RECOIL
Liquid
February 2000/Mute Records

Water, alcohol, blood, tears, adrenalin, sweat... Water may change into ice. Alcohol can change the situation. Your life depends on liquids. Diamanda Galás, Nicole Blackman, Samantha Coerbell, Rosa Torras, The Golden Gate Jubilee Quartet and others fuel ‘Liquid’, the most fervent and unsettling album yet from RECOIL mastermind Alan Wilder.

Following his 1997 LP, 'Unsound Methods', Wilder’s latest offering possesses a hypnotic and deeply charged allure drawn from its intense tapestry of desire, fury and violence. At its axis is 'Black Box,' a two-part track inspired by the former Depeche Mode member's experience witnessing a life-threatening air crash. As 'Black Box-Part One' draws to a close, we are left inside a man’s head, a man forced to confront the inevitable. His life flashes before him and ‘Liquid’ unfolds with moments of intense action punctuating the shifting imagery, occasionally jolting him back to the present before he drifts off again towards some other fragmented recollection - sometimes beautiful, often not. Liquid. His memories are liquid.

"Recoil is an ever-mutating thing." says Wilder. " I always start with a blank canvas, a kind of jigsaw where you have to make all the pieces first. There are no rules or preconceptions, just self-imposed emotional boundaries. And I trust this intuition implicitly."

The first collaborative session for 'Liquid' took place in the Spring of '98 and involved recording rhythm tracks for source material. Drummer Steven Monty, Curve bassist Dean Garcia and guitarist Merlin Rhys-Jones were invited to Wilder’s studio: “I asked them to jam through a whole range of different styles and tempos. We recorded 2 and a half hours of material before transferring everything into Protools."

After much cutting and pasting, Wilder added his unusual blend of electronic orchestration to construct the LP’s unnerving scores before drawing each collaborator into his net. For him, the casting of 'Liquid' set the tone for the album's direction: "It’s like having to solve a conceptual puzzle, trying to make sense of what others bring and how their words connect with the nature of the music. I didn’t impose any boundaries because I knew some rationale would evolve by choosing the right people, leaving them to their own lyrical devices and allowing the overall style and sense of continuity to follow naturally." Internationally acclaimed fellow Mute artist Diamanda Galás contributed a lead vocal to the bluesy, southern voodoo of 'Strange Hours', the album's first single. An extraordinary singer of unparalleled emotional intensity, possessing a near four-octave range, her sessions produced a diverse and powerful selection of material.

"I'd always wanted to work with a classically-trained singer and Diamanda has an exceptional range of singing styles. She tends to work very off-the-cuff which was fine since I mainly wanted her to ad-lib. She was a dream to work with and I think her work on ‘Liquid’ sounds completely different to anything she's done before."

Galás also provided additional vocals on perhaps the LP’s most avant garde piece, 'Vertigen', as well as the fire and brimstone tale of Babylonian whore, 'Jezebel', which features The Golden Gate Jubilee Quartet.

New York spoken word artist Nicole Blackman has been involved with a wide variety of musical projects, most notably supplying vocals on the darkly disturbing Golden Palominos album ‘Dead Inside’, in addition to recording with Bill Laswell, Scanner and KMFDM. "Everything I write is a bit burnt around the edges" she explains, "and I'm most intrigued by stories of people with strange attractions." She appears on three ‘Liquid’ tracks, including the vitriolic assault, 'Want'.

"I liked what I'd heard on ‘Dead Inside'," explains Wilder, "but I wanted to bring out a different side of Nicole with more dynamics. I also felt that her voice was somewhat buried on the Golden Palominos record so I was determined to bring her forward in the mix and make it a real feature."

Wilder and engineer PK pushed Blackman to the very brink of exhaustion, even having her run around the studio gardens to evoke authentic panting for the chilling and erotic 'Breath Control'. "For 'Chrome', she demanded that I actually vacate the studio while PK recorded her singing" Alan laughs. "Of all the collaborators, she was the toughest on herself but in fact turned out to be a real jewel in the crown because everything she did perfectly suited the essence of the record."

"The only rule I have for a collaboration" Blackman says, "is knowing that we share some common direction or style but that our frames of reference are different enough that we'll challenge and inspire each other. I think 'Liquid' indicates my vocal abilities better
than any other record I've done."

Samantha Coerbell, a native New Yorker with Trinidadian roots, has been active on the NY poetry scene since 1991 and has performed with numerous musicians and writers. After hearing her work on a compilation, Wilder was impressed by her unusual approach to poetry and descriptive language. "I was immediately struck by her words and delivery and felt she stood out from everything else on that record - I knew she would suit this project. After we spoke, I sent her a CD of three tracks to see if she could write something specifically to the music."

"When Alan called I was so surprised that I didn't even tell him he was interrupting my bath, so we had a half-hour conversation with me in the tub" Samantha recalls. "I didn't know what to expect but the 14 year old in me was really excited to meet someone who had a place in my social development. We spent a couple of months trading music and text to get a feel for the project." Coerbell's intensely claustrophobic urban storytelling is featured on 'Last Call For Liquid Courage' and 'Supreme'.

The story of how Rosa Torras came to work with Recoil may inspire devoted music fans everywhere. She is a Recoil fan from Barcelona who responded to Wilder’s request on his official web site 'Shunt', for anyone to send in a recording of themselves speaking in their native language. Rosa’s Catalan prose appears as the narration to 'Vertigen'. "For someone who'd never been in a studio before, Rosa was remarkably calm and collected" Wilder recalls. "Although I'll never be able to really understand how it sounds to a Catalonian, her voice works beautifully from a purely aesthetic perspective. It possesses a very sensual and emotive quality."

Strangely enthralling and genuinely unhinging, ‘Liquid’ masquerades as the aural equivalent of a disturbing movie. Wilder’s intoxicating soundscapes kick up clouds of the same dark dust that falls on David Lynch or Nine Inch Nails, but where others may hammer out their message with histrionic force, his touch is lighter and characteristically more subtle. ‘Liquid’ is designed to seep into your brain and drill holes into your psyche - a remarkable work for not-so-quiet reflection in the company of one’s darker side.