RADIO FFN:It had been a brave decision.

Leaving a successful band like Depeche Mode seems to be comparable to selling the rights on the bible.

Alan Wilder has always been a solitary person - and maybe he had only remained as a member of Depeche Mode for this long time because this band is comprised only of solitary persons and totally different characters. When in the beginning of the 80's, Alan Wilder came to Depeche Mode, it seemed he would replace Vince Clarke after his departure following their debut album Speak & Spell.

But he didn't. Martin L. Gore took the songwriting duties of Vince Clarke, and Alan Wilder's role in the band seemed to be undefined for a long time, at least for outsiders. But the influence he had went underestimated for a long time. The sound experiments and sampling, which became synonymous with Depeche Mode following their third album, Construction Time Again, had been his contribution, and Alan Wilder was the band member who brought life to Martin Gore's song ideas and who often developed them a bit further.

In addition to this, Alan Wilder had been the only member of Depeche Mode who "looked beyond his own nose." He started working with other bands and musicians very early on, and became respected as a producer and remixer, especially with Nitzer Ebb, whose singer is still a close friend to him.

In 1986, the first EP of his side project Recoil, 1+2, appeared, and was ignored of the majority of Depeche Mode fans. Whilst the early Recoil recordings were strongly influenced by the 80's Depeche Mode sounds, Recoil secretly developed into a mature, independent project, that seems to be comparable to a nihilistic mixture of Massive Attack and Barry Adamson.

The album Bloodline, released in 1992 - nearly parallel to the Depeche Mode album Songs of Faith and Devotion - contrasted his richness of ideas and diversity to the predicted sounds of the Depeche Mode album.

Two years later, everybody was surprised about the departure of Alan Wilder - for me it had been an overdue decision. But what were his reasons?

ALAN WILDER: It was simply that I'd had enough of working in the scheme of a band. In a group, I wouldn't have been able to develop personally. I've reached the point where I've simply needed a change, and not only musically! I've had a divorce. This and my departure form Depeche Mode allowed me to concentrate on Recoil. I'm now able to work satisfied and happily - and of course, my departure from Depeche Mode was also caused by large individual differences.

FFN: How would Alan Wilder, looking back, define his role in Depeche Mode? I mean, Martin Gore was the songwriter, Dave Gahan was the singer, Andrew Fletcher the manager - and Alan Wilder was always supposed to be the sound creator?

AW: Definitely speaking, our roles and duties had been well defined. For example, Martin is a very good songwriter, but he is absolutely not interested in the production process. But in my case, I didn't write lyrics or real songs, I was more interested in the production and structuring of sounds. The roles were especially well defined on the last two Depeche Mode albums, in that most of the time we all worked in the studio seperately.

FFN:In 1986 you started your Recoil project. Did you have any vision about the further development of this project? What had been your intentions and ambitions at that time?

AW: It was pure coincidence. The first Recoil album 1+2 wasn't meant to be released. It was more an experiment, an improvisation, I recorded in my home studio under primitive conditions. Daniel Miller, the head of our record label, persuaded me to release these recordings. Since then, I've always made some new Recoil recordings whenever I had a break from Depeche Mode. But there has never been the pressure that Recoil recordings should sound more "poppy," or commercial, or that they should be more successful. If you're working in a pop band it makes no sense to reuse the same kind of music in your second project. Besides, I work very instinctively. I don't think a lot about what I intend to do - I just do it, following my intuition.

FFN: The first two Recoil albums, 1+2 (1986) and Hydrology (1988), are highly underrated, colorful ambient albums, with Depeche Mode sounds being easily recognizable, but the structure of these long, mostly improvised tracks reminds one of German electronic pioneers, like Tangerine Dream or Klaus Schulze! And like Klaus Schulze, for example, the musical qualities of Alan Wilder consist of creation of partly unstructured soundscapes.

AW: I like music that takes some time to develop. When you are working in a pop band, the song format is often very restrictive. My method of working is the central theme that connects all of my released and somehow very different Recoil albums. And my method is very simple - I allow things to happen, I let them happen and I react to them. I rely very much on the atmospheres and emotions. And the results of this method differ very much from the music made with Depeche Mode.

FFN: But there are also big differences between the Recoil albums. While the first two albums had been solely instrumental, recorded all alone in his studio, the 1992 album Bloodline developed in another direction - the tracks shortened, and Alan Wilder worked together with guest musicians and singers and found himself in the role of a producer and director.

AW: I like the image of Recoil being a project and not a band. I don't want to be in a band anymore, but I like working together with different people. After the first two albums I realised that I didn't want to make instrumental albums, as my possibilities in that field had been exhausted. Nowadays I produce my tracks in the way that vocals are possible. I like to share my music with other people and enable them to enrich my music and to surprise me. But, in principle, the latest album Unsound Methods is instrumental. The voices and the vocals were added at the latest production stage. They were added not because of the vocals but because of the lyrics becoming important to me.

FFN: One could compare you to a painter or a director, drawing a landscape or a piece of scenery with different actors developing themselves with that background.

AW: That's quite a good analogy. If you compare the actors to the singers on Recoil records, they should be seen as improvising actors, because I don't give them a script. I just try to put them into a certain situation, where they can act creatively on their own. A good film consists of different elements and personalities merging into union. That's exactly what I try to realise.

FFN: Unsound Methods is a lot darker and even slightly claustrophobic compared to Bloodline. It is difficult at first listening to reach a conclusion. Superficially, the tracks resemble each other. This creates a valium filled atmosphere, a kind of cinematic character. But the tracks are full of subtle details, sounds engineered in a subtle way, so that they are perceived only little by little. Unsounds Methods appears 4 years after Bloodline - and the amount of work for this album is visible.

AW: If you're working with the music, you reach a certain point at which you should leave it that way for a time, just to find a new perspective. It is very important, especially if you are working on your own. There is nobody there to show you your mistakes, so you can only rely on your instincts and your power of judgement. These little details on Unsound Methods are very important and the elaboration of these details took a lot of time.

FFN: In contrast to its predecessor Bloodline, that contained a lot of song-oriented tracks, like "Edge To Life" or the main title, with Unsound Methods you returned to the improvised structures of your first Recoil albums. Also the singers adapt themselves to these structures, and as a result, you hear more stories told than songs.

AW: In fact, they are more narrated stories. The reason for this could be that the opened song structures give the singer a lot of free space. The music doesn't require melodies and singing. And that's the reason why I chose not just singers, but people who are able to work also with the spoken word. And this creates also this cinematic character of the album.

FFN:Do you have some particular singer in mind when you produce a track. How do you choose your different collaborators?

AW: I certainly develop a particular idea during the development of the song. Then I ask myself what's missing, what should be added and who could do this. But I also like working with some new people, surprising me. It is a challenge for me and you're not risking anything, because if it doesn't work you learn. But when it works it can be very thrilling! Sometimes you discover a new world. I always choose people with different characters. In addition, the character of the songs dictates what kind of singer I need. If I need a dark, sinister character, I choose people like Douglas McCarthy, and if I need a gospel singer, I choose someone like Hildia Campbell. I've already worked with Douglas McCarthy on Bloodline, and Hildia Campbell has worked with me as a backup singer on Depeche Mode's Songs of Faith and Devotion album and tour. The other two singers, Siobhan Lynch and Maggie Estep, had been suggested by some friends.

FFN: Just the different singers and protagonists give Unsound Methods a kind of carried away character. It's their very different charisma that creates this variation, standing in contrast to the integrated subtle elaborated soundscapes. Unsound Methods has indisputable cinematic qualities - it appeals on first sight to be a kind of soundtrack of an existing film. How should a film be, if Unsound Methods was the soundtrack?

AW: Hmm, good question! Maybe it's a good soundtrack of a David Lynch film. Nonetheless, the film has to be very dark and surreal.