EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Brooklyn’s Indie-Alt Rock Artist Mark Ciani

We are honored to have had a chance to chat with Brooklyn-based songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Mark Ciani, who will release his new album, Utopia, on August 21. We talked about the multitude of topics including his latest music. Please, enjoy.

Hi Mark. Can you, please, tell our readers little bit about yourself as a person and as a musician?

Happy to do so! I’m from Brooklyn, New York. A fun fact about me is that I briefly had recurring dreams about the California King Crab. I’ve been making music in bands and by myself for nearly 35 years and I’ve been putting out albums under my own name since 2022. I make rock music that’s hard to shoehorn into a subgenre but I’ve heard it described as art rock or “cinematic.” Generally speaking, I combine sometimes poignant, sometimes funny, sometimes sad lyrics with pretty melodies and noisy sonic landscapes. I work with a crack team of fantastic musicians and a co-producer and I try to put out an album every 18 months or so. The latest one, Utopia, is out August 21!

What sparked your affinity to the music?

I feel like music chose me. I have early memories of hearing Thriller and Willie Nelson and Tina Turner and loving it all. When my family got cable in the late 1980s, I was hooked to MTV. Def Leppard, Bon Jovi, and Guns N’ Roses were in heavy rotation at the time. That led to an interest in thrash metal and from there, punk, and from there, ska, and from there, R&B and indie rock, with jazz, modern rock, country, and hip hop in between. I’ve been an insatiable consumer of all kinds of music nearly my entire life. If the question is about my affinity to making music, then I suppose I have very fond memories of being in bands as a teenager, playing at VFW halls and church basements, and practicing in garages for hours with friends. During a short period of my 20s when I stopped playing and writing music, I really felt the importance of music in my life due to its absence at the time. And I think a part of the reason that making music feels like such a necessity is the nostalgia I feel about those initial music-making experiences as a teenager.

Where do you consider yourself as a musician at this moment?

The best word I can use is “unencumbered.” For many years, I felt an internal pressure to make a specific type of grand epic rock album. I feel like released it in the form of the twin albums King of Death and King of Death Returns back in 2022. Once those were released, I felt a weight lifted off my shoulders and it has freed me to pursue album projects that I didn’t before because I was too busy chasing this one thing. And I’m really happy with what’s come of this feeling. My last three albums–Sad Robot, The Catacombs, and now, Utopia–have been my strongest and most interesting work, in my estimation.

Speaking about your recent music. What was the initial spark for single “Fault Lines,” and how did the song evolve from that first idea into the finished track?

The song started with a lyrical narrative. I had in my mind a Ukrainian person who immigrated to the US in the 1970s or 1980s, who escaped the restrictions of the USSR and embraced the American dream. But now, seeing so many in the US express sympathy for Russia in the war against Ukraine, the narrator suffered disillusionment. And that’s initially where the chorus came from, “he’s seeing a crack in the fault lines.” Ultimately, the narrative of the song shifted to the story of a soldier experiencing PTSD. The chorus has this natural feel of suspension and resolution, so it lent itself to a big bass drop. And with the lyric being “they’re coming apart,” I thought it would be clever to mirror the chaos expressed in the lyric with an equally chaotic arrangement. Once the full band got into the studio, we all fine tuned the idea, got some great performances, and added some bells and whistles. I think it’s a great first song for the album because it gives the listener a sense of what’s to come.

Was there a particular lyric or moment in “Fault Lines” that was especially difficult—or meaningful—to write?

In my mind, the key lyrics is, “he tells his friends of a fight for a nation / their eyes glaze over, they’re losing patience.” The album as a whole grapples with social isolation and the necessity for connection. And I think “Fault Lines” ties into that theme because the subject of this song is a person who is trying, and failing, to connect. After this bridge, the chorus line, “they’re coming apart” sounds like it could be about the political issues this person concerns himself with, or it could be about the mental state of the person himself. But, you know, my view is no more valid than anyone else, so feel free to tell me I’ve got it all wrong!

What do you hope listeners take away from the song, particularly those who may relate to its themes of disillusionment and uncertainty?

First and foremost, I want people to enjoy the song. It’s an energetic anthem of a song and I hope people can just enjoy it on that level. But for those who dive into the lyrical subject matter, and particularly for those who relate to those themes, I would hope they feel seen and understood. That’s really the most anyone can ask for their art to do, right?

“Fault Lines” explores tension between ideals and reality. How does that idea connect to the broader themes of Utopia?

I wouldn’t have put it that way, but I suppose you’re right. I personally feel like there is a way I want to live: open, vulnerable, grateful for life, and generous with my time and spirit. But even though I know making the choice to live that way would benefit me, there is a reality of bouts of solitude and cynicism that rub against those ideals. That’s a theme that the album touches on quite a bit. In fact, a lot of my music speaks to various ways we (or at least, I) get in our (my) own way.

The album is described as exploring hope and disappointment, certainty and doubt, and the search for meaning. Were these themes something you had in mind when you began writing the album, or did they emerge organically?

No, I don’t think so. I write a lot of songs for each album–normally, between 50 and 60 songs. When I write the first 20 or so, I’m really just writing about anything that comes to mind. Sometimes I’ll just have a cool song title. Another time the melody might come first and the lyric will just naturally form from the shape of the melody. But after I have those first 20, I can normally look back and see what the common themes of the writing are. And there always are some common threads. Then, I start focusing my lyrics for the rest of the songs on those themes. That’s more or less how I wrote Utopia too.

How does Utopia represent an evolution in your songwriting compared with your previous work?

I don’t know if I have the perspective to answer this in an honest way. All of my albums share some DNA with each other, but they also all sound quite different from each other. And that’s by design. My bandmates and co-producer often encourage me to pursue my “weirder” instincts when it comes to sonic textures, arrangements, and songwriting. My last album, The Catacombs, had a fair amount of “weird” moments and I think I leaned harder into those choices this time around. The result is that the songs are constantly evolving from section to section, often in surprising ways. From a lyrical perspective, this album contains fewer narrative story songs than The Catacombs and has a handful of songs with lyrics that touch on themes of the album directly. To put it another way, I often write songs that could be read as short stories, but I rarely write the kind of lyrics that someone might tattoo on themselves, but this album has a few of those. The title track in particular, “Utopia,” has a handful of those.

You blend indie rock, alternative, and power pop with a cinematic sense of scale. What drew you toward that combination on this record?

I write these songs by banging on some chords on the piano. They sound like nothing, but I can hear some version of the finished recording in my head right from the jump. And these songs just sounded that way to me. The rest of the recording process is my collaboration with the band (Grant Zubritsky, Dave Scalia, Kirk Schoenherr, Ann Courtney, Jeni Magana, and my engineer and co-producer, Fernando Lodeiro) to bring that vision to life. I won’t fight you when you call the songs “cinematic.” I think that’s probably fair, but I think the songs often have lyrical development that deserves the emotional weight of those musical arrangements. That’s the more intellectual answer. The simpler and perhaps even truer answer is that I’m 45 years old, but I’m still a kid playing around in a studio trying to make fun, interesting noises and this is what comes out of my mind in collaboration with my band.

How do you balance writing lyrics that are personally specific with creating songs that listeners can see themselves in?

I’ll qualify this answer at the outset. I want people to listen to my music and I’m grateful to anyone who listens and appreciates it. With that said, I don’t account for the listener until very late in the creative process. I normally think about the listener when I’m sequencing an album and figuring out how long the album should be and which songs flow from one to the next. When I’m writing, however, I’m only thinking about what I personally find compelling. I trust that however specific, odd, or weird the stories I tell, listeners will find something in them.

As an independent artist, what has been the most challenging part of bringing a record as ambitious as Utopia to life?

Every record is a challenge and I love that. Writing albums is pure joy; it’s unfiltered creativity. But that process can be difficult because it is solitary and it depends entirely on my own ability to birth these songs out of nothing. Then, working with everyone in the band and Fernando is this beautiful collaboration. That has its own challenges because we’re all working together to figure out how to best fulfill the potential of each song. It goes on and on. Mixing and mastering are both exciting as the end of the race is in sight, but making those final creative choices is a very anxious process. I think I’ve made enough records at this point that I’m comfortable, and even fulfilled, by the challenge of making a record, even one as ambitious as Utopia. If I had to pick a most challenging part, it would be this part–where I’m trying to get word out that folks should give it a listen!

What have you learned about yourself as a songwriter while making this album?

People have told me that my last two albums, The Catacombs and Utopia, are slow burns. Meaning, they were intrigued the first time they listened, liked them the second time, and by the fifth time, they were hooked. And they seem to think that’s even more true of Utopia than The Catacombs. I have mixed feelings hearing this! On the one hand, I really want people to listen and immediately love the record. On the other hand, I’ve experienced many of my own favorite records this way. I think a lot of great albums are so rich and layered that many listeners can’t sufficiently form a final opinion on them from one or two listens. I can’t say that my albums fall into that category or not. But at the very least, I’ve learned that my records appeal to an audience, but for a portion of that audience, their appreciation grows with repeat listening.

After spending so much time writing and recording Utopia, what do you hope this album ultimately leaves listeners feeling?

I really just hope it’s an enjoyable listening experience. And I hope listeners have the patience to listen to it as an album because I think the record makes the most sense that way. If people have an emotional connection to the lyrics or music or both, that’s even better.

What’s next for Mark Ciani after Utopia?

Well, I’ve started to record a new album and the band will be joining me at a studio in October where we’ll lay down most of the tracking. I expect that record will be released in the second half of next year. I also might release some songs that have been recorded for the last several projects, but haven’t been included on the albums. And I’m currently writing a record that I’m hoping to record next year and release the following year. Always creating, always looking forward!