. Stuff like Joy Division, New Order and the like. So I was pretty stoked when I saw today’s video come across the internet at me last week. Mark Mills has been around the Calgary music scene for a while (Life Like Cobra, Needy Cat, Hot Sweet Noise) It’s almost 8-bit in it’s Casio simplicity, but Mills’ voice adds a strange, haunting quality to things. Some of your are going to hate this, but I’m digging this. - X929.CA

Taking his sinewy dance antics to the mean-streets of Calgary, Mark Mills releases new video ‘Body Break’ just in time for the sexiest day of year. - SilentShout.ca