Recoil UNSOUND
RECORDINGS For many of us
a home studio is a loft or bedroom crammed - if we're lucky - with a
sampler, synth, computer, some effects and a DAT player. Alan Wilder,
late of Depeche Mode and currently working on a studio-based recording
project entitled Recoil, may have a home studio somewhat grander than
most, but he maintains that his set-up is surprisingly simple. The main
work area was actually planned by a interior design company, and consequently
exhibits the same exquisite, minimalist, open-plan design as his family
home (as you can see from the pictures accompanying this article). Tbe
studio is not divided into a control room and live room; in fact the
main studio floor has no dividers or acoustic booths of any kind. This
was a conscious decision on Alan's part intended to meet his own methodology:
"It's important
for me to have space. Both at home and in the studio. This place was
never designed to have a controlled sound or environment like a traditional
studio, but rather to have the feel of a workshop, with plenty of light
and space." As though some
perverse inverse square law is at work, the amount of light and space
in this amazing home studio appears in total contrast to the sound of
the new Recoil album Unsound Methods, which is a densely-plotted, dark
and atmospheric work.. It's all quite some way from Wilder's work with
Depeche Mode, with whom he shot to fame in the '80s. Answering an anonymous
a group’s Melody Maker Wanted ad for a keyboard player in 1981, Alan
was fairly surprised to find himself in Depeche Mode, replacing Vince
Clarke (until this point the chief song writer in the band), who had
just left the group. Song writer duties in Depeche were subsequently
taken over by Martin Gore, and Wilder became responsible for programming,
sound design and production in the group as time went on, leaving no
outlet for his own musical compositions; a handful were released on
Depeche Mode B-sides or ,is the very occasional low-k-ey album track,
but that was all. It is now tempting to view Wilder's solo project Recoil,
which he launched in 1986, as his way of musically letting off steam
from Depeche Mode, but as he explains, the idea of the frustrated composer
desperately struggling to find an outlet for his darker musical outpourings
while operating day-to-day in a hugely successful pop band somewhat
belies the true, much more casual origins of the Recoil project. Admittedly,
since his well-documented split from Depeche a couple of years ago,
Recoil has become the focus for Wilder's creative energies, becoming
a one-man musical melting pot which has so far managed to mix blues,
rock, electronics, classical elements, ambient and rap (and that's just
for starters). But in the beginning, there was just a collection of
tracks released in the n-dd-'80s, entitled (with typical minimalism)
l+2; just a home demo which hadn't even been intended to lead anywhere
in particular. Wilder: "1+2 was
really just me mucking around at home. It was a cassette demo on a 4-track
Fostex or Tascam, and only ended up being released after I played it
to Daniel Miller, Managing Director of Mute Records, Depeche Mode's
independent record label. He said, 'Could you re-do this?' I didn't
really have time to do it properly, so we just decided to release it
inconspicuously, as it was, and not pay too much attention to it." The modest success
of l+2 led Wilder to release a more ambitious follow-up three years
later. 1989's hydrology was still a far cry from the commercial pop
sound of Wilder's day job, however. It remained entirely instrumental,
and was still recorded on a fairly modest set-up. "Hydrology was a step
up from l+2. It was done on a half-inch 16-track Fostex machine. So
there were limitations, but it was much more versatile than the first
thing I had done. Recoil was still very much an aside to Depeche Mode,
with no pressure or expectations placed upon it. In other words, it
wasn't my main concern, and was always going to be an 'antidote' to
Depeche Mode in some ways; a way to alleviate the frustrations of always
working within a pop format. I have nothing against the pop format,
but if I was going to do something on my own, there was no point in
repeating what I was already doing in the group. It was intended to
be completely different and experimental. It didn't matter if it was
too left-field or too weird for people, because I was still doing the
pop thing on the other side." However, it could be argued that Bloodline,
released in 1991, was a much more commercial effort. With vocals from
Douglas McCarthy of Nitzer Ebb, Toni Halliday of Curve, and Moby, it
came closer to having actual sores, albeit songs which split and divided
with alarming regularity, For Wilder, though,
there was no conscious attempt to change: "I certainly didn't feel -a
pressure to make it more conventional, but I did feel that I couldn't
just keep producing experimental instrumental music all the time. I'd
quite often get to a stage where I thought the music lacked something,
and reasoned that if I was to progress with it in any way, I would have
to bring something else in - be it vocals or whatever to enhance what
were basically backing tracks. Bloodline was a halfway-house between
the early stuff and what I'm dome now. I brought the vocals in, but
I didn't really see it through in the way I should have done; I think
I lacked the energy. I had Depeche Mode commitments, and I was really
fitting Bloodline into the first real break the band had taken in 10
years. "By the end of that year - while also producing a Nitzer Ebb
album - I'd just run out of energy. I think the album suffers a little
bit because of it, especially the vocals. They're there as almost last
minute atmospherics rather than to make real songs." And so to this
year's Unsound Methods, which continues the collaborative style of Bloodline.
Douglas McCarthy returns on the Apocalypse Now-inspired track 'Incubus',
as well as the sinister 'Stalker', and Alan has also roped in his partner,
Hepzibah Sessa, formerly of Miranda Sex Garden, on backing vocals. In
addition to Hepzibah, other vocals are supplied by Hildia Cambell, a
session singer, whom Wilder previously worked with on his final Depeche
Mode album, Songs Of Faith & Devotion. Two complete newcomer- are New
York. artist and poet Maggie Estep, who brings her own unique slant
to the spoken-word naratives of 'Luscious Apparatus' and 'Control Freak',
and a young singer named Siobhan Lynch, whose demo was passed on to
Wilder, and who guests on two tracks 'Drifting' and 'Missing Piece'.
However, Wilder explains that many of these collaborations are born
of necessity rather than through any great desire to have anyone else
involved. "It sounds arrogant,
but if I could do everything myself I would. It's just that sometimes
the music requires aspects that don't come naturally to me. Lyrics and
vocals are obvious examples. When it comes to engineering, I would prefer
to do it all myself, although by the time I get to the final mix stage
it can become a lot more complicated for me to deal with everything
objectively. [in fact, long-time Depeche Mode collaborator Steve Lyon
assisted with the engineering and mixing on Unsound Methods.] I suppose
what I'm really saying is I like to work alone - though this doesn't
mean that I don't ever want other people's input. I enjoy collaborating,
but not on a permanent basis. With Depeche Mode, what I learned over
the years from working with other people has been invaluable. It's left
me in a position where I know what I want in terms of production. Nowadays,
I find that working, with other people slows that process down, and
sometimes turns it into a battle. At this stage in my life, I don't
feel I want that any more." Another potential
drawback when bringing in people new to the music business, like Siobhan
Lynch, can be a feeling of intimidation on the part of the newcomer,
as they start work with someone who already has a successful career
in the business. Wilder agrees that it can be difficult to get over
this, but in this case, he minimised problems by entering into a musical
collaboration with Lynch before the two of them actually met, by demo'ing
songs on DAT and s.-ending them back and forth, each musical partner
expanding on what was on the tape with each pass. Wilder: "It seemed
quite a modem way of working. I didn't want to act too embroiled with
someone and find out we were completely incompatible. This way you can
avoid a head-on collision." Perhaps because
of such precautions, Alan feels he rarely clashes with people when recording:
"I think I'm quite diplomatic in the studio. I'm able to put people
at case, and encourage them to bring the best out of themselves. I know
that's why Douglas McCarthy likes working with me; I've always been
able to get the best out of him. Not that he lacks confidence, but a
lot of singers do need some guidance, and to work with someone who is
going to push them. Dave [Gahan - singer with Depeche Mode] loved being
driven hard, even to the point where he would become frustrated; but
then the next day he would say, 'I'm so glad you did that, because I'm
really pleased with how my vocal sounds'. It would seem
that once in the studio, Siobhan Lynch also responded well to Wilder's
diplomatic approach to recording -Siobhan had a maturity in her voice
that to me was way beyond her years; it was full of intensity and emotion,
and in the studio, that intensity poured out of her. "All the collaborations
worked in slightly different ways. With Hildia, I wanted her to act
like a session sinner, and really just recreate an idea I already had.
With Maggie, I hadn't heard anything, she had in mind for the music
until she arrived, and that was the most exciting but also the most
tense collaboration, because I didn't really know what to expect. She
came with a whole set of lyrics and recited her words pretty much from
start to finish. Then I pieced it together with a hard disk editor.
"As I've said,
on Bloodline, I almost purposely held the vocals back; at the time I
wasn't so interested in the words, only the textures. This time around,
the words were really the top line. I'm very careful about the placement
of everything, that's the part of the process I enjoy. For me, this
process is crucial to provide an overall continuity, so that I can use
four completely different vocalists without the record sounding. chaotic
and unfocused." SOUNDS OF FAITH
& DEVOTION At no time does
Alan snipe at or carp about his former bandmates. Aspects of the split
make him uncomfortable, yet he will quite cheerily reminice about a
particular tour, party or recording session: "I don't mind talking about
the Depeche Mode connection at all, because it's obviously relevant
to where I am now. However, in two or three years, when I make another
Recoil album, it's going to become more tedious to me. I would hope
by then that most people will leave it alone." When he is asked
how it felt to listen to Ultra, Depeche's most recent album and their
First without him, he admits it was a weird experience: "I can't hear
it in the same way as any record I was involved with, but I certainly
don't feel a yearning to be involved again, and I've no regrets about
leaving at all. The album is difficult for me to comment on, though
I do have something of a stock answer, which is: you can probably work.
out what I think about it by listening to Unsound Methods and then Ultra,
because the two records tell you everything you need to know about what
the musical relationship was between myself and Martin [Gore]. It's
almost as if we've gone to the two extremes of what we were when we
were together. What the band had before was a combination of those extremes.
It had run its course for me - and that isn't me sayin the group itself
has run its course. What I mean is that I didn't have anything else
to contribute within the band." Alan Wilder's
time in Depeche Mode saw the band's sound mature into an organic, atmospheric
blend of electronics with elements of pop, rock, blues and experimental
music. This obviously still appeals to him: "I love that hybrid mixing
of styles where you blend electronics with gospel, for example. One
reviewer compared Unsound Methods to Paul Hardcastle, saying it was
Electro-nonsense or something. This album is so un-electro, that's the
thing. There is much more of an organic slant on this than on anything
I've done before. To dismiss it as electro-Paul Hardcastle is disappointing,
lazy journalism. I think, in fact, it has more in common with Songs
Of Faith A7u] Devotion than it does with Bloodline. I always felt that
using electronics had some great advantages, but usually at the expense
of a certain groove. So I don't want to get sucked into that again.
I want to keep the electronics at the appropriate level, Makino sure
they have something 0 to contribute, but also Makino sure the sound
and atmosphere has a feel and a roundness." By the time Wilder
left Depeche Mode, after the Songs Of Faith & Devotion album, the ,group
had moved firmly away from what had been described as 'plink-plonk'
synth pop. Strangely, this led to the band receiving flak- at the other
extreme, from synth purists. Alan nods, "There was a criticism levelled
at Songs Of Faith & Devotion, that it was somehow a rock album. Yet
if you listen to it, it's so far from a rock album, it's untrue. Okay,
so there's some live drums and guitars on it - so that somehow makes
it a rock album? In the early days, we had silly rules about not using
guitars, and then we realised it was ridiculous to have any rules about
instrumentation. You could use any instrument if it works. I mean, there
are guitars on 1983's construction time Again. With Songs Of faith &
Devotion, the songs seemed to lend themselves to a more aggressive,
looser feel. Violator [19901 had been a more precise record, although
there were a lot of guitars on there as well. Yet somehow it was still
very programmed and rigid. songs Of Faith & Devotion was much less inhibited
and dynamic, but far from being a rock album." This process of
disinhibition has continued in Wilder's work with Recoil, and is clearly
something he welcomes. Alan is the first to admit that in the synth-
and sampler-dominated early and mid-'80s, Depeche Mode sometimes went
very overboard to get a sound: "By the time we came to record [1984's]
Some Great reward we not only had the Emulator, but Daniel Miller had
invested £60,000 in a Synclavier which rarely worked - although when
it did it sounded great. I think there was a time when Daniel got too
involved in the technology: I can remember one particular sound we created
for 'Shake The Disease'. The part itself was virtually moronic. It was
so simple it was unbelievable; a two-note riff. And we ended up using
24 sounds layered on top of each other, every sound in the orchestra!
These, of course, all then cancelled each other out, and the end result
sounded like a sine wave! That epitomised how far up your arse you could
go. "these days I
can still use 40 or 50 sounds per song, but somehow there's still space
in the music. To me, the details are very important, and I'm not content
with guitar, bass and drums as my only instrumentation. If you've got
the possibility to refine your music by bringing in a variety of atmospheres
and textures, then why not do it? You can draw people into the music
even though all the little details don't really make themselves apparent
right away. "Depeche Mode spent a lot of time farting around, possibly
with too much equipment. We also tried too many ways of doing something
that was really very simple. I think one of the benefits of working
on my own is I don't have to go through everybody's ideas. I don't have
to answer to anyone." It's easy to assume
from looking at Alan's amazing studio that he's a technology addict,
especially when he presses a button and part of the studio floor slides
away, James Bond-style, to reveal a basement 'store room', housing a
host of older samplers, amongst them an Emu Emulator II, and an original
Emax. But, in fact, Alan has a cautious outlook when it comes to purchasing
gear, and though Unsound Methods is a dense, dark album sonically, it
belies the actual amount of equipment used to create it. "I've never really
had a particularly complicated equipment set-up," he explains, "Obviously,
I do embrace technology, but I never spend a lot of time researching
all the latest equipment. I'm like most people, really... get something
that works and I stick with it. Occasionally, I update when it becomes
obvious I need to, but basically I like to act a set-up that works for
me, then I don't think about it too much. I can't stand equipment manuals,
so I never even read them. I just find it boring. If you really get
too involved in technology you go crazy, because there's too much choice.
I try to use tools to their optimum, but if I really took time to fully
explore the technology, I would never get any work done!" A staple of Recoil's
output is the re-use of familiar sounds from Depeche Mode or previous
Recoil albums. For this reason, a lot of Recoil's equipment has been
around since Alan first started with Depeche Mode. "My studio now
is made up of bits and pieces I've acquired over the years. I always
had things like my Minimoog anyway, and then I'd bring keyboards like
the Emulators home. In fact, I was working with the internal sequencer
in the Emulator for a while, which wasn't very good, but it was all
I had around. In terms of recording, everything was going onto a 4-track
reel-to-reel, so it was a very basic set-up to begin with. "The Minimoog
is a machine I return to now because there are sounds in there I particularly
like for a certain job. I use it for sequencer-type basslines or for
a mid-range parts - sort of bubbly synth sounds with a wide dynamic
range, using velocity sensitivity. That doesn't mean it's not capable
of doing other things, of course. "Most of what
I'm doing at the moment is very sample-based, with an original source
sample providing the sound. I then use the samplers as a tool to manipulate
that source sound, and in that respect I always look for an instrument
which has really good filtering, time-stretching and lots of possibilities
for stacking sounds on top of each other. Those kind of facilities are
what interest me. Consequently, I end up using Akais. I prefer them
to my Emulator 111, mainly because of the Akai’s better output assignment
facilities, and also the fact that you can stack more sounds on top
of each other. The EW actually sounds very good, but is a bit limited
in that department. 'l also got fed
-up with Emulators because I would purchase one for a lot of money,
and then six months later they'd bring out an incompatible new model
that rendered mine redundant. I got very angry about that, which is
another reason why I ended up with these Akai’s. They seem to do what
I want, so I stuck with them." Alan also finds it important to have
easy access to the equipment in his set-up. To this end, a Mark Of The
Unicorn MIDI Time Piece AV is invaluable. "I use a Korg, O1/W ProX as
my master keyboard. All the other keyboards and modules run through
the MTP AV. Then I can assign parts to any machine. I've just got one
patch on the MTP which allows me at least 64 MIDI channels. I can have
8x 16 MIDI possibilities via the MTP, which is easily enough." The heart of the
Recoil set-up is Alan's Power Mac running Cubase XT v3.0. His ultimate
aim is to run all the tracks, his effects and acoustic parts from the
computer, without laying anything to tape at any stage: "I've always
dreamed of being able to have everything immediately accessible and
totally flexible. In the past, there has always been some limitation
or other. I've had to commit my work to a format which allows no room
for change later, like tape. Now-everything is flexible - - including
the vocals. I'm able to restructure what someone has ,given me, such
as a lead vocal, and pick pieces up and move them around. If you want to
go to the chorus it's simple, there's no spooling, of tape or syncing
things up. It's just there. That's why I really love Cubase's Cycle
Mode. If I want to work on a two-bar sequence in the middle of a chorus,
I can go into Cycle and repeat it over and over, making adjustments
as it goes. You just couldn't do that in the '70s!" Despite the freedom
technology offers the modem musician, it also brings its own unique
problems, as the average SOS reader will be aware, and, like everyone
else. Alan suffers the occasional technological irritation. "I do find
there are drawbacks with Cubase sometimes, in terms of 'syncing over
MIDI. Sometimes my drum loops aren't tight enough, but at the end of
the day, if it feels good, things like that don't bother me, although
by the same token, slight timing discrepancies can be crucial to the
'feel' in a track, and in that respect I often want to put them right.
If that makes me seem like a trainspotter then I would argue against
that; I'm very conscious of the feel and the groove of music, to the
point where I am almost obsessed by it. Not because I want everything
regimented, but because I want to optimise that aspect." Although the developments
in direct-to-disk recording are the best thing to happen to the recording
studio since the invention of the tape-based multitrack, Alan is aware
he still hasn't put together his ideal set-up: There is so much technology
out there which is better than what I'm using at present. This is probably
because I haven't got the patience to explore it all. My ideal set-up
would be if I could do everything with just the computer as long as
it could still give me the sound of all that brilliant outboard gear,
the valve compression, amplification, and EQ... but in software, in
a computer based format. I'm not that far
off having that capability, but I do need to refine my set-up a little
bit, so that with the next album I won't have to pick up my studio and
transport it to a 'not-very good' commercial studio with an automated
desk and a more controlled sound, spending lots of money in the process,
which was what I had to do on this particular album." Later in the evening,
as Alan Wilder stretches out on his living room floor, relaxing with
his family, I beam to wonder if this is the same man responsible for
an album full of darkness and barely concealed violence. But he shrugs
this off: "Martin always thought there was a lot of humour in Depeche
Mode's music. I didn't think so particularly, although the people themselves
were funny and humorous. I don't understand why it is you have to be
like your music, or why making music which reflects your own personality
is important. The darker sides of people's characters are much more
interesting than the side They let you see. I heard a member of a particularly
well-known band ask recently why it is that people always assume that
just because you're in a band with two or three other people, you must
all be great buddies? "It doesn't necessarily
follow that you have to be great friends to have a Good working relationship.
And you don't have to be a certain kind of person to make a certain
kind of music. What's wrong, with being observational? A filmmaker can
tell a story, he doesn't have to live the life. Mike Leigh observes
the entire class system; he doesn't have to put himself on the screen.
I was in a band that wrote melodic pop songs - if I don't do that, is
everything I do now a failure?" The darkness at the heart of Unsound
Methods is almost relentless, which seems to be exactly what was intended.
Alan agrees with this heartily: "In the end, it's a solid body of work that has a continuity and seems to subconsciously deal with the same thing over and over again; this idea of obsession, no matter how that manifests itself. I'm not an obsessive character, so it's intriguing that I should have an interest in subjects which revolve about that." He mulls this over for a second and adds, "It's obviously something I need to act out somehow, bearing in mind I don't write the words to these songs. Nevertheless, the atmosphere and subject matter still comes from me. It's just a side of life that interests me more than writing about having babies." |