You have just released the album “Hourglass”. How long did the production process take, and what was the driving force behind it?
DG: We never actually had a plan to make an album. In March myself, Christian and Andrew decided to get together at my studio in NYC and do some writing together – very relaxed – we had a lot of fun and had a great creative flow going on. We would break for 2 weeks then get back together.
Then by the 3rd session Daniel Miller came into listen and basically said you guys seem to be making an album here, so we decided then just to keep going and produce it ourselves. I think the driving force was that we were just free to do what ever we wanted and as a result things just came really easily.
CRAFTING THE HOURGLASS
Dave Gahan, iconic frontman with Depeche Mode, needs no introduction. His instantly identifiable voice can be heard on some of the most definitive electronic/pop/rock songs of the 80s and 90s, including "Just Can't Get Enough", "People Are People" and "Personal Jesus". Andrew Phillpott is a long time collaborator with Depeche Mode as programmer, musical director and co-songwriter. In 2007 Phillpott worked together with Gahan on a new album, "Hourglass". Tech Talk took the opportunity to ask them a few questions about their working style, and found out how powerhouse NI synth MASSIVE has a crucial role in the sound of the record…
Could you elaborate on your roles in the studio?
AP: Well the layout of Dave's studio is simple – nice large control room, a drum room and a large “hang out” space. So I set up in the control room and Dave and Christian set up in the other room. Usually we will be all starting ideas either on the computers or else Christian would go in the drum room, I’d pick up the bass and we’d just jam away recording it all and then we chop out the nice bits and start playing with them.
Then the structuring process would begin which would involve Christian and Dave playing with lyric ideas, arrangements, keys etc. Then they will pass them onto me and I would start on the instrumentation and sounds. To be honest everyone’s been saying to me “I hear a good bit of Absynth in there” or “you must have used Reaktor a lot!” – but the truth is almost all the sounds on this album came from Massive – all started from scratch… and of course a mountain of plug-ins! And we would just pass ideas back and forth between the rooms so that within 8 weeks we almost had the whole thing written and ready for mixing – Tony Hoffer (Beck, Air etc) came to NYC and mixed it for us while we finished off the last bits of recording…
Andrew Phillpott
From which angle did you normally approach a new song? Did you lay down sketches ahead of the production?
The format would be different almost every time because we did the writing as we recorded. Sometimes me and Christian would just sit down at the keyboard and throw around chords, or Andrew would come in the room and say “come check this out” and play us some thing he’d be working on or else the boys would just jam away – be it bass and drums, keys and drums or vocoder and bass – that’s how “Miracles” happened. We just recorded it all, cut it up and started creating a song…
In your own experience, how has the process of producing an album changed over the years?
DG: I think for the most obvious things is how quickly you can get things done these days. No more sitting around the Syclavier for days on end sampling things… The technology has become so much more user friendly it lets me get involved in a way I couldn’t years ago.. And that keeps momentum and creativity flowing…
How many computers did you have in the studio, and what did you use them for?
AP: In the control room we had 2 main G5s, one running Protools which purely just served as a tape machine and then my Logic computer in which I do all the sound design, synths and midi.Christian and Dave had a basic G5 setup in the other room running Logic and then we had a smaller Protools set up in the live room for vocal comping – our friend Kap10Kurt came in towards the end to do some vocal comping to make time for us as we had a lot of different vocal melodies for the songs and it was nice to have some outside help with that...
How did you come across Native Instruments?
AP: It was one of the very early versions of Reaktor – some one had told Martin(Gore) about it so we decided to check it out – I fell in love with it instantly and haven't looked back! You guys have always brought out consistent quality tools, and suddenly we weren't having to drag all these huge synths around!
Which of our products did you use for the production of “Hourglass”?
AP: Like I said before it was pretty much exclusively Massive – only for the reason of breaking old habits. I love all the NI stuff, but I decided to limit myself to one synth that I hadn't really explored and see what I could get out of it – and I only scratched the surface.
How will the live versions of the songs differ from the studio productions?
DG: We actually aren’t going to tour this album for various reasons, but we just did a handful of radio shows, TVs and gigs all in NYC a couple of weeks ago – which went great. We had Martyn Lenoble on bass, Christian on drums, Andrew on keys and sequences, Kap10Kurt on his crazy strap-on SH101 and Graham Finn on guitar. It all felt really organic and yet we didn’t lose the electronic feel of the album…
AP: We ran basic sequences in Ableton Live from a Laptop and in another laptop I had loaded with Logic I was able to open up all the key sounds from the album with the plug-ins and synced it to Live – there was a good bit of side chain compression and gating which was important to the sounds… K10K had his modified SH101 which he played a lot of the driving lead sounds on. It all worked out really well.
Have you already found your perfect setup for both studio and stage and what is missing from your ideal musical environment?
DG: yes – my microphone!
AP: Simple is most important to me – there’s less of a chance for disasters happening. But its ever changing which I like because its so easy to get caught in a repetitive cycle creatively, so change is good – as for things missing in my musical environment..….just time!
