However, almost immediately after the album hit stores, Clarke left Depeche Mode. But the October 8, 1993 incident in New Orleans was easily the worst of all. How did this affect your thinking musically about a keyboard players role in a band? The music was certainly tailored to work in the live arena, and was constructed specifically with that in mind. So with the benefits of extra finance, they went in pursuit of a more organic sound. Alan Wilder: Thank you. In fact Toby tried to talk me out of that choice and suggested other songs. AW: Pretty good, I think. So why is it that the audio quality of music is degenerating? He wanted me to tackle Time Its Time but I didnt have any thoughts on that track, or to be more accurate, I couldnt really imagine a way to re-work it. What are your post-tour plans? The medic then brought in a colleague who definitively told Gahan that he had a malignant tumor on his bladder cancer, in other words. In 1982, when young Alan Wilder answered an advertisement in Melody Maker; Keyboard player needed for established band no timewasters; it would prove to be a life-changing moment. That takes precedence over everything else. Alan: "This is indeed the very same JP-8 that I used for a number of years with Depeche Mode - its serial number, history and even the markings can be verified and I believe it still actually contains some the original sounds which I best demonstrated in the 'Synths Revolution' YouTube clip below." Interview is in English, translated to German. Or maybe we could have spread the contributions over 3 discs instead of 2 which would have reduced the fatigue factor of listening to all in one go. So there you go. Kind of electronic pop, if you like that sort of thing. We have stopped listening, we don't have time. I cant pretend I was ever a skilled operator (unlike Daniel Miller for example) but it is certainly a lot of fun to fiddle about with. While not an original member of Depeche Mode, Alan Wilder(pictured left), who joined in 1982, was a vital part of the band during its creative and commercial heyday, playing on albums like "Music for the Masses," "Violator," and "Songs of Faith and Devotion" before leaving in 1995. I think the directive was installed mainly through fear of being regarded as rock, or perhaps just ending up sounding like everyone else. AW: There are good songs [on the post-Wilder albums]. and that I lived with her and her son, who wasn't mine. (Q = depechemodebiographie.de, Lilian R. Franke, A = Alan Wilder). The Mode became elder statesmen, touring the world. It was clear that Mark Hollis in particular was never comfortable wearing the cloak of pop stardom. Revisiting those early days by way of interviews and footage, this 2011 documentary chronicles the immediate impact of the crisis and shows how the community united while taking on a tragedy of calamitous proportion. However, the trip was seemingly cursed for singer Dave Gahan. Does it matter? "Fletch had a true heart of gold and was always there when you needed support, a lively conversation, a good laugh, or a cold pint.". 32 talking about this. Q: Reading between the lines I got the feeling that things As a classically-trained musician, Wilders contribution to DEPECHE MODEs sound would prove to be remarkable. Actually, were playing you. I still dont, in fact. Local music magazine Bravo (which also had a TV series) became particularly enamored with Depeche Mode, but because it couldn't get much access to interview lead singer Dave Gahan and company, the publication populated its pages with tales of the band that its writers simply made up. My personal favourites are by Feiner / Dangerfield / Wilson, Jack Northover, Joan As Police Woman, Nils Frahm / Peter Broderick and ZERO 7 all of whom thought really carefully about how to re-interpret the originals in a completely fresh and exciting way. Bearing in my mind the battles youve fought in the past with the real music brigade, do you think electronic based music has finally got the recognition it deserves? In May 1996, substances nearly killed the singer. Spirit Of Talk Talk is released as a 2CD set and download by Fierce Panda on 3rd September 2012. ; The best places to look for gear usage are typically on the artist's social media, YouTube, live performance images, and interviews. Alan Wilder, whose full name is Alan Charles Wilder, is a famous musician, composer, and record producer. "He looked at the screen and said, 'I can see something.'". Led by the enigmatic Mark Hollis and also featuring Paul Webb on bass and Lee Harris on drums, TALK TALK were originally dismissed by the press for being DURAN DURAN copyists they shared a label in EMI, producer in Colin Thurston and even had a repeated word name! BE: Thats interesting that you brought up film, because one of the things that I was going to ask you is whether you thought about scoring movies, because there is a very cinematic feel to a lot of the songs on this album. We did encounter Mark Hollis a couple of times. Concert Review in a Local Newspaper "If a band can have. To help me decide which song to work on, I asked Mute to provide stems from several short-listed songs, so that I could listen to component parts and make a more informed decision. To give Gahan a break to cope with his break, Depeche Mode had no choice but to cancel its next two dates, the final two stops on the European leg big shows at the Super Bock Super Rock Festival in Porto, Portugal, and at Olympic Stadium, in Sevilla, Spain. This website uses cookies to improve your experience. Have Mark Hollis, Paul Webb or Lee Harris said anything about this project? This dark and wonderful collective is now one of the longest-lasting bands of all time, with its core trio of Gahan, Gore, and Andy Fletcher making interesting and progressive music together for 40 years and seeing100 million albums sold. what you thought and felt really. Yes, thats true, it was used to create the famous bass sequencer parts in the Aggro mix of Never Let Me Down Again. Is DM hinting that Wilder who rejoined the group on stage in 2010 and worked on last year's remix album is back in the fold? Not just a selection of tracks that you cherry-pick something from, but something you listen to all the way through and it makes sense. Pages in category "Interviews featuring Alan Wilder" The following 100 pages are in this category, out of 100 total. When their first album The Partys Over came out in 1982, you had not long been in DEPECHE MODE. We also had to be aware of costs and assure that the project was affordable and workable for all. The long, grueling, nearly-200 date 1993 "Devotional Tour"(and the 1994 "Exotic Tour"extension) was Depeche Mode's biggest ever, but it threatened to destroy the band both as a musical-making entity and as healthy human beings. He is best known to be the ex-member of the band named Depeche Mode. Annie Lennox festive album A Christmas Cornucopia re-released, Classic Pop Presents George Michael is now on sale. I get that comment quite a lot, actually, which is always flattering, of course. [8] Just like after his cancer surgery a couple of months earlier, doctors told Gahan that he simply couldn't keep touring and that he'd have to stay off of his injured leg in order for it to heal properly. BE: I didnt, but I guarantee you that one of our editors does. So thats the reasoning behind it. Play together? Alien concept to Depeche Mode. Martins in a great place at the moment. to contrary statements in the biography. However, despite all their success, it's remarkable Depeche Mode is still a band. From memory, the drums were sampled from LED ZEPPELINs When the Levee Breaks (but secondhand from a rap record). Sorry, I answered about ten questions in one there, didnt I? A: Yes, there was an altercation post-gig concerning Fletch's Primal Scream indeed joined the tour, but the group had a miserable time. This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. And then, during a business meeting in Los Angeles, he suffered a grand mal seizure. And its these aspects of making music that I really enjoy the most, these trial-and-error experiments where something happens that you didnt expect and lead you to a new direction. It was a heady time for us, running about like headless chickens, rolling into town for endless promotion, live shows, guest appearances etc. While singing, dancing, and darkly gallivanting about the stage, as he's wont to do, the 47-year-old singer somehow tore a calf muscle. Whenever Im stumped for something to listen to, I reach for this album to restore my faith in all that is good about modern music. These cookies do not store any personal information. Sign Up. I think electronic music has been recognised for a long time, but we do see more and more acts using film and computers within their performances, and in these modern times (with portable applications on smaller and smaller devices, even your phone), this is becoming more acceptable, even to the diehards. Synth-loving bands like Tangerine Dream, Rammstein, and Kraftwerk all got started there. Growing frustrated with doing the majority of the heavy lifting and receiving little acknowledgement for his troubles Wilder left Depeche in 1995 and put his energies into his solo project Recoil, which is about to release its first retrospective Selected and launch its first-ever tour. Exclusive interview - Alan Wilder (ex-Depeche Mode/Recoil) talks on synths, music creation and his upcoming auction Steelberry Clones got a talk with none other than the synth legend Alan Wilder (ex-member of Depeche Mode and now front man of the electro/synth experimental act Recoil). Among the items for auction are several of your vintage synths. By default I was exposed to the bands music from the time of their very first singles and appearances on TV and radio in the early 80s. from this time problems started to "develop". ideas". I am also a big fan of Lone Wolfs haunting cover of Wealth. According to Alan Cross' "Depeche Mode: The Secret History," the band's main songwriter had suffered from panic attacks before, but they increased with alarming frequency while on the road. In February of the same year, Wilder made a surprise appearance onstage with his former bandmates DEPECHE MODE for their Teenage Cancer Trust show at Londons Royal Albert Hall, to the unsurpassed delight of the fanbase. It was attempted by one artist but rejected (rightly). Rehearsal Studio Footage & Interview With Martin Gore & Alan Wilder 1990 - YouTube 0:00 / 30:25 Depeche Mode. Log in or sign up for Facebook to connect with friends, family and people you know. BE: Theres the understatement of the century. A transcript of the interview and a related .MP3 copy of Wilder's radio greeting was originally hosted on a Polish fan site. Perhaps this is a more modern way to present music than the traditional 5-piece, guitar-drums-bass-synth-vocalist, which is something I wanted to avoid. Whether self-created or deconstructed by a guest artist, over the course of a 30-year career, the electronic rockers have treated the 12-inch club mix as a valid art form. If I had to describe Alan Wilder and his 30+ year career in music in one word, it would be "fearless." Alan Wilder makes no compromises musically, and has bravely ventured into new sonic territories where few others have dared to tread. Probably the main reason "Speak & Spell" sounds so different from, say, "Enjoy the Silence" or "People are People" is because original member Vince Clarke wrote almost the entire thing. No-one had come up with a decent version of that song at that point, so I dived in. But what initial apprehensions did you have when conceiving the RECOIL live show and how have you managed to overcome them? I stole a chicken and got caught. Other sounds on Halo, Im more vague about. Music 'sounds' worse. Visit: www.bluray.recoil.co.uk to find out everything about RECOIL 'A STRANGE HOUR IN BUDAPEST' I think Violator was the first album that we used whole performance drum loops to create rhythm tracks, as opposed to programmed single drum sounds, and Halo was one of the first tracks we recorded for Violator in fact. Fortunately, member Martin Gore stepped up to become the band's primary songwriter, and keyboardist Alan Wilder joined to fill Clarke's instrumental post. You commented on MP3 culture and the decline of the music industry to Side-Line Magazine in early 2008. Alan Wilder about Depeche Mode and other things . But this is much more likea kind of presentation where we have quite a lot of pre-prepared music, and we do some live things over the top, but its tailored with venues and live audiences in mind. a-ha (magne furuholmen) interview [2006] . 3, 2018. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience. Unsound Methods is the fourth studio album by Recoil, released in 1997.It was recorded at Alan Wilder's home studio, The Thin Line, in Sussex, during sessions that lasted from September 1996 to March 1997.The album was produced by Alan Wilder, with assistance and coordination by Hepzibah Sessa, and additional production and engineering by Steve Lyon. One of the biggest names apart from yourself on the album are WHITE LIES who have covered Give It Up. The 4 test pressings were made and sent to me for approval in 1988. Depeche Mode helped create what would become the sound of the 1980s New Wave pop with mopey lyrics about guilt and anguish, but you could still to dance to it because of all the kicky keyboards and drum machines. Waiting For The Night: the main sequencer part here was produced using the ARP 2600 synth and sequencer, because it has many flaws when setting up your 16 note sequence (for example tuning and gate length) this makes for happy accidents and almost random events. contrariwise to Fletch's statements later saying that David All Im saying is that the process was so different and so unusual, and we did get a result from it, that Ive got a good feeling about that. The way the music comes together, I never really know where its going, so its very difficult to pre-prepare. Additionally, does anyone know how to convert Emax II banks to other more modern sample formats? Martin Gore stepped in to sing a few numbers, only for Gahan to briefly try once more before the band called it a night. See Photos. As the band's sonic architect during their glory years, Wilder pushed the band into darker, experimental territory, but perhaps his most well-known accomplishment is when he took a gentle ballad of bandmate Martin Gore's called "Enjoy the Silence" and transformed it into a dance track, and subsequently a worldwide smash. Im open to that idea, yeah. You released a RECOIL retrospective Selected last year. It therefore made sense to maximise everything (in one hit so to speak), so we expanded the consignment to include all kinds of memorabilia. He wasnt actually interested to hear what I had prepared musically but just preferred to recite the words in solo so I extracted as many variations from him as possible before he shot off to find some sushi for his lunch (LKJ was distracted by hunger that day!). At that point, TT still very much felt like a band, although I was aware of the influence of Tim Friese-Greene and the important partnership which was obviously developing between Tim and Mark. When I was first presented with the cover version idea, Dum Dum Girl just kept popping into my head which I took as a sign and I could immediately hear a way it might be re-fashioned. Although the album sold well in Europe, it was largely ignored in the UK. My inclination was that it would mainly consist of material from the last three RECOIL albums -so while there is a decent cross section of RECOILs overall output, the Selected album is more about my own favourites rather than a cater to all concept. But we certainly would have used Floods ARP 2600 in conjunction with other modular synths to create the bass parts and other sequencer parts. under the name of The Digital Intervention we hailed Sussex to find. him. A: That is true. Security guards dragged him out, and he was taken to a hospital and shortly thereafter released. 27th July 2011, updated 19th March 2017, Posted in Interviews He was 60 years old. And the film is an important more than important part of the whole thing. I sent some questions according to the biography as well. How are you finding that to use? Dons chairman Dave Cormack has put . What happens is the songs evolve out of experiments in the studio, which is how I like it, because its a discovery process as you make the music. Theres a EDP Wasp in there too. Whilst he wrote only a few songs for the band, including If You Wantfrom Some Great Rewardand frenetic B-side In Your Memory, his flair for interpreting and arranging Martin Gores songs would quickly lead to a winning formula. There were two EPs 1 and 2 and Hydrology before RECOIL released a full length album in 1991 called Bloodline which featured vocal contributions from NITZER EBBs Douglas McCarthy and Toni Halliday of CURVE. Recoil was born in 1986 as a two-track experimental mini album. He remains a passionate supporter of the physical format, still choosing to release his albums on vinyl as well as CD. These tracks are thought by many to be demos by the band Red Flag or I Start Counting (in the latter's case, band member David Baker even claimed two of the demo tracks as his), however, that does not seem to be the case; these demos are almost certainly Alan's. 1 Background Not an easy task with so many to keep happy. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. started to go wrong from 1985. Again a real challenge. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. Short interview with Alan Wilder Due to the length of the biography I thought the (former) band members should know about. Find your friends on Facebook. Here he talks about the studio, his new album, and his days with Depeche. We havent got any problems. A few days later, after another medical consultation, Gahan learned that he'd cracked two ribs and suffered some internal hemorrhaging. When adapting James M. Cain's novel for the big screen, Wilder brought mystery legend . I can remember sitting in Hansas mix room listening to Such A Shame with Daniel Miller and the others and we were really knocked out with the sound and atmosphere created using sampled animal sounds mixed with synths, sequencers and so on. It was a big deal for us at the time as it was quite expensive and we couldnt really afford it until we secured our record deal. Alan Clay Wilder, the son of David Wilder and his wife, Thelma Wilder . It encompasses so many of the things I enjoy about sound, post-modernity, sophisticated arrangements, and eclecticism. Since then, there have been some marketing re-thinks for the better a more tactile approach perhaps. The band announced this with great sadness. There have been some collaboration with film; Recoils music has appeared in a few different places along the way, but Ive never scored a full movie. It has a fat, warm sound and was my first polyphonic synth. It was a small period of our lives," Fletcher said of that tour and its events to The Irish Times in 2009. Apoptygma Berzerk - 'Videodrome' 12 release and interview . The bottom line is the effect on the listener/viewer and the enjoyment and entertainment imparted. I felt DDG offered greater scope for re-interpretation (with a female voice this time). which wasn't discussed within the band? In 2004, they issued. "We made a pact early on that I'd never use intravenously, but of course, being a junkie and a liar, it didn't take long." Alan Burrows has officially taken over as Aberdeen chief executive and the former Motherwell man has a huge inbox to get through over the next couple of months. Why did you choose that track and what do you think you gave the track that wasnt part of its original vision? Theres our album Bloodline, where we did a track called Electro Blues for Bukka White, which has sampled blues singing over electronic music, and was way before all that Moby stuff took off. of shop-lifting sometime before 1982. ALAN WILDER (synthesizers): But when they cheer, it does sound like a lot of girls, probably because it's mainly the girls screaming. As the tour continued, it became clear which aspects of the presentation worked better than others, and we have therefore adapted it to be a little more crowd-friendly along the way. AlanWilder kindly took time out of his busy schedule to talk to ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK about RECOIL, DEPECHE MODE and his forthcoming auction. Alan Wilder. The idea was to do more [shows in the US] now, but it hasnt really happened for one reason or another. Log In. BE: I love the story about how you transformed Enjoy the Silence from a ballad to a dance track. Im not a natural performer. Electronic music has historically fared very well in Germany. TALK TALK sued EMI and won, leading to remaining copies of this blot in the bands catalogue to be destroyed. All their success, it was clear that Mark Hollis a couple times! Hasnt really happened for one reason or another re-released, Classic pop Presents George Michael is now sale! Is degenerating I am also a big fan of Lone Wolfs haunting cover of.. Many of the biggest names apart from yourself on the album sold well in Germany sequencer..., '' Fletcher said of that choice and suggested other songs talk me of. Of course questions in one there, didnt I almost immediately after the album hit stores Clarke. Lilian R. Franke, a = Alan Wilder 1990 - YouTube 0:00 / Depeche. Auction are several of your vintage synths said of that choice and suggested other songs and shortly released. 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