Originally published on Panic Dots.

I recently had the great pleasure of interviewing Chris Lee-Marr, the man behind Esperi. I only became aware of him when his last single came out at Christmas, the gorgeous and poignant Made For Life, which was accompanied by a b-side called “Snowman” – the accompanying video to which lodged a lump permanently in my throat. The man has a talent for making beautiful music without being sappy or maudlin, with lyrics that make you mourn your childhood and yearn for a simpler time.

Esperi’s latest release was the instrumental single, My Tear Dissolved The View. The song was effective enough without watching the video that accompanied it, but combined with the video – floodgates. The press release that came packaged with the promo compares it to some of Richard D. James’ (that’s Aphex Twin to you and me – who, I would like to clarify once and for all, is just one person) lo-fi creations. They’re not wrong. Check out the video below.

Your last two releases, Made For Life and My Tear Dissolved The View are, quite frankly, beautiful pieces of music. What do you draw from personally to make such emotionally engaging music?

Wow thank you , well I’m a big fan of life and generally really positive so I guess I’m happy in my surroundings and like to express my love for all those little moments.

The video for My Tear Dissolved The View has quite a distinctive look to it. How did the ethereal totem poles and plant life come about?

This video was filmed on a normal dog walk just because we had the camera with us and so we filmed a little journey through the dunes for fun then I edited it later to the track and asked my friend visual artist Graeme Hawkins ‘Retchy’ to have a play around with it and he brought it to life . Graeme also does some live shows with me projecting visuals onto a kite , the guy is amazing.

Talk us through your perfect day.

That’s a really hard question, there’s so much stuff I love and I’d find it hard to cram it all into a day, but it would involve music, friends, my dogs, nice food, the beach, sunshine, swimming, romance and of course Star wars.

If you weren’t making music, what would you be doing?

I’d probably just curl up like a poo, or I’d be an astronaut.

We hear you had quite an eventful trip to London recently. What happened?

Yeah we had a lovely tour which went really well till our van broke down just as we were about to leave for liverpool, so we had to cancel that show which sucks but we got to hang out with our friends in London for longer which was amazing.

You’ve got five minutes before the world is hit by a meteorite. What do you do?

I’m pretty determined, I’d probably be trying to build a spaceship or meteor deflector shield last-minute or something.

Any plans for the near future?

Yeah loads of Scottish shows in June and I’m still beavering away in the studio recording an ep and lp, then we’ll have UK and European shows in July/August, big fun.