Kerry Hopwood e os Depeche Mode

O produtor e programador Kerry Hopwood, em entrevista conduzida por Niels Kolling para o sítio The Black Hit Of Space, fala sobre do seu trabalho realizado com os Human League. Como Kerry tem uma ligação forte aos Depeche Mode as perguntas foram surgindo. É sobre os Depeche Mode a parte da entrevista que aqui se transcreve.

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Being as big a fan of Depeche Mode, I have to sneak in some questions about the work you’ve done with Basildons finest. Congratulations on the brilliant job you did as musical director on their recent tour. I went to the Berlin, Copenhagen, Bremen, Paris and Horsens gigs and it kept getting better with the 2 latter ones the highlight for me.

Thanks for the kind comments about the DM tour, I think we were in a good place and by all accounts the feedback has been positive about the sound and look of the show plus I think Dave were putting in some great performances.

Really glad you enjoyed the shows in Paris, the boys certainly enjoyed them as the crowd were so enthusiastic even though Martin was quite ill on the first night, he still pulled off a good gig.

Horsens seemed very dry sounding, I guess due to the size but not too bad to work with.

Working as musical director on DMs last 2 tours, how involved are you in the pre-production of the live tracks? Are you programming what the band tell you to or do you have creative input as to what bits to extend or remix?

Well there is a long list of potential songs that we start out with and then I work by myself getting those together and then we'll get together a few weeks later and try and get it down from say 40 to 30 so I can concentrate on them more and then I'll do another stint before we go into rehearsals.

It is very loose with what to do, there may be suggestions about a direction for a track but on the whole I just get on with it and make of it what I want but I don't ever want to go too off piste with their stuff as I think sometimes it can alienate audiences when tracks become too overworked or vastly different. My main aim is at some point to have prepared the definitive version of a DM track for live.

This time around I remade a lot of the sounds so that sonically it would sound better than before and also changed the way I work with Christian with regards sound processing plus giving Pete sounds he can manipulate on synths rather than samples from the record, which was how it used to be done due to the complexity of DM recordings.

Any track that was particular interesting to deconstruct for live programming?

I think Photographic is the most fun in a way as I did that, just how they would have done it with three synths and a drummer (machine).

You also worked as programmer on the Ultra album, so how did Depeche Mode do things differently in the studio compared to The Human League?

Very similar in fact - Philip and Martin come in with songs and whether we go about things in the right way or the wrong way is another discussion but we tend to get into the studio, have our take on what we want to do with a track and just crack on with it.

So you may even not hear anything for a few hours as we're all beavering away on headphones but the we all emerge and start throwing sounds, parts, ideas together etc.

It is a bit of an isolated way of working at times but it is really because we just want to get as many ideas out for the project in the time frame and getting good sounds, for instance, is never a quick process.

Of the songs you've worked on with Depeche Mode my favourite track is Sister of Night and I was chuffed to bits as it was introduced in full band version on the recent tour. Just mindblowing! Any memories of making this cracker in the studio?

It is one of my favourite's too. Lot's of memories about this one, some a bit painful I'm afraid to say as it was a difficult time for the band but we got there in the end with Sister.

We had done an initial recording session in London and then moved all the gear over to work at Electric Ladyland in New York for a month or so. Sister, in the form you know it as now, emerged from this session.

The demo was really like a Bill Withers track, you like "Lovely Day" very nice but one day, we took it in another direction as that is what you do with DM tracks, deconstruct the song and rebuild with noises. Dave Clayton came up with most of the parts on this and I just did the drum programming to his amazing stuff.

The painful memories of this track were that Dave was not very well at the time and as Q and I were left to do the vocals, it was a very hard emotionally as Dave was trying his best to sing but was clearly not well enough to do so.

In the end the vocals took many days to do and I ended up comping (making lines of songs from words and syllables) as best I could and patching it together as best I could from the many, many takes we had. In the end, I doubt many people would hear what it took to get that vocal, which is good in a way.

Did it cause any problems as you programmed it for the tour?

It was a delight revisiting the track just to hear the sounds again in isolation.

I'm a little surprised that Depeche Mode didn't play more songs from the Sounds Of The Universe album on the tour, especially gems like Perfect, In Sympathy and Corrupt. So were they programmed and rehearsed?

Yes, we actually rehearsed more stuff off the new album than before except Perfect (much to my dismay) but as the band said, sometimes there are songs that, with the best will in the world, just don't seem to lend themselves to being done live.

My favourite from the SOTU sessions are Oh Well. Would love to hear it live with Martin, Dave and Fletch moved to the front with a couple of synths, dim the lights, turn on the stroboscopics and let it rip. Could create a club vibe in a stadium! Can you see its live potential?

Maybe you should come and do the next tour with them Niels.

Listening to Depeche Mode live a hundred times in a row sounds like a wet dreams to die hard DM fans. So are you able to enjoy the show while you're working?

I really enjoy working on all my live shows anyway but with DM it is always special, they are a great band, great fun to be with.

We have, in my opinion, the best front man out there plus added to the fact that each night's DM audience are quite often heads and shoulders above other audiences, there is never a feeling of Groundhog Day.

Any favourite live tracks?

I think my favourite live tracks are when Martin gets up with Pete and then either Never Let Me Down or Stripped.

You were also heavily involved in the production of the Live In Barcelona CD and DVD that has just been released to sum up Tour Of The Universe?

I mixed the live DVD for the SOTU tour with Antony King our sound engineer and I really enjoyed my time back in the studio.

The band were not happy with the mixes that the first guy had done so right after the tour I went in to start some prep work at my studio and then we mixed for a two week period with Antony our FOH guy and then after some comments from the guys I made the tweaks and then did the 5.1 mix.

We mixed it up at Alan Moulder and Floods studio in London and it was a lot of fun, hard work at times I admit but I am looking forward to it's release and hopefully a favourable reaction to what we did as I tried to get over what I think the show should be like with plenty of atmosphere rather than some of the clinical, clean and dry DVD's some bands ending up sounding.

You did a brilliant job as the sound is simply awesome! It's No Good, Jezebel, Never Let Me Down Again and Sister Of Night are some real hightlights. Found lots of new details I didn't noticed at the gigs, real goosebump moments!

I really appreciate your kind words for the DVD.

It is always a bit difficult to please everybody, but I just tried to do what I thought was right for this project (as it is the only way I know how to do things really) as the previous attempts just didn't sound very exciting or how I heard the gig so that was why we took over.
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Ler a entrevista completa aqui.

Vídeo de Kerry a demonstrar como se faz o processamento da bateria num concerto dos Depeche Mode.