As a founding member of Depeche Mode and one-half of the duo’s Yazoo (with singer Alison Moyet) and Erasure (with frontman Andy Bell), electronics wizard Vince Clarke has created some of the greatest synth-pop songs of all time.
After a career that lasted 42 years and saw him sell around 30 million records, he’s finally decided to release a solo album, Songs of Silence. It’s a dramatic departure from his trademark electro-pop – a dark, brooding instrumental record based on drones created by Eurorack modular synthesisers and often inspired by his love of science fiction films.
The very cinematic-sounding album was created when he started experimenting in his home studio in Brooklyn, New York, during the COVID lockdown.
hi-fi+ chatted with him over Zoom to find out more about the background of this surprising and bold record.
SH: How does it feel to be releasing your first solo album after a career of more than 40 years?
VC: It feels very strange – when I started recording, it was never my intention for there to be an actual album. I was doing it to keep my brain active and explore a different style of music. The whole ‘solo album [thing].’ It kind of sounds really naff.
Besides being in Depeche Mode, you’ve always been part of a duo: Yazoo, The Assembly and Erasure. How does it feel to be in the spotlight?
It’s a lot more work – a lot of the decisions I’ve had to make, like titles, the order of the tracks and artwork approval, I used to hand over to Andy [Bell]. It’s a very different experience, but as it wasn’t really planned, I’m taking each day as it comes.
So, let’s talk about the background of the album. After Erasure’s 2021 UK tour finished, you had to isolate due to getting COVID. You were in a hotel in London for 10 days…
It was after the last show – everyone else went home but I couldn’t. The worst thing was phoning my wife to say, ‘Oh, by the way, I’m not coming home tomorrow…’
What was it like being in the hotel?
It was a lovely hotel – in the East End. The location was fantastic, even though I couldn’t really go out and go to discos or anything like that.
So, it wasn’t like Alan Partridge?
No (laughs).
How did you keep yourself sane? Did you watch a lot of TV?
When I go away or I’m on tour, I’ve always got my computer and a mini studio setup – speakers and a keyboard – so I can mess about. I’m not very good at sitting down and watching TV.
I started doing some arrangements – some very rough demos – for the next Erasure record, but I hadn’t thought about making the drone tracks.
So, lockdown allowed you to fully explore the potential of your Eurorack modular synthesisers, which you’ve used on Songs of Silence…
Yeah – certainly. One thing I did over the whole COVID thing was that I watched a lot of tutorials – Eurorack stuff and, prior to that, I did a couple of online history courses and I tried to do an online samba dance class, but that just didn’t work out. I prefer watching tutorials on modular synthesisers than I do watching films on Netflix. It’s a bit sad really, isn’t it?
Whatever floats your boat… So, for the new record, you’ve experimented with drone ideas based on one note maintaining a single key throughout each track…
Yeah – that was a challenge because it wasn’t a style of music I was particularly familiar with.
I always wondered how people did it – the mechanics of it. How could you make a track with no vocals on it – an instrumental – interesting and still engaging?
That was part of the challenge. If there’s a vocalist or a song with lyrics, you have sections – a chorus, a bridge… It’s very obvious where you go, but this time around, I thought if I can still keep people engaged – and keep myself interested – without having to do that, then that was an interesting challenge.
The album artwork and publicity pictures are striking – stark, moody, black-and-white photographs of you…
I wanted it to look documentary-style – I like the idea of everything being in black and white. I wanted the photographs to show all my lines and creases because you are what you are. My days of wearing hoodies are over. I wanted the images to be upfront and honest and it makes the album look more serious, which is what I was after.
The record will surprise people, won’t it? It’s new territory for you…
Yeah – it is. It’s been an interesting learning process for me. I enjoy a challenge – if I’ve got a [synthesiser] module in front of me, which I’ve bought, because someone recommended it to me, but I don’t understand it, then I can spend an hour or two trying to figure it out to see what comes out of it.
The album is very dark, sombre and unsettling. Did lockdown and COVID influence that? Did you go through a tough time?
I think we all went through some dark times over that period, and I had some personal stuff happen to me and the people around me.
I was also watching a lot of science fiction movies. I’m a huge fan of science fiction and often something I heard or saw in one of those movies would inspire me to write a track. You don’t get disco dance songs in Bladerunner… (laughs).
Tracks like ‘Red Planet’, ‘Scarper’, and ‘White Rabbit’ have a cinematic feel – I think they sound like sci-fi movie soundtracks or themes from a futuristic, dystopian thriller. Have you ever done much soundtrack work?
I’ve done a little bit, but not on a big scale, and I don’t know if I would want to.
There was a time a few years ago when I started looking around and I was talking to people about the idea of doing it, but it was a very difficult world for me to get into.
Me and my girlfriend, who was soon to be my wife, spent two weeks in L.A, talking to film people, but I found it a bit depressing.
If you’re a director and you’ve spent years and years working on a movie and trying to get finance for it, then you’re not suddenly going to go with some bloke out of a pop band to do the soundtrack for you – you would use someone you trust and who has a track record. I didn’t want to put in the extra effort to try and get into that world – I didn’t want that amount of direction and those limitations.
You came up with the titles of the tracks on the new album after you’d written them, didn’t you? They were initially called ‘Drone 1’, ‘Drone 2’, etc, weren’t they?
Yeah.
The album opens with ‘Cathedral’, a majestic piece of music with a more hopeful feel than some of the other tracks…
That’s interesting because it came towards the end of recording the tracks – it was one of the last things that I did. In the song, nothing really happens – it’s just full of evolving sounds, but it created an interesting atmosphere.
That was one of the songs that wasn’t called ‘Drone 7’, or ‘Drone 8,’ – it was called ‘Cathedral’ almost from the beginning, because, in my head it sounded, as you said, majestic and cathedral-like.
‘Passage’ is a beautiful track – vocalist Caroline Joy is on it, providing a wordless operatic contribution…
I did the track and in my head I could hear an operatic tone, but not singing lyrics – there were no words.
It was something I couldn’t achieve with just synthesisers – I wanted to incorporate another texture into the song – and I based the melody on an aria from a Puccini opera. I fiddled around with a few notes – hopefully he won’t sue me…
‘The Lamentations of Jeremiah’ is a powerful and haunting track, with a mournful cello by your friend, composer Reed Hays. How did that piece of music come about?
It was originally a very science fiction track – I sent it to Reed and asked him if he was interested in playing something over the top of it. The guy’s a genius cello player – he just came up with these ideas and suddenly it went from being something that was filmic to something very human. It’s almost a human voice.
Am I right in thinking that the title of the final track, ‘Last Transmission,’ is a nod to the Joy Division song, ‘Transmission?’
Yeah – I love that track. It was one of the first singles I bought when I was a kid.
And the album’s title, Songs of Silence, was inspired by Simon & Garfunkel, who greatly influenced you in the early days…
Yeah – definitely. That idea came immediately – I didn’t have to think about what the album should be called. The only alternative was ‘My First Solo Record…’ (laughs).
Before you discovered synthesisers, didn’t you start playing guitar because of Simon & Garfunkel?
I did guitar club after school and then I watched the film The Graduate – I was blown away by it. The next day I went out and bought the songbook and learnt every song. Music became something that wasn’t just on Top of the Pops – you could do it yourself.
You wrote songs independently at the start of your career, but in Erasure, you write collaboratively with Andy in the same room. How was it making the solo record? Was it a challenge?
No. I like being in my studio – it’s a bit of a toyshop. I’m very happy and content spending hours in there on my own, experimenting. No one else in the house is particularly interested in what I’m doing anyway – apart from the cat. I’m left to my own devices.
I’m quite happy on my own really, but when it comes to the Erasure stuff, I do start having ideas and writing stuff down, but, at the end of that period, Andy and I will always be in the same room, face to face, because decisions can be made there and then, and we work off each other.
We both know when an idea is good and is worth pursuing, or if a melody idea isn’t working and we trash it.
We do that rather than doing it over the Internet – rather than me sending him an email saying, ‘Andy, that vocal line is terrible…’ It’s better to be in the room and to have him telling me that I’ve used that bassline 17 million times before, which often happens.
For me, there’s no substitution for being in the same room. I’ve known Andy for a long time and we read each other really well – I can tell from his face if he likes or doesn’t like my idea, and I have no problem saying to him that what he’s suggested for a section of a song isn’t working very well. It’s a very honest relationship. I enjoy that aspect of it.
What’s kept Erasure going for so long?
I don’t know… I like Andy and I think he likes me. We have similar political views and musical tastes. He’s just a good bloke to be around and he laughs at my jokes. What more do you need?
Songs of Silence is out now on Mute Records.
Images by Eugene Richards
