Erasure • Features • Interviews
Martyn Ware (2001)
Martyn Ware is one of the leading figures in electronic music; as a founder member of both The Human League and Heaven 17, he was responsible for seminal records such as 'Being Boiled' and 'Temptation'. He has also worked as a producer, notably on Erasure's I Say I Say I Say album.
More recently, he has collaborated with Vince Clarke on two experimental music projects; the 'Pretentious' album, out in 1999, and 'Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle', released on the 4th June 2001.
How did you and Vince meet for the first time? Martyn
Martyn: We both come from the same musical background, of course. When I formed The Human League, Vince started making music as well. He recently told me that his favourite song was 'Being Boiled' which was The Human League's first single. Vince said that the band was a large inspiration for him in forming Depeche Mode. Strangely enough, we didn't meet until 1993 when I produced Erasure's 'I Say I Say I Say' album. From that moment on we became very close friends.
You and Vince teamed up for the first time in 1999 to record 'Pretentious'. How did that happen?
Martyn: It's very strange how it all came about, really. It was almost accidental. I was involved in the National Centre of Popular Music, the exhibition in my hometown Sheffield, and I asked Vince if he'd be interested in writing a demonstration piece of music for the 3D surround sound auditorium. He said, 'Yeah, I'd love to.' We started working and suddenly Vince asked, 'Why not do a whole album?' Moreover, he thought that it might be fun to do something not intended to be commercial. So we released 'Pretentious'.
And this time?
Martyn: Consequently, for this current album, 'Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle', we were approached by a new advertising company that was setting up in London called 'Leonardo'. They wanted to do something unusual for their launch party. They knew 'Pretentious' and they asked us if we would be interested in composing a piece of music for them which should be three hours long.
How would you describe the concept of the album?
Martyn: When I was on tour with Heaven 17, Culture Club and The Human League, I got interested in lighting design. The lighting director said that it was difficult to do something pure with light in rock terms, because on stage you have to light individuals. I thought that it would be interesting to have a blank room and to light it with just one colour.
So I found this location for the party, the Undercroft of the Roundhouse in Chalk farm, London, which is a circular room 18 metres in diameter and about 14 feet high. We painted it white - even the floor and the ceiling - in order to light it in a never ending sequence of cross fading colours over a period of three hours. With the colours changing so slowly the changes would be imperceptible. That would already be an interesting experiment on its own without the music, actually.
Then I thought that it would be interesting to ally the music to that particular sensation. I went through various ideas. The most simple one that came to me was to induce a sense of relaxation, a kind of futuristic relaxation, in the people attending the party. If you have blue, for example, the ideal situation for relaxation would be underwater. Yellow plus relaxation equals lying on the beach and looking into the sun - the yellow is the beach that surrounds you. White would be a fictitious heaven, red would be your mother's womb, green would be a beautiful rain forest somewhere. So it's fairly straightforward stuff. The whole album is like a soundtrack for an imaginary film, really.
How do you and Vince go about creating such an album?
Martyn: Vince is a very artistic person and I am quite pretentious myself. I do like to keep in touch with the artistic world. But for Vince it was like being let off the leash; he's got all these fantastic instruments in his studio for creating sound and he very rarely gets the chance to use them in unlimited creativity. He's always been a slave to creating pop music, which is a very strict discipline.
It was just a piece of fun for us, we had enough spare time to record this album. And, of course, we were paid enough to make it worthwhile - just for this one-off party. But we thought that it would be a pity to have gone to the trouble of recording all this music with no-one ever getting the chance to hear it - except for those people in the party, of course. So we edited it down from three hours to about 74 minutes. The album is in the tradition of Brian Eno's early pieces.
Where was the album recorded?
Martyn: All the programming was done at Vince's studio, 37B. I then dropped all the music onto hard disk and manipulated it in my studio where we also mixed the album. We did the final mix at Sonic Imaging in Brixton. Then I had to convert it into Binaural Format for headphones. So recording 'Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle' was quite a long process.
What are your expectations for this album?
Martyn: We just wanted it to get out. We are not interested in how many people will buy it, to be honest.
I enjoyed listening to 'Pretentious' more than listening to 'Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle', because it is more dramatic …
Martyn: Well, 'Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle' wasn't meant to be anything more than just a mood piece. Eno also wrote pieces of music which wouldn't change very much within 60 minutes - most of the time it would be just piano. That's not vivid or futuristic either. Vince and I have got a reputation for working purely with electronics. We haven't got anything left to prove in that respect, I think. To be honest, this second album was only released because it was in the can. So we wanted to put it out - we're not ashamed of it, you know - it's not some major piece of work but we like it.
You also did the artwork of 'Pretentious' yourself. Did you do the art work of 'Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle'?
Martyn: The cover is pure white with a bar code right in the middle of it. And the bar code is the spectrum. It was created by a friend of mine, Kim Le Liboux, who had helped us with 'Pretentious'. But this was his idea. I wanted to have a kind of sine wave running through the spectrum, but in the end we chose Kim's idea. But the packaging won't be as elaborate as that for 'Pretentious'. Now it's ultra simple.
What's your opinion on combining such different forms of art?
Martyn: I am a strong believer in convergence - this is the most fashionable word in the art world at the moment. All art forms are converging right now. As Vince and myself get older and more experienced, we realise that you have to be multi-disciplinary to fulfil your potential. It's not enough to be a pop star, to write pop tunes and to go on tour once in a while. We are really looking forward to expand our sphere of influence into more intellectual realms.
And to that end we've formed a new company called 'The Illustrious Company' which exists to go out and aggressively find work in the film soundtrack market place. We really feel that we are ready to do that now.
So you are going to be soundtrack composers in the future?
Martyn: Yes. Vince has already written a couple of soundtracks for small independent films. I'm not saying that we're going to do a blockbuster straight away, you know. But we do know that we can do it and get work. I think that we are of a certain age where we've got the experience and the musical aplomb to do something like that.
How often do you meet then?
Martyn: We're always together. We meet on a weekly basis.
In what way has your attitude changed towards music and the business behind it?
Martyn: My attitude towards music has changed since my children have been born. Strangely enough, I don't know why. It seems to make me more relaxed and less disciplined. I find it easier to express myself in terms of music than before. I think before the kids were born I was too wrapped up in the business; now I can easily take off a few months to help my wife with the children. I recently took two years off.
I still write for Heaven 17 sometimes but I do it in my own studio at home. Since I got my own studio it seems to be a lot easier to express what I want, as I don't have to think, 'Oh, God, this is going to cost me fortune in the studio!' or 'I have to finish this and then to finish that!'. I find myself drawing in so many influences now - I love classical music, I love contemporary art, experimental installation work and contemporary culture of all kinds. I own an apartment in Venice too and there's an awful lot of contemporary art around. Within the last two years I have become very involved with that world. We have always been asked to do things for the Southbank in London but it has never been the right time to do it.
What else are you doing right now?
Martyn: I still do a lot of commercial production for other artists. And we're about to finish a brand new Heaven 17 album in my home studio which will be coming out next year. We'll finish it in the first week of September. There are a lot of things going on around me but I feel very creative at the moment.
Who would you describe electronic music in the future?
Martyn: Electronic music is everywhere - and will get even more everywhere. It covers everything - there's as much electronic music in a Boyzone single as there is on some experimental independent record. I find it very hard to distinguish. What we should be talking about now is not 'electronic music', it's 'experimental' music of all kinds. For instance, the distinction between electronic music and recording techniques is a blurred distinction now - on a hard disk you've got so many plug-ins, so many ways of manipulating sounds! Is that electronic music? I think it is. Because it's the source of sound. You can take a single note played on guitar and make it sound like the weirdest synthesiser on earth. So for me that is far more exciting than where the sound originates from.