2025 / A Lucky 7 / Mark Barrott

2025 saw Mark Barrott’s epic Everything Changes, Nothing Ends get remixed, while he himself turned his hand to amazing orchestral re-imaginings of The Grid’s Balearic classic, Floatation. Mark finished the year relocating, returning to Ibiza, and completing a timeless “ambient jazz” collaboration, I Am The Sun, You Are The Moon, with Norma Winstone and Leo Taylor.

Mark has also just reissued his first ever release, as Electronic Love Foundation. Expect a full review in 2026.

Mark, like a lot of my talented friends is too busy making music to really keep up with new releases. So rather than a list of recordings, instead, he has kindly shared 7 things that influenced him over the last 12 months.

Wonderful words by the terribly talented Mark Barrott.

BOOKS

Elizabeth Alker / Everything We Do Is Music

I love reading music books, as long as they have a left field approach that holds my interest. Elizabeth’s book is a great ‘history’, highlighting the connectedness of subjects that appear sonically disparate on the surface. I love the fact that it can be read as a book or just dipped into on a random ‘chapter by chapter basis’ and it has the ultimate bonus of a Steve Reich interview.

Richard Norris / Strange Things Are Happening

Richard has lived a very interesting life – if you doubted that in any way, read this book – it’s engaging, enthralling and fascinating. It captures electronic music / rave culture through the eyes of one person from acid house onwards.

What I love about great books like these is that they keep me ‘match fit’. Not every day can be a bonanza in the studio and because I rarely DJ and live quite an isolated life – by choice. The scene that exists is the one in my head, and delving into books like these keeps me in the scene when I’m not in studio mode.

Paüls Wildfire / Remixing The Grid’s ‘Flotation’ / Vegyn

These three things are all interconnected and form the most influential axis of 2025 for me.

After two years away from Ibiza and a brutally cold winter on the Spanish mainland in 2024/25, I was, in early summer, dreading the thought of another winter over there. I was dreaming of a return to Ibiza, but didn’t feel it was practically possible for another 12 months.

Then, within a couple of weeks, Richard Norris / BMG asked me to remix the Ibiza classic ‘Floatation’, and then there was a massive out of control wildfire nearly knocking at my door.

I was a little lost at the start of working on the Grid remixes as to what approach to take, and felt a little intimidated given the song’s iconic status and the previous remixers – Weatherall! Out of the blue I heard Vegyn’s re-working of the Air classic ‘Moon Safari’ – an album I hold very dear – and I loved the fresh approach he’d taken with the tracks in terms of re-harmonising a lot of them. In the end, the only practical thought that found it’s way into the Grid work was the idea to slow “Flotation” down, and that’s often the case – you hear something that you really love, but its practical impact on your own work is often quite left field. However, for me, in this case, it was enough to get me started and once I was on my way, I immediately felt very Ibizan again and started to plot a more immediate return – so a huge thanks to Richard for asking me to do it.

In the middle of working on these remixes, a forest fire started 30 km away, on a Monday. I looked at the map and thought, “Oh, Spain’s biggest river is in-between, so thats ok”, except that later that evening 90 km per hour winds blew the fire over the river and out of control. The following day it was 15 km away, and then 7 km away, and then I got a knock at the door and told to pack a bag in case of evacuation. It struck me at the time, that when watching the LA wildfires a few months earlier, you feel for the people that lost everything, but because its not your life, it’s only a fleeting feeling… until it happens to you and your garden smells like the 5th of November.

I packed a cat bag, a studio bag, a personal bag and a clothes bag, and then looked around the house and saw all this… stuff and started to wonder what the point of having it all was. I remembered the first year in Ibiza, after the excesses of Uruguay, with just one suitcase, the world smallest studio setup – that Sketches From An Island came out of – and how happy I was, and I decided two things… live with less, and if I get evacuated, I’m driving to the ferry and going home to Ibiza. Luckily at the last minute they got the fire under control, but in that moment, my future was decided and I started to look for a house in Ibiza.

Which leads nicely onto number 6 – which counts double making 7!

IBIZA

Jump forward a few months and here I am, back ‘home’. This was the best life decision I’ve made in recent memory. Ibiza was always Santa Gertrudis to me, but the only option this time was up near Aguas Blancas in the north. After a few weeks of been here and thinking, “Well, this isn’t Santa Gertrudis”, I’ve fallen in love with this part of the island. The visceral nature, the clifftop walks overlooking the sea, the peace and quiet, and it’s Ibiza – nothing is really far away. I’ve just spent two years in a weird modern day version of “Deliverance”, where everything was one hour away.

I wake up every day with my soul and heart singing, and in January it’ll be time to start channelling this feeling into a new album… after a ten year gap it’s time to start composing some new “Sketches From An Island”.