Repeat After Me

"To be honest, it wasn't really a conscious decision. In terms of my own musical knowledge and stuff. I actually made the decision to start learning to sing a couple of years ago. It was after the release of my last album [2011's Speaking Volumes],” says Tremlett, explaining what led him to get piano lessons. “There was stuff I'd never tried before on that album.”

“It was just about strengthening up my vocal performance as a rapper... But, while I was doing it, my teacher started teaching me piano. So, I was learning chords, melodies and the actual structure of music. Which is not something I'd looked at since I was a kid,” he impresses. “Learning about that stuff in the context of what I'm doing now was a big help.”

Telling Scenes isn't just another album for Rob Tremlett. His third solo outing as Mantra, Telling Scenes finds the respected rapper getting ambitious. It's taken him nearly two years to really tease it out. As a musician, he's taken a more hands-on role in writing and production. As a lyricist, he's digging deeper than ever.

“Lyrically, I did a few things that I'd never really done before. I address a lot of personal issues on this album that I've never touched on in a song before. I don't want to use the term 'soul searching' – but I guess I just did,” he quips. “I think I personally became a bit more reflective over the time I worked on this album.”

It's gone through a couple of incarnations. Initially, Tremlett was reaching for something far more obscure. In discussing the album's initial direction, he talks of minimalism and cathedrals. Mantra's third studio album was intended to be a vast, cavernous recording. The eventual product didn't turn out like that.

“It was way darker than the final album ended up being. I wanted it to be really dark, I wanted it to be really minimal. I was working with a few vocalists and we were writing these almost choir-style vocals and basing a lot of the songs around that. Basically, I saw a big, Gregorian church.

“And that's where I was spitting my raps. I was taking it back to the abbey. I was the fucking monk, y'know what I mean,” Tremlett jokes. “A lot of those early ideas managed to get onto the album in some way, but I think I just wasn't in that dark, brooding place. There's a few lighter tracks, there's a few hardcore banging tracks. There's both sides.”

Tremlett's work as Mantra has always had a pronounced difference from that of his peers. For one thing, there's genuine darkness and struggle to Mantra's narrative. One of his closest friends was murdered at the outset of Tremlett's career. More pragmatically, his early albums have a far broader stylistic palette than found on those of his contemporaries.

“I'm still really proud of everything I did on those first two albums. When I listen to my first solo album, I kind of go, 'Wow, I don't write like that anymore'. Sometimes, I look back and go, 'Wow, I wish I could think like that again',” he reflects. “It was much more dreamy, much more abstract. A little bit cryptic. But, that was just the starting point. But it's gotten me to the point where I'm at now – which is much more of a complete artist. I feel like I've honed it. I'm a much better songwriter now. Those early records hold a very special place in my heart but I think I've been able to take their strengths and really build on them with this album.”

Most poignantly, Mantra's work has always been shot through with a sense of spirituality. Tremlett's chosen alias alone is a hint of the greater depths at play within some of his work. He still maintains that nationalistic sense of larrikinism (see: recent single Loudmouth) but there's always something going on beneath the surface.

“I'm certainly not a religious person. In fact, I'm quite adamantly not a religious person... But I'm totally accepting of all forms of spirituality and I really value the sense of spirit. The idea of the spirit and spirituality. I feel like I definitely consider myself a spiritual person in that I know what my soul needs to be happy and content.

“Can't always get it, but I know what it is,” the MC says with a laugh. “It's certainly not a thing I rigidly stick to or whatever, though. I think the spiritual connotations of the albums are often simply a product of me thinking about the world and my place within it.”