Unser erster Beitrag widmet sich Martin Gore (Depeche Mode), der sich zum Produktionsprozess seines aktuellen Soloalbums "Counterfeit2" zusammen mit seinem Produzenten äußert. CAUTION! SPEAK ENGLISH!

Martin Gore is a composer, songwriter, keyboardist, guitarist, and most notably one of the masterminds behind the group Depeche Mode. After writing and arranging songs for many Depeche Mode albums, he finally released his first solo EP "Counterfeit" in 1989. Nearly fourteen years later, Spring 2003 saw the release of "Counterfeit²".

This full length extends the idea set forth by the previous effort by making cover versions of some of his favorite songs. On "Counterfeit²" Andrew Phillpott (the musical director of the last Depeche Mode tours) and producer Paul Freegard (Exciter etc.) help Martin Gore develop very impressive interpretations of songs originally written by John Lennon, Brian Eno, Nick Cave, Lou Reed, David Bowie, Kurt Weill and others - ingeniously arranged by making use of sophisticated electronic beats and sounds. The result is a brilliant example of contemporary electronic song writing - drawing its strength from Gores' clear and pure voice in combination with crackling soundscapes, electronica-style beats and Reaktor bleeps.

You can listen to the tracks on Gore's website www.martingore.com if you have the Quicktime player installed.

On "Counterfeit²" the NI products REAKTOR, ABSYNTH, KONTAKT and BATTERY were used. NI talked to Martin Gore and Andrew Phillpott about the new album and the use of NI software...

Interview by Native Instruments

How and when did the idea develop to produce your 2nd solo-album "Counterfeit²"?
Gore: I’ve had the idea to make a follow up album to the first Counterfeit EP for a few years. I like the concept of producing a covers series.

Under which criteria did you pick the songs for the album? Do you have a special connection to each song?
Gore: Of course I have a strong emotional connection to each of the songs I chose to cover, but there is also something unquantifiable that make a song stand out above others that I also like. There is a kind of subconcious belief that I can take the song in an intersting direction, even when I’m not sure what that direction is.

Were there a lot of candidates that didn't make it onto the album?
Gore: I was surprized that I didn’t have a short list of fifty songs. I think I started out with about twenty, but after the first few songs were started, an overall atmosphere was created that ruled out some of the canditates immediately. Others were started but did’nt really sit well.

Did you have a clear vision of how you wanted the album to sound, or did the musical direction develop while you were working with the songs?
Gore: The sound definitely developed as we went along. It became clearer to me after we had a basic skeletal structure for the first four or five songs.

Was it clear to you that it would become an "electronic" album ? Did you think of other approaches?
Gore: I was sure from the outset that I wanted to be a mainly electronic album. There are not many interesting cover version albums in existence. Taking songs from various genres in music and re-presenting them electronically was a challenge, especially when you have alot of respect for the songs.

Where did you record the album? How long was the production process?
Gore: The album was recorded and mixed at the studio in my house. We started recording in March 2002 and finished at the beginning of December. We did, however, take breaks along the way. I suppose we were probably in the studio for approximately seven months in total.

Which other people were involved in the production of the album? How was it different from your previous recording sessions with Depeche Mode?
Gore: I worked with Andrew Phillpott and Paul Freegard. Andrew has worked with Depeche before, being the musical director and programmer for the last two Depeche tours. And Paul worked with me on the pre-production of Exciter. I found the actuall working process in this ablum fairlly similar in approach to the last two Depeche Mode albums in that there were various workstations and there could be various songs worked on at any one time. The main difference was not having the other members of the band around.

Was there a specific method that you followed when you arranged and programmed the songs? Can you briefly describe the workflow?
Phillpott: It was different for every song , but the general routine was we would all start the songs together and then I would take stuff from the master computer and work on it on headphones for a while whilst Martin and Paul would keep working on their set-up. Then it was a case of me or them saying „have a listen to this“ and if we liked what we had done, the part would be added to the master song file and we would continue like this. Often we would just do a load of improvising or random sequencing (Paul was especially great at this on the Nord), record it and chop it up. Sometimes we would end up with 2 completely different versions of the song as a result of us working seperately and then we would take our favourite bits form them and piece together one final track.

What synthesizers did you use for the sound creation?
Phillpott: I think mostly we used the Nord, Reaktor, Absynth, a Voyetra, Arp 2600, and a lot of processing to make the sounds our own. We also used an Akai, until Kontakt came along and then we started using that – but the main thing was twisting and processing the sounds through a miriad of different things – sound design I guess you call it.... We also did alot of guitar stuff that we procesed to hell. One of the great things about doing this record at Mart’s house was we were able to indulge ourselves in alot of experimentation – which was a great luxury and learning process which you never have in commercial studios because of obvious time restrictions....

What was the general technical set up? What sequencers and which instruments did you use on "Counterfeit²"?
Phillpott: We basically had two main sequencing/recording stations. One was my setup which was a ProTools rig for recording and then a laptop running logic and softsynths.

The other one was for Paul and Martin to work on which was Logic with softsynths. We also had a drum kit, various guitar amps and a baby grand. It kind of evolved as we went along adding and subtracting various synths and processors – but we tried to use everything we had...

Which NI products do you like the most and what do you use them for?
Phillpott: To be honest I love them all, but definitely my favourite is Reaktor – so much so I always have one laptop purely dedicated to running it, and have a second copy running within Logic on my other laptop... The presets have always been so good that I only started building my own in the past year .
The other favourite is Kontakt – at last a software based sampler that will drag me away from the Akai!!

We've heard that you like Reaktor a lot. Is there a general rule for your usage of Reaktor?
Gore: No set rule really, but limitless possibilites for experimentation!!

Where did you gets your beats & percussions from? I rarely heard acoustic material? What were your sound sources for these and what did u use to process them?
Phillpott: Funnily enough there was a certain amount of heavily processed acoustic stuff – we took a trip to a music shop at one stage and went mad buying all kinds of percussion instruments – we literally filled the boot of the car!!
But other wise it was a combination of a multitude of sources ranging from analog sequencers running the Arps, to Battery and Kontakt and of course loads of editing and chopping in Pro Tools and Logic.

It seems as if you avoided using too many fx and processing on your vocals. What did you use to record the vocals? What did you use for processing them (for example in the track Stardust)?
Phillpott: We found that Martin has such a pure sounding voice that it took a while to find the right mic and path to capture and represent it the best. In the end we generally opted for a Blue mic running through an Avalon 737 but some times Martin would just pic up a 58 we had lying around and we would record that straight into Pro Tools and try and salvage it later, - as generally the spontaneous takes are the best....

You ve played a few live shows with the new material. How was the response? Do you plan to play more live shows this year?
Phillpott: Having worked on the past two Depeche tours, I think we were initially a bit nervous doing the Counterfeit shows – you know, small production, different P.A. every night etc. etc. and with Depeche tours we are spoilt!!– but infact they turned out to be the best fun we’ve had on stage in years. The difference being, as we were playing small theatres we figured lets have some real fun and improvise a bit – and try pushing the technology a bit... I think it also served as a reminder, that things dont have to be so regimented nowadays as the technology is so much more flexible and reliable and I think it will help for future Depeche tours....We always used to be so nervous of the computers on stage going down and letting them control us – whereas now we can control them!


Thank you for the interview!

The album Counterfeit² was released on Mute. You can listen to the tracks on Gore's website www.martingore.com if you have the Quicktime player installed.

___________________________________________________________________

So - und nun noch ein interessanter Hinweis:

presented by Tom Laukemper     


Onetwo mit "Cloud Nine" von Martin L. Gore
Der "Propaganda" Track "Cloud Nine", der unter anderem von Martin L. Gore co-produziert wurde, wird nun doch offiziell erscheinen!
Martin hatte damals das Gitarrenriff zu diesem Song, auf Bitten von Claudia Brücken, beigesteuert.
Ursprünglich sollte der Song von der deutschen Band "Propaganda" veröffentlicht werden. Dies hat sich jedoch über Jahre verschoben und letztendlich wurde das Album nicht mehr veröffentlicht.
 
Zusammen mit Paul Humphreys (OMD) wird Claudia Brücken (Propaganda) unter dem Namen "Onetwo" am 28.06.04 das neue Album "Item" veröffentlichen. Auf der LP wird sich neben anderen unveröffentlichten Propaganda Songs auch "Cloud Nine" befinden.
Über den Link könnt ihr in "Cloud 9" bereits anhören!

Cloud Nine
Onetwo
14.06.2004 (RG)