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You're Not Alone - Interview for Depechemode.de

Q. I've seen you guys last year on tour in Germany with de/vision. Are there any plans for touring Germany in the next months? Maybe not just as a "support-band"?

We are hoping to tour early in the New Year, although nothing has been confirmed as yet. This would be as a support as we are not established enough in Germany to go it alone.

Q. Where did you get your inspirations for new tracks? Are there special places or does it depend from separate situations?

Separate situations. Even though I write the music and not the lyrics, a situation will and does affect the mood and tempo of the music. PJ will then write the lyrics and vocal melody. I don’t give an indication of what I was thinking about when the idea emerged but she usually picks up the vibe. Her lyrics are based around her own life situations.

Q. Are there any bands influencing your music? Something like idols?

I suppose influences would include the likes of Massive attack, Talk Talk and David Sylvian, purely from a music point of view. I think that a lot of songs can influence what you are doing, and most the time you wont realize it.

Q. How would you describe your own music?

Hmmm, that’s a good question. I really find it hard to categorize. I would say electronica meets shoe gaze if that makes any sense to anyone… (shoe gaze was an English craze in the early 90’s – bands like chapterhouse, slowdive and swervedriver. Swirls of layered guitars and a breathy vocal usually would be enough to make you a shoe gazer. Oh, and you must gaze at you shoes whilst playing the guitar!). We have tried to make something that relaxes you when you hear it, but hopefully not to make you fall asleep completely!!! We have used lots of lush pads, chorus guitars with long delays and long reverbs to try and create this atmosphere, I hope it works.

Q. Back in 2002 your music was more "instrumental" like. At which point did you decided to integrate a voice? And where did you "find" Phoenix J?

I suppose we wanted to do something different from the first album which was purely instrumental. We wanted to use a vocal on a few tracks, and to see how it went. This then developed and we ended up having a lot of guest singer (Lahannya, Roi from mechanical cabaret, Sandrene from seize). They were all great but it all became a bit of a nightmare to put together live, so we decided to stick with a single singer(although there are actually two other vocalists on the album, Josie Akers and Anthony Neale, but they only sing 3 songs between them). PJ was one of our guest singers, and we felt that her voice really complemented the music, so that was that. She is now a full time member of the band, which is great. Having said that, ‘You’re not alone’ still include 2 instrumental, I think there will always be a couple of instrumentals on our albums.

Q. Well apart from this.. which sort of studio-equipment are you using?

We run cubase 5 on an old PC that, to date, has done the job that’s required of it. There are a mixture of electronic and live sounds as audio files and also electronic sounds running via midi. As for Synthesizers, I use a Korg MS10 (I use this mainly for bass, but it is also great for those sweeps and mad electronic sounds). Most of the synth pad sounds and other electronica on the ‘you’re not alone’ album are built up from a combination of an Access Virus, a Roland MVS1, a Roland JV1010 and an e-bow guitar. The trusty old Emulator 3 does the drum samples alongside a roland octopad spd50. These are the units that just get used more. We have got other synths, but don’t use them that much. An old Roland RS09 string synth(which has a certain early 80’s string sound which nothing else made these days can re-produce. It makes things instantly retro sounding!), there is a Roland JX8, a Korg Micro-preset (bought, just ‘cos OMD had one) and an SH101 as well.

The live sounds, such as the percussion, acoustic guitar, violin and flute are recorded using an AKG414 going through a Drawmer 1960 Compressor (which cost a bit, but is absolutely brilliant, and worth every penny). The electric guitars were all done on the POD. We have tried a mic’d up Marshall amp a few times - and the results have been excellent, but as the guitars are complimenting the electronic stuff on most the album, we felt that the POD sound was by far good enough and it is so much easier to record. The Vocals were either recorded at mine, or PJ recorded them at her own studio. I believe she used a Rode NT2 microphone.

The Drums were kindly played and recorded by Achim Faerber of project pitchfork in his studio in Bremen.

The whole lot was mixed on a Mackie D8B. Wow, what a desk! We used to have an old soundtracs quartz desk (shown in the photo) which I thought was good, but once we got the Mackie, we would never go back. Its just so easy to use as well as great sounding - the fact you can save a mix to go back to saves so much time in the long run.

Effects wise, most of the ‘washy’ reverbs come from an ancient Lexicon 224, which was one of the first digital reverbs. Its only 8 bits, but who cares, it sounds real. Unfortunately I think its dying, and I have to kick it pretty hard to get it to light up, which is not in the manual, but seems to work. We also have a PCM60, a LXP1 and a Yamaha REV 7 to back the 224 up. Other effects come from the Mackie itself, which has 3 processors, or are a plug ins on the PC.

Q. Thanks so far for the interview!

No problem!

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