Recoil: As Open As They Wanna Be By Steve Holtje
Wilder says his approach to Recoil hasn't changed much since he left
Depeche Mode. "Obviously I can spend more time on it, so it's more involved.
But in terms of its concept, it hasn't really changed, because it was
always designed to be a very open project and very experimental, and,
in a way, an antidote to what I was doing in [Depeche Mode]. It's still
very experimental and still open. That doesn't mean sometimes it can't
go more structured and more toward pop, but generally speaking, it's
just as open as it wants it to be, and it can mutate, and it can bring
in many different people at any given time."
Liquid was partly built around thoughts stirred up by a plane
crash Wilder witnessed. "Really, the album was never intended to be
about that," he emphasizes, "but I had this one track I was working
on, and this incident kept coming back into my mind when I was working
on this music, so I thought I might as well use it to write this particular
track. And in the end it was a good way to kinda make sense of all the
stories that were contributed by the other writers. And the way I found
to make sense of it was to put all the stories into the mind of the
man going down in this crash and make them become kind of his life memory
as he's about to die in this air crash. And that was the thought that
stayed with me after I witnessed this particular incident, which was
a military plane that literally crashed right in front of us as we were
driving around, myself and my partner, in the middle of nowhere in Scotland."
Of the tracks with Blackman, Coerbell, and Galas, Wilder explains,
"I sort of build a rough framework with the music, which has a kind
of atmosphere that I like and some kind of loose structure but nothing
more. At this stage, I didn't have any idea about using this black-box
idea as a sort of overall theme or anything. Once I got these collaborators
involved, which is really dictated by the music and what that's kind
of indicating, I didn't tell them that I wanted them to write a story
that could be a man's memory. All I did was pick someone I think is
good at what they do and can write, and just let them have a free rein,
give them the track, and say, just write a story to this, whatever you
like. So it's just my way to make sense of everything afterwards."
Speaking both of the group in general and of Liquid in particular,
Wilder continues, "I wanted [Recoil] to be my project, rather than that
kind of group or a democracy. But at the same time, I'm not a dictator,
so when I bring other people in, I want them to bring their characters
and for them to contribute, so I don't tell them what to write. It was
really allowing the music to dictate the kind of vocalists. So, for
example, with Diamanda Galas I had this very dark blues feel to this
particular track, and that's what made me think about her, because I
knew from her previous work that she goes into those gospel and blues
areas. And likewise with the spoken-word people."
The direction Recoil has taken so far -- one which Wilder thinks will
change next time out -- reflected the way he conceived of and constructed
the music. "I kind of gravitated towards [the spoken-word artists],"
Wilder states, "because I felt the music needed some kind of narration,
dialog. I often start building the music by using a bit of sampled film
dialog, something like that just to give me some kind of focus. Most
of the time I'm thinking around in the dark; I don't really know what
the direction is, so I need something to sort of be a focus. So this
music came together, and it had this sort of filmic quality to it, so
in a way I suppose I was looking for actors, but actors don't write
words, so spoken word's the next thing, really, where someone can write
words, tell a story. Obviously, I go towards these people that have
this kind of strong character. I think the music kinda needs that. I
try to find people appropriate to the atmosphere of the music."
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