A Chat with Pocket Lint (15.07.26)
Sauntering through diverse genres and dressing his sonic palette with every colour, style and sound, Pocket Lint (also known as Mark Heffernan) found a way of connecting, resonating and engaging through moving melodies. We speak with the UK-based singer-songwriter about his new album, Wunderkammer, what music means to him, future plans, and much more.
OSR: The origin tale of Pocket Lint is that the idea of Pocket Lint came to you while you were carving amethyst cameos. How exactly did this come to you? I mean, were you just carving and the thought of creating music came to mind, or was it a deep contemplation you took several days to consider and act?
Pocket Lint: So, it was lockdown 2020, and everyone was looking to find something to fill their time. I was lucky that I was working, but I was unlucky as I was shielding, so I was unable to leave my flat for 6 months. I thought, “Wouldn’t it be fun to learn how to carve gemstones into cameos?” I am sure it would be fun if you knew anything about it, or had any of the tools. I had neither. So, defeated, I decided to go back to something I knew I could do: music.
OSR: Other than being Pocket Lint, what drew Mark Heffernan to music? Why did you choose to pursue a music career?
Pocket Lint: I have played in bands since I was 13. And in my 20s my band played hundreds of shows, supported some fairly big people and had music played on radio. I wouldn’t say it was a career though; for that I would need to be able to live from it and I have never managed that. For me, music has always been my passion, not a career. As to why I started music in the first place, I had piano lessons from age 5 and picked up the guitar after seeing a school friend play some Jimi Hendrix and thought, “Yup, that is the thing for me”.
OSR: What does music mean to you?
Pocket Lint: Mostly, I think now it is as a means of expression. However, to be honest, it is also a form of permission. Music allows me to be the person I think I am, and so by being a musician, I am able to be myself. When I was younger, it was a guiding light in my life. So much of my knowledge of art or literature came from music. If an artist I loved mentioned something – a band, a book, a painter – I would go and immerse myself in it. So it has shaped my world as well as allowing me to be myself.
OSR: You recently released your album Wunderkammer. What can you tell us about the album? What inspired it, and is there a particular theme or backstory?
Pocket Lint: After my album The Jet Age in 2024, I wanted to change direction a little. I do this after every album as I hate the idea of treading water. This for me involves finding a new way to work, changing around the gear, different drum machines, different synths, different ways of playing. Through the experimentation with gear, a lot of the music is born, but tonally too I wanted to do something new. So, in came the romantic poets resurrected from my teenage bedroom. In came that heavy incense-filled atmosphere and out went the shining sophistication of The Jet Age.
Shelley’s Ozymandias and Coleridge’s Kubla Khan were really the frames that I built the canvas on, but as I was recoding it, I realised that I was actually creating a musical self-portrait. Rather than creating music out of vignettes, I was showing different facets of myself. At that point, I decided I needed an extra person to help me with the mixing and production, which I had always done myself.
OSR: Along with Adam Whittaker, you are involved in the production of your music using a DIY approach. Why do you think being involved in everything from composition to lyrics and production is important? Also, what are the benefits and drawbacks of being self-produced?
Pocket Lint: It’s not that I think that it is important for anyone else, but it is to me. However people want to make their work is fine, but for me, I want control over it and do not want to have to debate lyrics or whether something is commercial enough with anyone. Drawbacks, I suppose, are a lack of funding and support. The advantages are the creative freedom and the ability to follow your muse, wherever she may fly.
OSR: If you could change anything about Wunderkammer, what would it be and why?
Pocket Lint: Hmmm, to be honest, I am not sure I would change anything beyond perhaps redesigning the cover to have the images landscape rather than portrait.
OSR: What do you hope people take from the album, and what does Wunderkammer mean to you?
Pocket Lint: I hope they take whatever they want from it. I don’t feel that I ought to dictate how people feel about it. I would be happy if they enjoyed it, or were confused by it or even disliked it, as it would mean that they had listened to it. I would dislike ambivalence to it. To me, as I said above, it is an album that is incredibly autobiographical and acts as a multi-faceted self-portrait.
OSR: Is Wunderkarmmer a true representation of you as an artist and person at the moment?
Pocket Lint: As I said above, yes, it very, very much is. If you read the accompanying booklet to the CD or hop onto Bandcamp, you can see an invented backstory to each object and in there are snippets of information about me, mixed with some invention.
OSR: If you could introduce a new listener to your music, which track would you recommend and why?
Pocket Lint: God, it would really depend what music they liked, but I think a good place to start would be ‘Cyanometer’. It has synths, guitars, vintage drum machines – it is probably a decent launch point.
OSR: What can we expect from Pocket Lint in the future?
Pocket Lint: I am doing the last few vocals on an album called Seascapes, which is far more shoegaze-inspired. I pretty much ditched the synths, or at least pushed them to the background in favour of experimenting with guitars and particularly parallel processing, which is splitting your guitar signal and running two different sets of effects into two different amplifiers and recording both to see if I could create new textures and ways of working. For me, the new process is always a means of creativity.
OSR: Do you have a message for our readers?
Pocket Lint: Have a wonderful summer and try to make time for art, music, literature and film. Dress however you want and find the things that let you be yourself.
Many thanks to Mark Heffernan for speaking with us! Find out more about Pocket Lint on his Instagram, Bandcamp, SoundCloud, YouTube and Spotify.
This artist was discovered via Musosoup #sustainablecurator
