2009-03-03 Steve Lamacq Show, BBC 6 Music Radio, London, UK

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Notes

Steve Lamacq is joined by Dave Gahan in the studio for an interview about his career and new album Sounds Of The Universe. Gahan spent almost an hour with BBC6, live, to chat about the album and take listeners questions, in which they not only talked through the themes of the record, but also touched up upon the band’s love of second hand analogue equipment and how his kids love finding old pictures of him on the internet. The file was uploaded as a podcast on BBC.co.uk (link now dead), which is from where this file was taken.

As summarised by BBC:

Speaking about his band, Dave said: "It was a joy to work together. It's rare that you'll find me saying that."

The singer revealed they revisited technology used on their early material and drew on R 'n' B influences.

"You know, usually, it could be quite a struggle and different things happened during different albums but this one; it's like we showed up to work, we had a great team, Ben Hillier produced the album. Everybody seemed to just have fun doing it."

He admitted getting back into the studio after a break felt strange: "It's like coming back after your summer holiday, a bit uncomfortable. You've got to see what's going on a bit, try and catch up, but it is always a new thing getting back together again."

As for drawing on their past sounds Gahan said: "The use of analogue synthesisers and analogue drum machines is something that we kind of explored again making this record.

"I hear it, there's a simplicity of it and there's something about the warmth that you get in analogue synthesisers, it's unpredictable and will never do the same thing twice."

Unlikely influences Speaking about the album's inspiration, Gahan continued: "There's definitely R 'n' B flavours that have come into this rhythmically. It trawls along in that way but I would say it's more of a rant than a rap.

"This is as close as it gets, but sometimes a lot of that rhythmical flavour comes into it. We use a lot of those blues-based or R 'n' B-based rhythms."

"What people miss actually, quite often, is the black humour underlying in there," said Gahan about the track.

"It's definitely in Wrong... It's like a 13 year-old ranting on at his mother about everything that she's going on to him about to do, and he's not doing right. A response to life."

• Duration: 35:16

Audio

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