Dave Gahan - Hourglass (new solo album)
Sept 9, 2007 21:17:34 GMT -5
Post by कामसूत्र on Sept 9, 2007 21:17:34 GMT -5
This is the second solo album from the lead singer of electronic/rock group Depeche Mode. Dave released his first solo album Paper Monsters back in 2003.
The release date is now confirmed as October 22nd in the UK.
The lead single is "Kingdom." It is available for digital download in various places. U.S. iTunes has the single version.
A commercial single with remixes by Booka Shade and Digitalism will be released in early October.
Billboard article:
Gahan Digs 'Deeper' On Second Solo Album
September 07, 2007, 10:05 AM ET
Jonathan Cohen, N.Y.
Depeche Mode's David Gahan isn't exactly known for working quickly. After all, fans have come to expect a traditional four-year wait between the band's studio albums, and Gahan waited more than 20 years to release his first solo project, 2003's "Paper Monsters."
But within a few months of completing Depeche Mode's Playing the Angel tour, he was writing new material with the band's touring drummer Christian Eigner and programmer Andrew Phillpott, and it's this music which makes up "Hourglass," due Oct. 23 via Mute/Virgin.
"When we started, they had a few musical ideas, but nothing song-like in any way, shape or form," he tells Billboard.com. "We really wrote as we went along. After two weeks, we looked around and realized we weren't just demoing, so we thought, Why don't we just make a record? For me, that was the really exciting thing. There was no involvement from the record company, or worrying about who would produce it or where we'd record it."
Lyrically, Gahan pushed himself to write about his own struggles. "I'm becoming more accepting of the fact that I'm getting a little older," he says with a laugh. "It always seems to be a theme in my life that I'm racing against time. I'm a 25-year-old in a 45-year-old man's body. I wrote about those themes more, like, this is who I am and these are these are my frustrations. There's still these other parts of me that rear their ugly head ... my struggle with being with myself."
In terms of the music, the goal was to be as spontaneous as possible. Gahan points to the song "Deeper and Deeper" as a prime example. "It was a one-riff idea we decided to go with fundamentally from the groove," he says. "We improvised on that one idea and exaggerated it as the song went along. We just kept going and layering it."
"With the use of electronics and technology, you can quickly produce something very different by twisting it around," he continues. "It's a lot more difficult to do that when you sit down with a traditional band. You can change arrangements, but to create an atmosphere, using technology is a great help."
Gahan isn't planning to tour solo at the moment, although he says he "won't rule it out." There's also not much percolating in the Depeche Mode camp at the moment, but Gahan says bandmate Martin Gore is "working on some ideas. Loosely, we're planning on at least talking about doing another record next year."
Song by song...
SAW SOMETHING
“When we first started writing, I had that song in my head and in my heart; so I was dying to get on a mic and sing it. The lyrics are about sitting, waiting for something to come--protection of some kind, or some kind of answer. What I’ve come to learn is that you’ve got to go find it, take some action. I prefer to sit and wait, but it just doesn’t work. It sounds kind weird, but I do believe in that sort of divine intervention, if you allow it. If you allow life to happen, not try to push it in the direction you think it’s supposed to go in—which is what I spend a lot of time doing—then really amazing things happen, things that you didn’t expect. But you’ve got to take some action. This song, for me, is a starting point for something new in my life.”
KINGDOM
“It’s this idea that there’s a better place, and it’s not up there in the clouds, it’s right here. And it’s about becoming more accepting of life and the way it is. I would be lying if I said the world didn’t affect me. I have children and I want to protect them; and sometimes I don’t really have the ability to do that.”
DEEPER AND DEEPER
“It is very sexual and very animal. But that’s a big part of me, too; and I wanted to expose that. I started singing it, and Christian said I would have to stand three feet from the mic—I was just screaming it out. I wanted it to have that feel of T. Rex, Gary Glitter, all those glam bands. But it’s really kind of a blues thing, just riffing on one idea.”
21 DAYS
“This is built around a sort of Stooges drone, a bass guitar hit in a very strange way. It’s sung in my true voice, the way I just sort of spit things out. As for the lyrics, well, all these things creep in from what I read, what I see. And I do believe that we are building this tower of fear that we’re all going to live in, until we decide we’re not going to anymore."
MIRACLES
“It’s one of my favorites, because it is so exposed. Visually, it’s kind of like coming in and out of the fog. Exposing a little bit of what I believe in but not really. I’m going to tell you that I don’t believe in Jesus but I’m gonna continue praying. Religion is not a concept that I...I think it’s archaic. But at the same time, there are many times I’ve found myself praying to something. If the lyrics are contradicting themselves, it’s because I’m contradicting myself all the time. The thing is, I don’t believe in miracles, but I see them happen in my life and in other people’s lives. I have total faith in life and love; I just don’t have any faith in people. But it’s really a love song. And I believe in love, but I’m also afraid of it. In the past, I lost myself completely, and if you’ve lost yourself, you can’t possibly have a relationship with anybody else. To have that in my life, to have a family, I realize it’s the most important thing.”
USE YOU
“It’s very sleazy. It’s about my disgust with people, myself, disgust with my arrogance and my self-sabotaging behavior. I wanna use something, I wanna use life to escape. I think it comes from being made to go to Sunday school when I was a kid. I heard it loud and clear, that we’re all sinners.”
INSOLUBLE
“It’s just the word, I really like that word. It’s about something you can’t really touch, but you know it’s there. I felt like it wasn’t going to make it on the record, but we stripped it back, and it’s become drumless. Now I feel like it’s got a place.”
ENDLESS
“It’s about trying to believe there’s something at the end of the tunnel that will somehow solve all the problems; it’s that illusion. We recorded 'Endless' in five different ways. We went a really hard way with it, and that just didn’t work. Then Andrew and Christian went out and ended up at some club and the DJ did this thing where he reversed the beat; and they came back all excited about it. So we let Christian go at it and he came up with this very off beat. I think that even in a pop format, if you push yourself and allow the experimentation, the song can go in so many different ways; it's very hypnotic, but it's also a pop song."
A LITTLE LIE
“It has a John McGeoch/Siouxsie Sioux kind of vibe to it. It’s very gothic, and of course there’s nothing wrong with goth. It’s like those songs that have real highs and lows and take you to an odd, sort of ethereal place. A lot of Depeche songs have that feeling; Martin and I are very much minor chord people. The beat is a sort of swamp crawl, something from the deep South, which comes from me listening to John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters. I was poking fun at myself a bit in this song, using this really bombastic opening, and then singing about how the time for that has sort of passed.”
DOWN
“It’s one of my favorites. It’s almost got a kind of country feel to it. It’s the last little reflection of where I left off with Paper Monsters. Visually it’s reflecting back to the days when I wasn’t participating in life. There are certainly times when I’m still, like, fuck it, let’s crack open the bottle of Jack Daniels.”
The release date is now confirmed as October 22nd in the UK.
The lead single is "Kingdom." It is available for digital download in various places. U.S. iTunes has the single version.
A commercial single with remixes by Booka Shade and Digitalism will be released in early October.
Billboard article:
Gahan Digs 'Deeper' On Second Solo Album
September 07, 2007, 10:05 AM ET
Jonathan Cohen, N.Y.
Depeche Mode's David Gahan isn't exactly known for working quickly. After all, fans have come to expect a traditional four-year wait between the band's studio albums, and Gahan waited more than 20 years to release his first solo project, 2003's "Paper Monsters."
But within a few months of completing Depeche Mode's Playing the Angel tour, he was writing new material with the band's touring drummer Christian Eigner and programmer Andrew Phillpott, and it's this music which makes up "Hourglass," due Oct. 23 via Mute/Virgin.
"When we started, they had a few musical ideas, but nothing song-like in any way, shape or form," he tells Billboard.com. "We really wrote as we went along. After two weeks, we looked around and realized we weren't just demoing, so we thought, Why don't we just make a record? For me, that was the really exciting thing. There was no involvement from the record company, or worrying about who would produce it or where we'd record it."
Lyrically, Gahan pushed himself to write about his own struggles. "I'm becoming more accepting of the fact that I'm getting a little older," he says with a laugh. "It always seems to be a theme in my life that I'm racing against time. I'm a 25-year-old in a 45-year-old man's body. I wrote about those themes more, like, this is who I am and these are these are my frustrations. There's still these other parts of me that rear their ugly head ... my struggle with being with myself."
In terms of the music, the goal was to be as spontaneous as possible. Gahan points to the song "Deeper and Deeper" as a prime example. "It was a one-riff idea we decided to go with fundamentally from the groove," he says. "We improvised on that one idea and exaggerated it as the song went along. We just kept going and layering it."
"With the use of electronics and technology, you can quickly produce something very different by twisting it around," he continues. "It's a lot more difficult to do that when you sit down with a traditional band. You can change arrangements, but to create an atmosphere, using technology is a great help."
Gahan isn't planning to tour solo at the moment, although he says he "won't rule it out." There's also not much percolating in the Depeche Mode camp at the moment, but Gahan says bandmate Martin Gore is "working on some ideas. Loosely, we're planning on at least talking about doing another record next year."
Song by song...
SAW SOMETHING
“When we first started writing, I had that song in my head and in my heart; so I was dying to get on a mic and sing it. The lyrics are about sitting, waiting for something to come--protection of some kind, or some kind of answer. What I’ve come to learn is that you’ve got to go find it, take some action. I prefer to sit and wait, but it just doesn’t work. It sounds kind weird, but I do believe in that sort of divine intervention, if you allow it. If you allow life to happen, not try to push it in the direction you think it’s supposed to go in—which is what I spend a lot of time doing—then really amazing things happen, things that you didn’t expect. But you’ve got to take some action. This song, for me, is a starting point for something new in my life.”
KINGDOM
“It’s this idea that there’s a better place, and it’s not up there in the clouds, it’s right here. And it’s about becoming more accepting of life and the way it is. I would be lying if I said the world didn’t affect me. I have children and I want to protect them; and sometimes I don’t really have the ability to do that.”
DEEPER AND DEEPER
“It is very sexual and very animal. But that’s a big part of me, too; and I wanted to expose that. I started singing it, and Christian said I would have to stand three feet from the mic—I was just screaming it out. I wanted it to have that feel of T. Rex, Gary Glitter, all those glam bands. But it’s really kind of a blues thing, just riffing on one idea.”
21 DAYS
“This is built around a sort of Stooges drone, a bass guitar hit in a very strange way. It’s sung in my true voice, the way I just sort of spit things out. As for the lyrics, well, all these things creep in from what I read, what I see. And I do believe that we are building this tower of fear that we’re all going to live in, until we decide we’re not going to anymore."
MIRACLES
“It’s one of my favorites, because it is so exposed. Visually, it’s kind of like coming in and out of the fog. Exposing a little bit of what I believe in but not really. I’m going to tell you that I don’t believe in Jesus but I’m gonna continue praying. Religion is not a concept that I...I think it’s archaic. But at the same time, there are many times I’ve found myself praying to something. If the lyrics are contradicting themselves, it’s because I’m contradicting myself all the time. The thing is, I don’t believe in miracles, but I see them happen in my life and in other people’s lives. I have total faith in life and love; I just don’t have any faith in people. But it’s really a love song. And I believe in love, but I’m also afraid of it. In the past, I lost myself completely, and if you’ve lost yourself, you can’t possibly have a relationship with anybody else. To have that in my life, to have a family, I realize it’s the most important thing.”
USE YOU
“It’s very sleazy. It’s about my disgust with people, myself, disgust with my arrogance and my self-sabotaging behavior. I wanna use something, I wanna use life to escape. I think it comes from being made to go to Sunday school when I was a kid. I heard it loud and clear, that we’re all sinners.”
INSOLUBLE
“It’s just the word, I really like that word. It’s about something you can’t really touch, but you know it’s there. I felt like it wasn’t going to make it on the record, but we stripped it back, and it’s become drumless. Now I feel like it’s got a place.”
ENDLESS
“It’s about trying to believe there’s something at the end of the tunnel that will somehow solve all the problems; it’s that illusion. We recorded 'Endless' in five different ways. We went a really hard way with it, and that just didn’t work. Then Andrew and Christian went out and ended up at some club and the DJ did this thing where he reversed the beat; and they came back all excited about it. So we let Christian go at it and he came up with this very off beat. I think that even in a pop format, if you push yourself and allow the experimentation, the song can go in so many different ways; it's very hypnotic, but it's also a pop song."
A LITTLE LIE
“It has a John McGeoch/Siouxsie Sioux kind of vibe to it. It’s very gothic, and of course there’s nothing wrong with goth. It’s like those songs that have real highs and lows and take you to an odd, sort of ethereal place. A lot of Depeche songs have that feeling; Martin and I are very much minor chord people. The beat is a sort of swamp crawl, something from the deep South, which comes from me listening to John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters. I was poking fun at myself a bit in this song, using this really bombastic opening, and then singing about how the time for that has sort of passed.”
DOWN
“It’s one of my favorites. It’s almost got a kind of country feel to it. It’s the last little reflection of where I left off with Paper Monsters. Visually it’s reflecting back to the days when I wasn’t participating in life. There are certainly times when I’m still, like, fuck it, let’s crack open the bottle of Jack Daniels.”
