2015-04-26 BBC Radio 6, London, UK

Notes

Martin Gore chats to Stuart Maconie on his show Freak Zone about his new solo album of electronic instrumentals. Gore says he wanted it to be "very filmic and give it an almost sci-fi like quality". A transcript has been typed out below.

• Duration: 6:37

Transcript

Stuart Maconie: This is the Freak Zone with me, Stuart Maconie. Martin Gore from Depeche Mode has a new album of electronic instrumentals out tomorrow, and I caught up with him on the phone from LA, earlier this week.

Stuart Maconie: 'MG' is an album of very textured, very filmic electronic instrumentals. When you go into the studio most days, what does that involve? Do you go in with ideas or do you go in and let the muse strike you?

Martin Gore: Yeah, I just go in there, and, for want of a better word, play around. The majority of the sounds on this album were made with a Eurorack modular system, and that really is like a playground. So you go in and you start patching and sometimes you might wanna make a base sound so you start off in a certain way. But sometimes you might not have a particular idea in your head and you'll just patch, and something interesting might happen, and you then will think "Oh, that's a germ of an idea there, I might record it and take it from there."

Stuart Maconie: Are you very techy? Are you a gearhead?

Martin Gore: I'm not very techy in that I can't sit down and read manuals. I'm a bit more impetuous. I'll just try and dive in and realise that I don't have a clue how something's working, and fortunately I have an assistent in the studio who loves reading manuals. So I'll get him to read the manual and explain it to me.

Stuart Maconie: Well a guy has got to have a hobby, I suppose.

Martin Gore: (laughs)

Stuart Maconie: What were you like back in the days as a teenager? Were you like that then? Did you think, "If I push this button on..." - what presumably was a very different kind of setup? Was synthesizers your weapon of choice then, because they were just easy and convenient or was it that you were kind of excited by the possibilities of them and what they sounded like?

Martin Gore: Well, I started out as a guitar player. I was only really introduced to synthesizers when I was 16 or 17, and a friend of mine bought one. Because I got really engrossed in it, he lent it to me for a couple of weeks. I just thought, "This is the way to go, I really need to go and get one." All I could afford at the time was a cheap Yamaha CS5, which I think at the time cost about 200 GBP. And that was a lucky break for me, because Vince and Andy, who had already started playing music together, they needed somebody to - well, they didn't need somebody - they suddenly realised that I had a synthesizer, and so they asked me to join the band.

Stuart Maconie: (laughs) That was your audition?

Martin Gore: That was it, yeah.

['New Life' plays]

Martin Gore: ... And then they saw the potential, obviously, and then we turned into an all-electronic band. Because at the time, they were playing guitar and bass. That's why, when we first started out, we were really electronic purists. We didn't really use guitars at all until, I think the first time was probably on something like 'Music For The Masses'.

Stuart Maconie: Oh, so you would have been annoyed by Queens. Do you remember how Queen albums used to say, "No synthesizers" on them?

Martin Gore: I do remember that, yeah. The funniest thing for me was that, though, I think that the Human League started putting that on their albums at one point.

Stuart Maconie: Yeah, I think they, definitely on Travelogue, put "Synthesizers and vocals only" as an attempt to annoy Queens, I suppose. Although at that point, [Queens] probably could not care less what the Human League thought, I guess.

Stuart Maconie: But have you got two distinct musical personalities, Martin? Have you got the guitar playing, songwriter-ly personality, and then the person who has made 'MG' with these darker, more textured synthetic and electronic soundscapes?

Martin Gore: Yeah, I think there are definitely different sides to me. This was definitely meant to be a pure electronic album again. I definitely knew that I didn't want to use guitars at all. I knew that I didn't want to use any real drums, I knew I didn't want to use vocals on it.

Stuart Maconie: And is it a mood that you're thinking of? When you're playing around in your studio and you're thinking, "That's working, that's finished, that's maybe not finished"? I've been looking at the titles, you have despawned my theory that they were all going to be one-word titles by having one called 'Europa Hymn', but otherwise, they are all one-word titles. And is the idea that you are trying to convey some kind of cinematic or mood in the listener?

Martin Gore: Well, the idea was really to try and create small, cinematic soundscapes. I just saw them as, like, short scenes in films. They were just meant to be small pieces that conveyed some kind of mood or atmosphere.

Stuart Maconie: This was kind of conceived, I think, just after you had come off the road with the Delta Machine tour for Depeche Mode, is that right?

Martin Gore: Well, I kind of had the initial conception before that, because, when I was actually writing Delta Machine, I wrote a few instrumentals that didn't get used on the album or the deluxe edition, because Dave and me both write now for the band. I didn't want to just discard them, so I thought, "Maybe I should think about bleeding a whole album."

Stuart Maconie: And what comes next then, Martin?

Martin Gore: Eh, I suppose I am going to start writing some songs with the vague goal of getting a whole album worth of material together for the band.

Stuart Maconie: Well, good luck, and thanks for taking the time to do this, Martin.

Martin Gore: Alright, thanks Stuart.

Stuart Maconie: Thanks, bye bye!

Martin Gore: Bye!