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An Interview with Alan Wilder of Recoil
Posted: Monday, August 06, 2007
By: Ilker Yücel
Editor

Long before Alan Wilder announced his departure from seminal synthpop outfit Depeche Mode, the electro music wunderkind was already experimenting with more abstract and intriguing forms of electronic music with Recoil. While his early efforts were arguably little more than demo recordings, with the encouragement of Mute label head Daniel Miller, Wilder proceeded to develop Recoil into an even more productive entry in the annals of electronic music. His 1992 album, Bloodline, was the first to feature a renewed sense of compositional focus, along with appearances from several prominent guest vocalists including Moby, Curve's Toni Halliday, and Nitzer Ebb's Douglas McCarthy. Shortly after, due to frictions within the band, Wilder gracefully bade Depeche Mode farewell, making Recoil his fulltime musical endeavor, culminating in Unsound Methods in 1997. Taking a dramatic leap from Bloodline, yet still retaining certain core elements, Unsound Methods presented an even denser sonic palette, full of deep electronics and symphonic textures. Once again, the album featured a wide range of guest vocalists, from spoken word artist Maggie Estep to gospel singer Hildia Campbell. Liquid followed in 2000, taking the aesthetics of the previous album even further into a unified concept dealing with alcoholism, abusive relationships, and death. While not as widely heard as Depeche Mode, Recoil's music presents a visceral experience akin to film noir, exposing the listeners to cinematic and atmospheric narratives. Now, after seven years, Wilder unveils the latest entry in Recoil's discography, subHuman, featuring Carla Trevaskies and New Orleans bluesman Joe Richardson on five of its seven tracks. Where past Recoil albums merely flirted with the blues, subHuman takes a more overt approach, portraying a style of blues more distorted and sinister than ever done before, but it's a style that is so distinguishably Recoil. Those looking to get inside Alan Wilder's musical world are in for a treat as ReGen speaks to him about his compositional approach, his affinity for American blues music, his collaborations both past and present, and just what role his wife plays in Recoil.

It's been over seven years since the release of your last album, Liquid, which was something of a concept album revolving around a near-death experience. With subHuman, the concept seems geared more towards the current order of human affairs. What drove you to pursue this worldly concept on subHuman?

Wilder: Well, to be honest, when I'm starting off on any album, I don't really have any concept in mind. With the last one, that kind of evolved and grew out of the songs that came together at the time. The same thing happened this time, really. Towards the end of the project, when the songs had been written and I put it all together, then I got to thinking, 'Well, how can I present this, and what does it all mean?' It's really only my own interpretation of trying to make sense of everything. You can imagine me; I'm working with all these different singers and lyricists that it's difficult. I don't go to them in the beginning of the project and say, 'You must write like this.' My idea is to choose people who I think have talent and there's something good about them, and then let them indulge themselves really, to give them free reign to do their thing, and then I'll be like a film director, put it all together and make a story of it.

It's interesting that you made the film director analogy, because in many reviews of your music people refer to your music as very cinematic. Throughout Recoil's discography, several tracks have offered your unique take on traditional forms of Black American music, such as in the gospel leanings of 'Red River Cargo' to the blues in 'Jezebel' and 'Electro Blues for Bukka White,' and you even have New Orleans bluesman Joe Richardson appearing on subHuman. Being English and coming from a more classical background as you do, to what do you attribute your affinity for these forms of music?

Wilder: I think it's just the kind of hormonal jazz that you get when you're a teenager that turns you away from your practical upbringing, and you find yourself searching for something a bit more otherworldly. I think when I got to be about 13 or 14...and my background is very much classically music-driven, and I come from this family of all musicians. My brothers are very good players and I was encouraged to follow in their footsteps, really, but the kind of black sheep element of my makeup would say, 'Well, I'm not going to do that.' It's a rebellious thing, I suppose. At that point, I started sort of researching and looking back to find out what the roots of the current music of that time came from. I was suddenly being exposed to prog rock and glam rock and that was in the '70s, and then The Beatles, David Bowie, you name it. My natural curiosity made me wonder where did it all come from and what's the cause of this, and that just takes back to the blues, rock 'n' roll, and jazz, and all the rest of it. All of them are American-born. Really, that's where it comes from, and it's just something in it that has more of an emotional content in that kind of music that you can't help it; it just touches a nerve.

With subHuman, we see Joe Richardson singing on five of the seven tracks, which is unusual because in the past, Recoil albums have primarily had a revolving door of vocalists, with each guest usually appearing on no more than two tracks. How did you come to associate with Richardson and how have his contributions affected your outlook on Recoil's music?

Wilder: Well, I guess he's the kind of singer I've been looking to work with for a long time in terms of what you're talking about, having the combination of blues and American roots music, if you like, with modern technique, electronics, and all the things that I've been doing for a long time. I think for awhile, I've been coming up with that music looking for someone who could provide the vocals to it. He came closer than anybody else I'd worked with before. I was lucky in a way to have met him and for him to be so willing to get involved, so it was a pleasure to work with him. It was all luck. I just did a Google search and he was one of the first people that came up in the search, and from there, it's just as you can imagine; I sent him a CD, we had a chat, we got together, and started recording. We recorded more than we actually put on the album. We got more stuff, including two other tracks that we didn't use from the sessions, and another one that he provided that wasn't quite right. So in that one week, we had recorded eight or nine songs.

That's interesting too because in the past, it seemed that there were more Recoil tracks vocalized by females as opposed to males, and with subHuman, we see a complete opposite, as Richardson takes the bulk of the album's vocal content.

Wilder: Yeah, that's true. I have trouble...I can usually think of more females than males when it comes to singers, for some reason.

Carla Trevaskies, who has worked with members of Eurythmics, Apollo 440, and Portishead, appears on 'Allelujah' and 'Intruders' on this album. What can you tell us about her involvement? How did she come to work with you?

Wilder: After I worked with Joe, I realized that I needed a different voice and something that was going to provide a counterbalance to what he'd done. And I think when you listen to the four or five Joe tracks on the drop, you need a break from it, basically. So I stretched out to find the most opposite voice to his that I could, and that would also be female and move away from this style in a way, so that was my starting point. From there, I tried searching on the net for people, and it didn't really work out. I didn't come up with anything, even though I listened to 200 or 300 people. In the end, someone at Mute said, 'Look, what about Carla? She's a friend of mine, and here's her MySpace.' I thought she had a pretty interesting voice, and she came to be involved. I like to work with the sort of people who are not jaded in any way, and are kind of creeping around the block, and are very open to experimentation and trying things and seeing what happens. I'm very nervous going to try tested names. I'm quite perfectionist about things. I like to take my time and I like to get it right, and I expect the people that get involved to have the same kind of latitude.

From a lyrical standpoint, Recoil lyrics seem to primarily be contributed by the vocalists you work with. How involved are you in the lyrical process? Do you often find yourself at odds with the subject matter they explore?

Wilder: I rarely dictate the subject matter. I can't think of an occasion when I said, 'You must write about this.' There are a lot of indicators in the music itself to suggest what kind of subject it would be about. Sometimes, I even have guide vocals that could be bits of samples from any source, just to give an idea of where one could put a verse or chorus. What generally seems to happen is that people come back with something that is very much appropriate to the sound, and that normally involves exploring the distorted and dark side of human behavior, which is fine by me. It's coincidence more than anything, or perhaps it's just my way of putting it all together which makes some sort of sense and seemingly has a continuous idea. Sometimes there are instances of me saying, 'Well, I'm not sure about that,' or 'Let's change it,' or 'Should we move that verse, or make it longer?' We have all those kinds of conversations. A good example of that is 'Allelujah,' one of Carla's. She usually started off with a whole set of words for that, and we gradually put them away until we were just left with one word. That's the kind of extreme example of editing that works, because if you heard that track with the whole story, a very neutral and political story about the atrocities that have happened before. And then she said this one line, 'Allelujah,' and I thought, 'Actually, that's too literal for my tastes.' And I felt that line said more than all of the words that she had. I think she was a bit shocked that I wanted to take them all away, but in the end, I think she kind of understood where I was coming from. There's always some kind of ego going on, but we all get along fine. There's a certain tension that comes with working with new people, and I actually try to draw from that, and I enjoy it. It doesn't always work. I've tried to work with people before that just haven't come off. That's really only happened once. There's something about the tension in the air when you're working with someone new that brings a whole new chemistry and an added spark to the whole project, and I search for that each time.

That leads into my next question, because at the end of 'Backslider,' I had noticed segments from 'Drifting' from Unsound Methods. That took me by surprise. How often do you keep in contact with your past collaborators?

Wilder: It varies from person to person. I haven't actually kept in contact with Siobhan, the singer from 'Drifting.' We lost touch a few years back. She moved and we never got a forwarding address. We just lost contact, and I never knew what happened to her. Other people like Douglas McCarthy, I chat with him quite often. Diamanda Galas I'll run into, because she's a Mute label-mate. We keep in touch with Nicole Blackman. We write to each other all the time. I'm trying to think of some others, but I'm in touch for the occasional chat, and I won't rule out the possibility of working with any of them again either. I don't have a golden rule for it to be a new person each time.

Yes, because Douglas and Diamanda both appeared on Bloodline as well as Unsound Methods.

Wilder: That's true.

Since the last album, technology has advanced so that many musicians these days are employing laptop recording rigs and software synthesizers. Being that you have produced Recoil's music in your own home studio (The Thin Line), how well have you kept up with these developments, and how have you integrated them into your studio?

Wilder: Well, I do keep up with it, but I'm not like a super follower of it. To be honest, once I get a system that I'm happy with, I kind of stick with it for at least one project. For this project, because I had such an old system, I've had to upgrade certain items, but I find it tedious really just working out how new bits and pieces can work when I just like to get stuck in making music. But on the other hand, I do enjoy learning about new bits and pieces, and there's always some new piece of gear that I try to get involved with. The tools that help me with my music are the ones I try to use, but then, of course, I still turn to tried and tested old school bits of gear as well, which was really beneficial going to Texas to record with Joe, because you don't get more old school than that. It was like going back in time, and it was really enjoyable.

Also included with subHuman is a DVD containing all of Recoil's past videos as well as an exclusive ambient reworking of the album. As your music already contains a vast range of ambient textures, how will the rework differ from the regular version of subHuman? How do you feel it complements the overall package?

Wilder: Most Recoil music is very dense, being that it has a lot of ambience and atmosphere, and there are also a lot of layers to it. So really the thinking here was to strip back all those layers and expose some of the more subtle elements and bring them to the fore, such as the backwards sounds and the reverbs and such, to make them more obvious. It's a much more open spaces kind of sound, and when we were working with the 5.1 mix, we liked the effect of the rear speakers, which was really nice. I almost prefer it, in a way, but only because I'd been working on the normal mix for so long that it was kind of more refreshing for me to listen to it.

On the last three Recoil albums, Unsound Methods, Liquid, and now subHuman, your wife Hepzibah Sessa contributed musically. How does the working process between you and Hepzibah differ from when you are working with other musicians on an album?

Wilder: It's very different because she's my wife. [Laughs.]

I'm really obnoxious, stubborn, bossy, dictatorial, whereas with the other people I'm more charming and easygoing. She'll tell you that. But she's been used to that for a long time, so it's a kind of banter. We like to give each other shit. But she's really useful to me, not just in music, but on all kinds of levels. She gives me encouragement, organizes my life, comes in to give me a good perspective on the music, and she comes from all areas.