Showcase
Lyrics
This page shows the Cover Art of the Professor Blue songs. This art is provided by Runs with Dogs. Together with this, each set of lyrics is provided for each song, overlaying the cover photos.
Song Facts
There is extra detail on each track below each of the titles for you to access. There is also up to date information released on Facebook. You will find these on Professor Blue Facebook page and Mark’s own Facebook page
Videos
Accessing the videos is via on the Videos page.
Bridges in Pisa
The song lyric was inspired by a visit to Pisa. The cover picture reflecting the space between the two banks of the river. The space between people can inspire trust and love or lack of trust and misunderstanding. The video furthers this in illustrating the lyrics.
As it Is
Time Passing in the Fens
This is a song written about the passing of time and the final journey of a couple. In it, lyrics tell of the Fenlands, the area of the UK where Mark grew up. Therein, the imagery is of the Fens, although the cover photo is actually Denmark. The rhythm of the song reflects that of a ticking clock. This is also reflected the the start and end of the video.
Post Trauma
This is a significant song for Mark as it was written about his recovery post surgery. This surgery was for a large tumour which he had been struggling with for a year prior to February 2025. The tumour (behind his cheek and nose, impacting on his singing and vocals) turned out to be benign. The pace and energy of the song is synonymous with the energy of recovery but also the trauma of it.
The Story of Betrayal
Unusually, for Mark, this was a song where the lyrics and the music were written at the same time. It explores betrayal; where one act of betrayal is undercut by another.
Places
Joy in Pembrokeshire
The original lyric was written quite quickly. It was based and written around a sunset evening on a beach in Pembrokeshire in South Wales. The music evokes a feeling around the positive nature and feelings of that trip.
Croatia (and Portugal)
A story of two air flights. In the first of these, on a flight to Portugal, the lyrics were written. That was then rested, awaiting the music to go with it. Then, the music, particularly the instrumental section that makes up the second half of the song, was inspired by a trip to Croatia. Indeed, it was roughed out on the flight back. The two elements of the song were then joined. The name of the song comes from the latter trip.
Landscapes in North Wales
The lyric was written following a trip to North Wales. Black Rock Sands Beach inspired the title. However, the narrative is actually is partially about slate (a large part of the industrial heritage there) and also about the foreboding nature of the landscape.
The story is around returning to a place alone having travelled to the same place with a loved one previously. That calls back emptiness and the sense of loss. The lyrics were imagined as an internal monologue although talking to the person no longer there.
Relationships
Moving Away
This was the last track written and produced prior to Mark’s move away from Devon. By the time recording took place a lot of the instruments had been packed away with only the minimum equipment was left in the studio. A pragmatic and minimalist approach to recording was left. As Mark prefers “real” instruments rather than digital emulation of sounds, he worked out how to produce those from what he had. On it, a bass, a keyboard, a guitar and a few drums remained. From these, a drum was used to make the heartbeat sound central to the track.
Non understanding in relationships
A track about the frustration of not being understood. The story follows an estranged young person’s frustration at not being able to communicate with her mother.
Musically, the production and arrangement is fluid, aligning to the watery aspect of the subject. This includes the wider use of panning of the drums (toms) and the guitar effects chosen.
The original video had the subject diving into the water at the end but some people noted that this could have been construed as a drowning. As this was not the intention, Mark re-edited the video.
Returning home
An interesting pairing with In Tension. That song was a about child having run away and the mother coming to find her. In this case, the narrative tells of the story of a grown up son. He is being called back, the reasons unstated, to his former home. There is a whole set of issues around trust and how we remember things. Indeed, the working title of the track was called “From Memory to Longing.” This title was change a little before release as Mark felt that title was a little weak.
A State of Being
Not stagnating
The lyric is based on a photograph taken by Runs With Dogs (the opening shot in the video). The song tells of autobiographical issues of the fear of being stuck in life but also being fearful of moving on and afraid everything will be out of control. This aligns it to the metaphor of the photograph degrading, rather than real life moving forward and time passing (“time radiates and is gone”).
The original video had one shot of a spaceman flying uncontrolled off into space but that shot was replaced for the final Vevo version.
This is happening to a real person somewhere
A lyric coming from watching the unfolding of wars (the item being watched was Ukraine in this case) and grim news on the tv and how easy it is to depersonalise things happening to real people elsewhere. There are three different contexts to the “father” in each of the sections.
The bassline was one take live, which, although it was the same riff all through, was felt to add texture rather than looping it. The relentless nature of the riff is very deliberate and adds tension, with the song weaving around it. The only relief is the (slightly) hopeful ending where a keyboard is introduced to slightly lift it.
The Buzzard and the Mouse
The inspiration for the lyric came from Mark sitting in his garden and watching a buzzard circling over the hill of the title and thinking about the bird’s perspective, then that of a potential mouse that may well soon become his prey.
The idea for the musical themes follow the mouse in the picked guitar lines and hi hat; with the bass drum, his heartbeat increasing as the song goes on. The buzzard is the swirling keyboard.
Reflecting
Thanks Dad
This was a song written about Mark’s late father, John. It tells of his struggles with dementia in the years prior to his passing. It draws from an incident when John couldn’t identify his own grandson, AJ, from a picture on a shelf and wanted to know who had slid AJ’s picture from its frame, even though it was in there and AJ was in the room with him.
A tribute to old Friends
A song written after a visit to see two friends and ex band mates who Mark hadn’t seen for many years. The lyric was written the day Mark returned home and the style is meant to be a nod towards a more rocky sensibility from those times. The drums are higher in the mix than Mark would normally make them in other songs. The thinking behind that arrangement being one of seeing the world from a drummer and bass player’s perspective, as the instruments that Mark had been mainly playing at that time.
A trip to Cornwall and away from life
The lyric was developed on a trip into Cornwall from his home county, Devon, in the UK; travelling west. This is noted in the Sevenstones name check of a village travelled through. The refences to pantomime are used as a context relating to both politics and the business world, something that the trip (and life) is trying to drive away from.
The drum voice is played live but uses an electronic voice to mimic that of a electronic drum; a kind of backward twist on when, “back in the day”, we would use drum machines to mimic live drums.
Eyes opening
Strange Days
Although not the first song to be recorded (that was The River), it was the first to be released as Professor Blue.
The original version had a layer of keyboards and a number of themic motifs. Having played it to friends, it was felt that was too overly fussy and would be best stripping it back to what was, essentially, the backing track. The only remnant of the keyboard themes can be heard at the end of song.
The song was written about tough times during covid.
Ad Hoc
The song was recorded in association with Mark’s son, AJ. Working at installing some new studio equipment, Mark tested the new installation using this as a test tune. The words heard here were added later. It also accounts for the unusual Professor Blue inclusion of an acoustic guitar. The original version actually had AJ playing drums and keyboard. These were overdubbed by Mark as AJ was not available for overdubs in the later recording sessions, although Mark kept faithful to AJ’s original, off the cuff, arrangement.
Chronologically, this was the first music to be recorded as Professor Blue, but was actually released after 56 Winters Unravelling.
Tough One
Written during a particularly intense period of struggling with mental health issues, both the lyric and the music was written and recorded very quickly. Where generally for other songs, lyrics will take a number of iterations during the process and each instrument will take a number of takes (sometimes many!), the lyrics underwent minimal changes and each instrument only one or two takes. This “rough cut” remains as the only version recorded by Mark of Lost At Sea and serves as a reminder as to the difficult circumstances it was written and recorded under.
Despite the above, it remains one of Mark’s favourite drum performances in the Professor Blue set.