Mudhut online music magazine
Date : 2000

Recoil

Alan Wilder interview

Many of our readers will be familiar with Alan's work as Vince Clarke's replacement in stadium rock giants Depeche Mode. Alan decided to leave the band in 1995, and continue solely under the moniker 'Recoil', whose new album 'Liquid' is out now. Alan's intention was to make the album a complete multimedia experience, accompanied by some lovely interactive visuals and other exciting stuff. Unfortunately the album didn't quite survive under the hot spotlights of the mudmag reviews page, so we decided to give Alan the chance to redeem himself. We went down to Mute records to talk to Alan about his new album, leaving Depeche Mode and music in general:

  • Would it be fair to say that there is a great deal of electronic influences on this record?

"I don't place much importance on that side of things.

To my way of thinking, the less rules there are the better, which means bringing in all types of music that influence me, and that covers everything including electronics, through to classical music and gospel.

don't actually see too many people doing that - allowing themselves to combine sounds of the orchestra with electronics, or guitars with gospel - things that you don't normally put together. In this day and age, you have the technology to do that. To me, that's the most interesting use of technology. Protools and samplers allow you to do that.

"It's born from that hip-hop method of recording, where you can take a sampler, take elements of records and mutate them. If you go back to Depeche Mode you can hear a good difference between 'Violator' which was early nineties and and the next album. Suddenly our approach changed from programming single sounds to sampling great chunks of music. This whole organic humanity came back, which had been missing on the previous record."

  • Doesn't that mean that a lot of the writing process involves trial and error?

"Yes, it's always a question of lots of trial and error. I don't have a song to start with, which makes a big difference between what I do now and what I did within a group. Obviously with Depeche Mode we always started off with quite a well structured song - whereas with Recoil that doesn't happen until quite late in the day. Until that point it's really a discovery thing. It's a constant wrestling act, really. I'm just fishing for ideas all the time and gradually the songs have loose framework, and then the vocalists get involved."

  • How do you choose the vocalists that you work with?

"I often have ideas for vocalists. That usually comes in after the music has taken shape, because really the music has to dictate who is going to be sympathetic to the atmosphere. An example would be the track 'Strange Hours', which was done with Diamanda Galas. When the music came together it developed this blues/dub feel - quite dark, but very blues based. At that point she came to mind, knowing her from her previous work. She's quite dark and she's quite extreme."

  • Your music seems very cinematic. Have any pieces been used for film soundtracks?

"There is one piece that is being used in an australian film. It's always nice if people want to place your music inside a film. However it's not as interesting as if I was writing music for a film, which would be something completely different. The videos for the music work in much the same way as working with any collaborator. I choose somone because they are good at what they do, then we have a good dialogue about it and they do their thing. It's the same for artwork. I don't pretend to be experts on these things myself, but we want to get the right message across, so I try and get involved."

  • Who has been the best collaborator you have worked with?

"Each one is different. I would say one of the easiest people to work with is Douglas Mcarthy from Nitzer Ebb. He's very easy to work with in the studio, he's able to draw lines through things without offending."

  • Do you feel that letting lyricists have a free reign on your music changes the context of the songs?

"Yeah, and that's a good thing. I want other people's characters to come into the song, otherwise there is no point in getting them involved. I don't want to be a fascist about it, even though there is a bit of thruth behind the idea that I'm a control freak. On the other hand, when I work with other people, I let them do their thing. I think collaborating does bring the most out of both parties."

  • How long did the album take to record?

"In total about a year. It's a build up process. The first few months would be two or three days a week, and then by the end of it seven days a week, twenty hours a day working up to the deadline."

  • Is this your favourite Recoil record?

"The thing is, you would always say that, because, if you don't feel you're improving. It's time to stop. You can never be totally happy with it, because then you've made the perfect record, and you can't do that. I think what drives anyone on, creatively, is the notion that you can do something better."

  • Have you always wanted to work as a solo artist?

"I think that it was always in the back of my mind. I didn't always want to be working in the same pop format, even though we were succesful. I never had a long term view of the project itself. This project was almost born by accident - the first release was never really intended to be released."

  • What made you decide to leave Depeche Mode in 1995?

"There was no one thing, it was a cumulative effect. It had been in my mind for a couple of years before I made the decision. I just made it at that time because it was the end of the tour, and it was a natural break. There had been a build up of frustration over the relationships within the group. Mainly, I was getting bored with the whole mentality of being in a group. That 'being in a gang' feeling doesn't really suit you when you hit middle age! I didn't think that there was much more I could do with the pop format."

  • When you joined Depeche Mode, did you ever think that the band would enjoy so much success?

"When I joined the group I didn't think that it would last that long, and I don't think that anyone in the group thought that it would. We were very wary of looking too far ahead. It was very difficult to get everyone together to discuss a plan as such. We were very naïve in the early days, it was just lads having fun."

  • Did the success change the members of the band at all?

"I don't think that it changed people in a way that they wouldn't have changed anyway.

We all just grew up, and a lot of that growing up was done in public, so it was far more obvious.

It's quite clear that the pressures of life in general have got to certain people."

  • Who is behind the artwork for the album?

"It's Intro, who is Michael Williams, who also directed the video, and they were responsible for the last album as well. We tried to give a continuity to every visual aspect of the project, which means making a link from the artwork through to the music, the videos and the web site. It makes a more powerful overall effect."

  • Do you regard the internet as a powerful promotional tool for acts such as Recoil?

"Yes, the internet is important for Recoil, more so than it would be for Depeche Mode, who have the airwaves, and have the base of fans. My problem is that I'm running a project that not a lot of people know about, and also it's a lot less radio friendly. There is a very narrow band of music that gets radio exposure. I've only really got the internet, where people have total choice. People making so-called 'difficult' music need the internet."

Nick Lisher