Tag: Paul Humphreys (Page 4 of 6)

CLAUDIA BRÜCKEN Everyone Says Hi

26 February 2013 /

Last Autumn saw the release of ‘The Lost Are Found’, an emotive body of songs recorded by Claudia Brücken in collaboration with top producer Stephen Hague, best known for his work with PET SHOP BOYS, OMD, NEW ORDER and ERASURE.

Each of the compositions came from their very own world and were respectively adopted to form an eleven episode triste drame. One of the album’s highlights Everyone Says Hi’ has just been released as a single ahead of Claudia’s upcoming UK and German tour.

Claudia Brücken’s lively reinterpretation of one of David Bowie’s latterly compositions from ‘Heathen’ is dressed with catchy synth riffs and fuzzy shades. And the fabulous accompanying promo video could be interpreted as a visual dramatisation of Major Tom’s final voyage from ‘Space Oddity’.

Claudia only features halfway through but also look out for cameos from Glenn Gregory, Andrew Poppy, Paul Humphreys and even Claudia’s dog Patsy… joyous it may be but poor Major Tom is ultimately doomed, left to drift in space’s wilderness. So “Tell my wife I love her very much…”

As well as touring in March. Claudia will be making a very special guest appearance on the new OMD album ‘English Electric’, to be released on 8th April 2013. She will feature on a new version of ‘Kissing The Machine’, a track written by Andy McCluskey with the electronic godfather Karl Bartos in 1993 for the ELEKTRIC MUSIC album ‘Esperanto’ which has been reworked by her ONETWO partner and OMD founder member Paul Humphreys. The track which could be perceived by many to be KRAFTWERK vs OMD vs PROPAGANDA is eagerly awaited.

‘Everyone Says Hi’ and ‘The Lost Are Found’ are released by There (there)

Claudia Brücken ’s 2013 Spring tour includes:

Glasgow O2 ABC2 (12th March), Birmingham O2 Academy 3 (13th March), Manchester Academy 3 (15th March), London Borderline (16th March), Brighton Concorde 2 (17th March)

http://www.claudiabrucken.co.uk

http://www.theremusic.com

Text by Chi Ming Lai
26th February 2013

PAUL HUMPHREYS & DOUGLAS COUPLAND Electric Ikebana

2 February 2013 /

Not a track from the new OMD album ‘English Electric’ but an indication of where it’s heading.

This is ‘Electric Ikebana’, a collaboration between Paul Humphreys and ‘Generation X’ author Douglas Coupland which Mr Humphreys first told ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK about back in 2010.

An audio/visual installation to act as the voice of the network, it was a commission for Alcatel-Lucent as part of their online 2011 Annual Review. The beautiful piece has Humphreys’ musical stamp and  conceptual hints of KRAFTWERK’s ‘The Voice Of Energy’ but with a far less Teutonic style. There’s even a charming mathematical formula recital “x = [-b +- √(b² -4ac)] / 2a” by Humphreys to the tune of the nursery rhyme ‘Pop Goes The Weasel’ which recalls ‘ABC Auto-Industry’ from ‘Dazzle Ships’…

The global communications company said: “we have asked Douglas Coupland, writer and artist, together with the musician Paul Humphreys, to bring the data that represents network usage to life through an audio visual installation. Together they have responded by creating ‘Electric Ikebana’, an artwork that captures the spirit of innovation that lies at the heart of our company”.

It all bodes well for the new OMD album ‘English Electric’ which is a true musical collaboration between its founder members Paul Humphreys and Andy McCluskey.

Humphreys said in Summer 2012: “Andy and I are really excited by ‘English Electric’. We’ve really gone to another level from ‘History Of Modern’ which was too much remote work. We realised we don’t work very well passing files back to each other; we work best when we sit in a room together… What we’d do is flesh out the ideas together and then we’d both take parts back to work on separately. But the spark of this record is us sitting together in a room. We really had a mantra for this album which was ‘What does the future sound like?’… we’re pushing boundaries”.

‘English Electric’ will be released on 8th April 2013

OMD’s 2013 ‘English Electric’ UK Tour

Margate Winter Gardens (28th April), Birmingham Symphony Hall (29th April), Nottingham Royal Centre (1st May), Ipswich Regent Theatre (2nd May), London Roundhouse (3rd May), Bristol Colston Hall (5th May), Oxford New Theatre (6th May), Sheffield City Hall (8th May), Leeds Academy (9th May), Manchester Academy (10th May), Glasgow Royal Concert Hall (12th May), Gateshead Sage (13th May), Liverpool Empire (14th May)

http://www.omd.uk.com/

https://www.facebook.com/omdofficial/

Text by Chi Ming Lai
Illustration by Supersonic Creative Inc
2nd February 2013

A Short Conversation with CLAUDIA BRÜCKEN & PAUL HUMPHREYS

20 July 2012 /

To celebrate the launch of her new live DVD ‘This Happened’, Claudia Brücken reprised her triumphant appearance at The Scala captured on that DVD with another guest filled show at London’s Bush Hall.

With a sparkling band led by her erstwhile Onetwo musical partner Paul Humphreys, on a slightly cramped stage they were additionally augmented by the skills of legendary ZTT producer Stephen J Lipson who worked with Claudia on PROPAGANDA’s ‘A Secret Wish’ and Act’s ‘Laughter, Tears & Rage’ albums. Also present from the Scala gig line-up was Susanne Freytag who performed ‘Dream Within A Dream’ while Claudia took a mid-set break.

HEAVEN 17’s Glenn Gregory participated in some playfully fun renditions of ‘Snobbery & Decay’ and ‘When Your Heart Runs Out Of Time’, while Martyn Ware joined them for a Teutonically ripe ‘Temptation’. Central to the evening though was her stripped down covers of ‘In Dreams’ and ‘Running Up That Hill’ with pianist Andrew Poppy which showcased Claudia’s emotive range and diversity.

But in the absence of Andy Bell came another Andy of the McCluskey variety who duetted with Claudia on Act’s ‘Absolutely Immune’ and OMD’s evergreen ‘Messages’. With other great tunes aplenty from Claudia’s repertoire like ‘Thank You’, ‘Absolut(E)’, ‘Sequentia’, ‘Night School’, the Martin Gore co-write ‘Cloud Nine’, ‘p:Machinery’ and of course ‘Duel’, it was another warm, heartfelt evening with plenty of love from Claudia’s loyal audience in return for an elegantly refined performance.

Just prior to the Bush Hall show, Claudia and Paul talked to ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK about what their futures might sound like…

Photo by Hege Saebjornsen

With regards to playing live at festivals as ONETWO, you did Vintage and Back To The Phuture Night at Bestival in 2011…

Paul: Vintage was a good line-up. Thomas Dolby was great…

Claudia: …Thomas was brilliant!

Paul: It was great to see Alan Wilder too cos I’d not seen him since Depeche Mode’s ‘101’ tour in America, we had a real good catch up. I really like Alan a lot.

ONETWO seem to be invited to play the cool festivals but is there any reason OMD don’t seem to get asked?

Paul: We will… we’re having an easy year in 2012. But next year, we’re pushing for some really good festivals.

Claudia, have you ever been tempted to accept an offer to play Here&Now or Rewind?

Claudia: I’ve not been asked before…there is this thing about me going out as Claudia Brücken and me going out as PROPAGANDA. If PROPAGANDA was set-up with everybody there, I think it is most likely we would have been approached, but not as Claudia Brücken.

Paul, you’re actually going to do Rewind as part of OMD…

Paul: Yes, this is going to be our first and maybe last concession to the retro thing, but we just fancied doing it really. For four consecutive years, we were asked to headline Here&Now and we turned it down every year! And then they stopped asking…

Claudia: …they stopped asking and then you said “we want to do it!” *laughs*

Paul: Then, we got offered Rewind and almost said no but we discussed it and we thought it might be nice to do a couple of British festivals this summer. The bill for our night is ok; Marc Almond, The Lightning Seeds, Midge Ure, The Christians…

You’ve both worked on some interesting projects like the ‘LA Noire’ computer game soundtrack for you Claudia, which was quite different as it was jazz…

Claudia: During Christmas 2011, I received an email which I thought was spam from the head of Rockstar Games saying there was this part of a German singer for a new game called ‘L.A. Noire’…

Paul: She nearly deleted it! *laughs*

Claudia: They wanted to ask if I would be interested in being the voice on three songs for that game. I thought: “why not?”. I heard the songs and thought they were so beautiful. I found it a really good challenge doing something I hadn’t done before.

Paul: It was out of your comfort zone…

Claudia: …I liked the whole idea.

Paul: What was interesting is that it tuned Claudia onto a much younger audience. Those songs are all over YouTube and some of the comments are from 16 year old gamers going “OMG, who’s this singer, where can I get an album like this?”…so they WILL have an album like this. We’re doing a noire album.

Claudia: What was really nice was that the producer Stephen Coates is London based so that made it all plausible and Paul recorded the vocals.

Paul: Later this year, we get the rights to those songs back from the game but there were some other songs they did that were fantastic which didn’t make it onto the game. Stephen’s written a few other songs so we’ve got enough for an album. It will be with a different twist, not completely jazz, it will be a bit more David Lynch…

Claudia: …a bit dark. Like ‘The Third Man’ meets ‘Twin Peaks’

Photo by Hege Saebjornsen

Paul, you’ve done the ‘Electric Ikebana’ with Douglas Coupland…

Paul: The feedback’s been amazing and I’ve been interested in the comments on the OMD site. People are saying “Oh my god, it’s like Dazzle Ships’ for this century” and “I hope the new album’s got something like this on it”… and IT DOES!

So what about the future projects then?

Claudia: I’ve done a solo album, it’s in the can and we’re hoping to release it in November. The theme is melancholy songs…they’re sad but they don’t make you slash your wrists. I recorded it in four months with Stephen Hague and we had this real clear vision of what we wanted to do. It was recorded after the Scala gig…

Paul: …yes, I went on a big American tour with OMD and Claudia thought “I’m going to make a record”! *laughs*

Claudia: We’d work on the song arrangements remotely but when I was ready to sing, I’d go over to Stephen’s studio in Hastings and that was an amazing experience. I’m so happy about this album because you really can’t put it into a certain time, it kind of ignores what’s current and it’s not competing with it.

Stephen is playing all the instruments and that’s a great gift he has. He loves his electronic references, but he enhances it as he’s a multi-instrumentalist.

So Paul, what’s happening with OMD?

Paul: I’ve been working on ‘English Electric’ which will be out in 2013 and it’s fab by the way. Andy and I are really excited by ‘English Electric’. We’ve really gone to another level from ‘History Of Modern’, which was too much remote work. We realised we don’t work very well passing files back to each other; we work best when we sit in a room together. And so I’ve been up to Liverpool loads. What we’d do is flesh out the ideas together and then we’d both take parts back to work on separately.

But the spark of this record is us sitting together in a room. We really had a mantra for this album which was “What does the future sound like?”…we’re pushing boundaries. There is a song called ‘Night Café’, which is like ‘She’s Leaving’ meets ‘Souvenir’ and lovely. The album’s a little bit more musical than ‘Dazzle Ships’, but it is ‘Dazzle Ships’ for the 21st Century in a sense because it’s not just a collection of songs. The album is themed although it’s not a concept album. There are sections that maybe only last a minute and a half, there’s pieces that are three minutes and nine minutes as well. We’ve also got a song called ‘Metroland’ which I think is going to be really fantastic.

And when can we look forward to the next ONETWO album?

Claudia: It’s coming along but obviously with all these projects, the DVD etc, there’s only so much we can do and you need focus. So Paul and I have been writing and recording but personally I thought it would be great if Andy and Paul could make a great album as OMD.

Paul: Who knows if there is going to be another OMD album after this? Maybe there will but if this was to be our last album and I have to think in these terms now, I want to leave an album that is really special. And I think ‘English Electric’ has a good chance of being that album. I’m really happy with it.

ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its grateful thanks to Claudia Brücken and Paul Humphreys

Claudia Brücken ‘This Happened’ DVD+CD set is available now through the There(there) shop.

OMD play Rewind Festival on Sunday 19th August 2012 in Henley-on-Thames

http://www.claudiabrucken.co.uk

http://www.theremusic.com

Text and Interview by Chi Ming Lai
20th July 2012

CLAUDIA BRÜCKEN & PAUL HUMPHREYS Discuss How ‘This Happened’

4 July 2012 /

Photo by Hege Saebjornsen

Claudia Brücken’s ‘This Time’ career celebration at The Scala in London was without doubt, one of the best live presentations of 2011.On this wonderful evening, the first lady of cinematic electronic pop was joined by some very special guests in Erasure’s Andy Bell, Heaven 17’s Glenn Gregory and Martyn Ware, Ralf Dörper and Susanne Freytag from Propaganda and one time ZTT label mate Andrew Poppy for an unforgettable and almost certainly unrepeatable concert. The superb event has been captured as a DVD film and accompanying CD soundtrack entitled ‘This Happened’.

This is the perfect souvenir for those who were there (and those who wished they were there). It captures all the warmth of appreciation from that evening when Claudia performed a selection of songs from her career accompanied by a superb backing band led by ONETWO partner and musical director Paul Humphreys.

Featuring Philip Larsen, James Watson, Dawne Adams, Sam Sallon, Melissa D’Arcy and Dave Watson, the company delightfully tackled a catalogue songs made famous by Claudia as a member of Propaganda, Act, Onetwo and as a solo artist. There are many highlights to savour including a exceptionally groovy ‘Absolut(E)’, playful duets with Glenn Gregory and Andy Bell, the Bond theme meets Massive Attack chic of new song ‘Thank You’, the three quarters reunion of PROPAGANDA and the surprise inclusion of ‘Dream Within A Dream’ from their highly regarded album ‘A Secret Wish’.

But that’s not all. To celebrate the release of ‘This Happened’, Claudia Brücken will also be playing a new version of the show, ‘This Time Too’ at London’s Bush Hall on Thursday 19th July 2012 featuring OMD’s Andy McCluskey as one of the special guests.

Taking a break from preparing for this upcoming performance, Claudia Brücken and Paul Humphreys kindly invited ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK to their London studio to talk about the live DVD and reminisce about that wonderful evening at The Scala last March.

It was an amazing night at The Scala, how do you look back on it?

Claudia: It was a complete success, it was great to have all the people, who I have collaborated with, agree to perform with me. It was quite a difficult task to get all of the musicians together and to organise it all.

Paul: Getting everyone to rehearse on the same day was a nightmare.

Claudia: Everybody was individually rehearsed. We told everyone what parts they were doing so they were all well prepared and then we did two days rehearsal…

Paul: …that was mainly for the band really as we were playing a whole load of songs we had never played before. *laughs*

Which songs were the most challenging to reproduce in a live situation?

Paul: ‘Dream Within A Dream’ was probably the toughest because it’s such a complex piece, there’s all these solos and Dawne our percussionist had all these things to do, there were different cues and all the bar counts are changing all the time! To be honest, we never got ‘Dream Within A Dream’ right in rehearsals; the only time we got it right was live on stage at the Scala. On stage, we were all just secretly nodding at each other!

I remember all the gasps of excitement from the audience when Susanne uttered those first few words…

Paul: Yes, you can hear it on the mikes when I mixed it!

Claudia: That was a little personal challenge; it’s such a great Propaganda piece. As Susanne was there as a guest, I really wanted to put that song out there in a live context.

Paul: All the chords are very complex and we had to get in our mate Sam who hadn’t played flugelhorn since he was a kid. So he bought one and he spent two weeks rehearsing…but he did really well *laughs*

The setlist was very well paced and as good as perfect. How did you decide what to perform?

Paul: We played the obvious ones from the ‘ComBined’ album as it was a celebration based around that.

Claudia: Also through Onetwo, we had so many songs already rehearsed. It was just a matter of organising everyone. So it became obvious when we had Glenn as a guest that we do ‘Snobbery & Decay’ and ‘When Your Heart Runs Out Of Time’. ‘When Your Heart Runs Out Of Time’ was pure self-indulgence because we’d never done it before. We thought we might as well do it.

Paul: We completely reworked it, it’s nothing like the original; we did a very electro version.

Claudia: Then Glenn and Martyn remembered they had done an electro version of ‘Temptation’ which was a demo…

Paul: …apparently that was the demo which got HEAVEN 17 their deal. And they had a German singer actually talk it before they reworked it with all the high vocals and the strings.

Claudia: I had this demo as a template and I really like that almost detached attitude so I thought that’s a good way to go with the idea.

Paul: But the biggest challenge for Claudia was ‘Running Up That Hill’ and ‘In Dreams’ with Andrew Poppy because you’re so exposed and any slight mistake, it really stands out.

Claudia: It was quite daring because most people attending the show, their background is electronic music so for me to just come out and bring it right down to just piano and voice…I really liked it for a change of scene. I did a show with Andrew Poppy the other day for his new album ‘Shiny Floor, Shiny Ceiling’. We did a couple of performances at the Chelsea Arts Centre. He’s very clever and such an artist, he’s got his own ideas and he sees it through.

Paul: It was an amazing show.

Were there any songs that you considered, but discounted for various reasons?

Claudia: I would have liked to have played more from ‘Love: And A Million Other Things’ like ‘Baby Sign’ or ‘Love: In Another World’ but there was just so much to choose from.

The crowd particularly enjoyed the three quarters reunion of PROPAGANDA…

Claudia: It was great, I’ve always wanted to do it. I’ve been working towards the possibility of trying to get PROPGANDA on the road again and there’s always been hurdles, it’s never been easy! Everything else with ONETWO and the band has always been very easy and pleasurable. So when Susanne and Ralf agreed to join me, it was the closest at that point of getting those PROPAGANDA songs back up live. I’m someone who doesn’t give up easily and I try different ways to make something happen. I’ve known them for such a long time and it just kind of fell into place.

Is it true Ralf never played live with PROPGANDA first time round when you were on ZTT?

Claudia: That’s right, he was working as a banker and couldn’t get time off. The first time was the Trevor Horn Wembley concert in 2004. Wow! That was a bit of a band wasn’t it? *laughs*

Yes, I’ve seen the video clip of that! Stephen Lipson, Lol Creme, Anne Dudley, Geoff Downes, David Palmer AND an orchestra!

Paul: Now that’s what I call a band! *laughs*

Claudia: A band, Trevor Horn style! *laughs*

There’s an obvious onstage chemistry between you and Glenn Gregory, what do you put that down to?

Claudia and Paul: Mates! *laughter*

Claudia: But we genuinely love each other as well, I’ve known him since the ‘Dr Mabuse’ video shoot which his first wife Sarah did the make-up for. One of my earliest memories about England was going to Glenn’s old house in Notting Hill…I was discussing make-up and stuff with Sarah and there were Heaven 17 sitting on a couch in a darkly lit room. We just became really good friends and went through a lot of things together on ZTT as Trevor Horn used to use him as a session singer a lot on recordings by Grace Jones and stuff.

We’ve already mentioned Andrew Poppy but you couldn’t have had a more polar opposite guest than the other Andrew, Mr Bell?

Claudia: I did some gigs with Andy Bell back in 2005 at Madame Jo-Jo’s and Koko, it was just so natural.

Paul: Again, we’re mates with Andy, we’ve been on holiday with Andy too. He’s a sweetheart. We adore him.

Susanne almost didn’t make it on stage in time for ‘Light The Way’. How did you make sure the evening ran like clockwork while still being able to vibe off the special occasion?

Paul: It was funny while mixing the sound for the DVD and album, all the way through the intro of ‘Light The Way’, Claudia’s going: “Where’s Susanne? Where’s Susanne?”…we didn’t have a stage manager! *laughs*

Claudia: We forgot actually about that didn’t we!! *laughs*

Paul: We relied on everyone to remember their cue, I posted a sheet up in the dressing room! There’s only one dressing room at The Scala and it’s tiny…there were fifteen of us!!

Claudia: All these men dressed in black standing there, it was like a Magritte painting *laughs*

Paul: There were three chairs, all for the girls of course.

Claudia: It was very funny!

How was it trying to fix situations like when Susanne’s microphone cut out during ‘Dr Mabuse’ in the final audio mix? Is it a matter of retrieving sections of the recording or overdubbing?

Paul: It was actually there. It went to record, but our soundman Chicky had it muted on the desk! He had so many cues to remember that he forgot that one! *laughs*

Claudia: It was a bit “let’s see what happens” as well. There was so much information for him there.

With so many people involved, was it a matter of tying it all together during the soundcheck? Martyn Ware mentioned to me it had been a long day.

Claudia: We did have a soundcheck but there were a few technical hiccups which no-one could foresee. At 6.45pm, I said to Paul: “Shouldn’t we be hearing a sound of some sort by now?”

Paul: I was trying to keep Claudia calm and saying “Don’t worry, everything is fine” but knowing that it really wasn’t! What happened was James from the band’s laptop blew up and he didn’t have a back-up….all his virtual instruments were on there. So he was programming all these different sounds on another keyboard that he had using his headphones! But also at The Scala, we had so many lines, mikes and inputs that the stage box wasn’t good enough. You have to split it to monitor desk and front of house but with their box, you could have one or the other, but not both! So I had to hire one really quickly and get it delivered. But I didn’t tell Claudia this! *laughs*

How does the finished DVD look and will it satisfy those fans who there, and also those were unable to make it to the gig?

Paul: It’s fantastic!

Claudia: It’s been a real labour of love, it’s taken us so long to make. We get asked to play Canada, Russia, Finland and the USA but we can’t tour everywhere, it’s not so simple. So I wanted there to be a documentation of what I’m like live so I hope they like it. We put a lot of love into it… it’s 100% and more to make this an entertaining piece of work.

Is it in 5.1 surround sound?

Paul: It’s not actually, so many people I know don’t have 5.1, so I didn’t think it was necessary. Plus it would have made it far more expensive to make because I mixed it in my own studio, and I don’t have a 5.1 system in here. I’m happy with stereo and most people will enjoy it stereo. In 5.1 you’ve got mix everything twice as you have to do a stereo mix anyway, those balances are completely different. It took a long time to just to mix 98 minutes of music in stereo.

You have ‘This Time Too’ at Bush Hall coming up on 19th July as a follow on event. This time you have another Andrew, ie Mr McCluskey as a guest. What song will he be performing with you?

Claudia: He’s doing ‘Absolutely Immune’ in place of Andy Bell…

Paul: …but instead of ‘Delicious’, we’ll be doing something else which Claudia and Andy will sing as a duet.

Would it ever be a possibility for you to go out with a touring version of this show in Europe, albeit maybe without all the wonderful guests?

Claudia: If I did it, it would make sense for everyone else to join us…anything is possible. But if they did come on tour with me, I would want them to show more of themselves. I couldn’t ask them to sing just one song…

Paul: Hopefully, Claudia will be touring to promote her new solo album and she will playing some of these songs in the show so it will kind of be happening…

ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its sincerest thanks to Claudia Brücken and Paul Humphreys

The DVD+CD set ‘This Happened’ is released on 23rd July 2012 via There(there).

http://www.claudiabrucken.co.uk

https://www.facebook.com/ClaudiaBruckenMusic

Text and Interviewby Chi Ming Lai
Photos from the Claudia Brücken, Propaganda and Onetwo Facebook pages
4th July 2012

OMD Synthetic Engineering

16 March 2012 /

OMD’s existing performance set-up with two Roland Fantom X8 workstations actually has its roots in the 1983 ‘Dazzle Ships’ Live Presentation.

Some of the more purist observers complain about the lack of analogue instruments in the current live shows but Andy McCluskey said recently: “Who says that digital can’t be a beautiful as analogue?”

Even in the pioneering days, OMD were thinking carefully about how best technologically to present themselves in a live context to an audience that was still growing accustomed to electronic based music. It is well documented that the success of ‘Architecture & Morality’ tour had taken its toll on the band emotionally and functionally. Extended touring had robbed the band of time in their studio The Gramophone Suite to compose new material.

As Andy once remarked: “you can’t sit up the back of a tour bus and strum your synthesizer…”. But there was also their reliance on the equipment they took out on the road. Paul Humphreys had his ever faithful Korg Micro-Preset but also the Sequential Circuits Prophet 5 first used on the single version of ‘Messages’ and the subsequent ‘Organisation’ campaign.

In addition, there was the hefty sky blue Elgam Symphony dual action organ and the huge, even more cumbersome Novatron which was an updated version of the Streetly Mellotron M400 that had been during the recording of the album. “We used a Mellotron Mk1 on ‘Architecture & Morality’ but were advised that if we were going on the road to get a Novatron.” said Andy, “The Mk1 had a very bad whine created by the power supply. Streetly told us it was a design fault.”

The Mellotron aka Novatron was an electro-mechanical keyboard that played tape loops of sounds such as choirs, strings and brass. The name Novatron was adopted for instruments produced after 1976 due to a legal blunder which meant the name Mellotron could not be used. It was the dominant texture of ‘Joan Of Arc (Maid Of Orleans)’ as well as several other tracks on ‘Architecture & Morality’ so was considered a necessity on tour sonically. But it was extremely heavy, weighing in at 55 kg and due to its delicate systems, was vulnerable to malfunction under the heat of stage lights.

But there were also power supply issues as Andy recalled from a gig in Italy: “All the power was from a small generator and every time the lights got really bright on stage, the power supply to equipment reduced making the Novatron flywheel slow down so the notes went very flat. Once our lighting guy realised the problem, we did the rest of the show with reduced lights to keep the Novatron in tune.”

Meanwhile, the Prophet 5 had been a godsend as one of the first programmable polyphonic synths and used integrated circuits to make it more compact and versatile compared with say, a Polymoog or Yamaha CS50. It played an important role in the pioneering OMD sound as much as the Mellotron, with tracks such as ‘Romance Of The Telescope’. “’Romance…’ is actually a Prophet 5 factory preset for the out of tune brass sound but the choir is Mellotron” remembered Andy.

Previously, cheaper synths either had presets like Paul’s little Korg which restricted the number of sounds they could make, or they would have no memory like their Korg MS20. Synths like the latter were largely impractical for live use as a keyboard although Mal Holmes had the MS20 to generate fixed sounds for percussive effects triggered by his drum pads. But now with a programmable synth and patch memories at their disposal, a sound could be created or found, stored and then recalled for its corresponding song at a touch of a button.

However, it was still early days for developments in chip based technology and while the Prophet 5 was invaluable for studio work, the oscillators which generated the sound source would destabilise over the time it was switched on, thus causing tuning difficulties. Also the precious memories could be scrambled due to voltage spikes. To add an extra headache, the Prophet 5 had a reputation for reliability issues which necessitated two examples being taken out on the road.

Martin Cooper’s set-up included Roland SH09 and SH2 monosynths for basslines and melodies plus a Vox Jaguar organ for chords. While this organ had been an essential part of the early OMD sound, especially on the first album, it was of 1960s vintage, large and of transistor construction. So again, it was extremely delicate and not suited for the perils of a world tour.

Mal Holmes’ percussion complex consisted of a big Tama bass drum, large Pearl snares and conventional Paiste hi-hat alongside an array of electronic percussion pads triggering the aforementioned Korg MS20 and a pair of Pearl Syncussion units which controlled two percussive timbres each. With minimised microphone spill allowing very loud acoustic drums to combine with the raw electronic noise, these helped give OMD a uniquely crunchy live sound.

But this system was also very fragile due to the exposed ceramic piezoelectric sensors on the pads. Ceramics are not a naturally malleable material so therefore prone to breakage when hit hard. Famously, a home made electronic kit designed by Paul Humphreys and Paul Collister fell to pieces while being used by Mal during OMD’s first show as a live quartet. “I hit the crystal microphone inside the pad and smashed it to bits!” remembered Mal.

The practicalities of a one and a half hour show had shown various shortcomings and provided unnecessarily stress for a group of young musicians still fighting with a music press and audience that didn’t consider synthpop real music and thought synth bands couldn’t play live! So with the future in mind, OMD looked for an instrumental set-up that was more streamlined and practical for live work.

They found it with the E-mu Systems Emulator. Founded in 1971 by Scott Wedge and Dave Rossum, E-mu began making modular synthesizers whose users included jazz virtuoso Herbie Hancock. At a convention, Wedge and Rossum saw the Fairlight CMI, the world’s first computerised digital sampling synthesizer and set about making a less expensive sampler.

The Emulator was released in 1981 at a price of £5000, considerably less than the £20,000 Fairlight. It was a floppy disk-based keyboard workstation which enabled the recording of any sound to non-volatile media and allowed these samples to be played back as musical notes. As an instrument, the Emulator had no sound of its own.

Each aural palette had to be loaded into its memory separately, whether it was from a factory disk of sounds produced by E-mu themselves like the symphonic strings used on ‘Silent Running’, the sound of OMD’s own synths such as the Prophet 5, the voice of Andy McCluskey crooning “blue” on ‘Dazzle Ships’ or the bugle from the BBC Sound Effects record used on ‘This Is Helena’. But by wanting to make life easier for themselves on the road, OMD also entered the brave new world of sampling and were now able to realise some of their more musique concrete ambitions as was apparent on the ‘Dazzle Ships’ album.

But with regards touring, the Mellotron, Elgam, Vox Jaguar and the Prophet 5 could now be retired and replaced by two of these wonder machines on stage. However, the samples were low resolution and grainy at only 8 bits. While these sounds were suitable for chords and effects, the live punch required from the rhythm section meant that Martin’s Roland SH2 was retained as its phat twin oscillator bass sound was formidable in a live context.

Also kept was the similar looking but single oscillator SH09 which was OMD’s preferred synth bass in the studio. Meanwhile, Paul’s Korg Micro-Preset also remained. This was an important artistic gesture as when layered with suitable effects, it provided a cutting melodic bite that was in keeping with OMD’s original garage band ethos. In that spirit, a reel-to-reel tape machine containing things such as the sequence of ‘Messages’ and the Speak & Spell Machine on ‘Genetic Engineering’ was still very much part of the line-up although this was upgraded to a new Tascam from the older Revox.

With Andy, there was no equipment change at all with his trusty Fender Jazz bass guitar. Martin however had his own Fender Jaguar bass for use on ‘Julia’s Song’ as Andy’s was strung in an unconventional manner with the lowest string ‘E’ at the bottom due to first learning to play on a left handed Wilson Rapier bass turned upside down!

For Mal, his new toy came with three Simmons SDS-V drum synths. Co-designed by LANDSCAPE’s Richard James Burgess, these replaced two of the pads hooked to one of the Pearl Syncussion units. The Simmons was very sturdy, having already been road tested on tour by acts such as JAPAN and ULTRAVOX. It was also less of a headache to soundcheck than normal drums.

The SDS-V’s distinctive hexagonal pads were actually made from the same material as police riot sheets.Although he didn’t use the whole Simmons kit, Mal later complained of aching arms. This was from a ‘shock’ that came from hitting the Simmons pads as they did not have the natural give of skinned acoustic drums or even the earlier electronic pads that controlled the Syncussion units and MS20 which to all intents and purposes, were tiny but amplified drums!

Although a fuller Simmons kit was used subsequently on the ‘Junk Culture’ tour, it was only later as OMD made in-roads into breaking synthphobic America with the more conventional sounding ‘Crush’ that Mal started to use a full acoustic drum kit and was allowed to have one of the ultimate percussive symbols of rock ‘n’ roll, the cymbal! This would explain why Mal’s early drum kit always looked like it had been raided by thieves between the soundcheck and gig! Mal remembered “So many people like the road crew said ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with your drum kit but it looks really different! NO CYMBALS, THAT’S IT!’”

Although access to digital representations of their old synths and keyboards were now available using the Emulator live, the fledgling technology was prone to reading errors with the then state-of-the-art 5 ¼ floppy disks. These visually did make interesting artefacts however as Peter Saville found when he saw NEW ORDER’s Emulator and designed the iconic ‘Blue Monday’ sleeve as a coded 12 inch floppy complete with cut-outs!

The Emulator would seem to take forever to load in the context of a show and the setlist needed be arranged to accommodate this. One interesting consequence of the Emulator’s loading time was that Andy’s between song banter increased to cover it up!!! Later when the band upgraded to the Emulator II with its then innovative hard drive in 1985, Andy would often joke about Paul’s problems with his hard disk!!

Despite the expected glitches with the new Emulators, on the whole they gave the band less to worry about, especially after the difficult gestation of ‘Dazzle Ships’ and the critical mauling it received from the press. It allowed for the band to deliver a more confident and professional performance that when combined with Ken Kennedy and Peter Saville’s impressive stage set, would later be recognised as their best live tour to date. But that’s another story although strangely, brass sections and America were only just round the corner…

Special thanks to Alex Machairas for his valued help and granting permission for the use of the archive photographs

‘Dazzle Ships’ is still available in a number of formats via Virgin Records

https://www.omd.uk.com

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Text by Chi Ming Lai
16th March 2012

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