Chorus-Vince’s Track by Track

[Pughie]

CHORUS TRACK BY TRACK

Chorus
The first single from the album, with an intro whose swoops and blips give a fair hint of what's in store. A less obvious melody than usual, the kind of thing that creeps up on you by surprise on about the third hearing, and suddenly you're hooked.

Waiting For The Day
Nothing subtle about this; an insanely, ridiculously catchy slice of timeless synth pop. Quite reminiscent of 'Victim Of Love' - three minutes of heaven, and surely a single.

"No. The record company wanted it, but I thought it was too... cheap? No, wrong word. Too obvious. It's a bit of an Abba pastiche as well. You know, like 'The Day Before You Came'."

Joan
An unusually funky beat sets this track quite apart from the rest of the album. Whereas every other track is Solidly four-on-the-floor, 'Joan' is based on a pattern that could have been copied straight from a 'Funky Drummer'-style loop. "That was quite a difficult track to do because I'm not used to those sort of rhythms; that's where Martyn really comes into his own. He can look at, dissect a loop and know which beats go where, whereas all my drum beats go 'dum, thwack, dum, thwack'. I concentrate on the melodies, and the syncopation is in the music. For a lot of bands now, the track is the rhythm track and the chords, and that's it. It's not really my background.

Breath Of Life
A fairly average, workaday Erasure number, but quite typical of the tracks on Chorus in its use of successive monophonic synth lines with sharp, blippy sounds, and rapid chromatic runs up and down the keyboard to fill out the sound in the absence of chords. "That was written right towards the end of recording. We spent a lot of time getting the snare drum right — it sounds like a packet of crisps. We used another sequencer, a 16-step ARP sequencer, which has a random generator on it. So it's got 16 steps and you can change the pitch, and note on/offs, but it's got a random thing so that instead of going round and round it'll just randomise. We used that for the middle eight brassy riff. That's a case of you do it, then you do it again, until you get the one you like. Synth jazz, man."

Am I Right
The album's third single; perhaps an odd choice, as it's not as good a slow song as 'Home'. Still, it recalls the dignified, mournful atmosphere of 'Circus' quite effectively. "That was crying out for chords, but I decided I couldn't do that, so it has similar sounds interweaving to make chords, and it sounds more like a muted brass section I think. That worked out really well, because we weren't too sure about the song, but it's got a nice feel. The bell sound at the end is a Korg MS20."

Love To Hate You
Now this really does sound like Abba; the long synth runs, and the way that the lyrics jump slightly awkwardly across the vocal phrases. Intentional? "Not really, but both me and Andy are big Abba fans; you can't knock their songwriting. I think it rubs off. Andy must have every Abba album - in Spanish, Italian, English and Swedish.

Turns The Love To Anger
A track that builds beautifully, from a broody intro to a pumping classic. Should be a cracker live. No melody to speak of in the combination of synth bass sounds that drive the track, but the interest comes rather from their dynamic, bubbling feel. "Yeah. That was the ARP sequencer again. You can use the MC4 to take care of the pitch changes, then use the sliders on the ARP to control the filter rather than pitch, so you can set up random filter changes so it bubbles over randomly. Or in a set pattern. Otherwise with just the MC4 you have to use CV and CV2, and number crunch."

Quite glasnost inspired lyrics. "They went through lots of transformations. The Gulf War was on when we recorded the album. We had two weeks off recording, and Andy didn't come back at the end. He said it wasn't worth coming back - he was serious. He was quite freaked out about it."

Siren Song
Another of the album's moodier moments, with some quite spooky sounds that sweep VCOs from almost subsonic depths right up to piercing heights. An oddly baroque feel; you almost feel that a harpsichord wouldn't be out of place at the start. "That song - I only know this 'cos I've been listening to Andy doing interviews for the past week - is about mermaids singing. How, according to legend, if sailors hear or see a mermaid they'll die; turn to stone or dive into the sea because they're so entranced. I know a terrible joke about a mermaid..."

There's a very nice synthy pluck sound in there. If you'd been using, say, an M1, it would have been a pizzicato sound. "That was a Pro 1, triple-gated, so you have a C1, a C2 and a C3 for instance, in really quick step time - br-br-rrp. Sounds like that pluck. We used a Prophet 5 as well, but I didn't find that as usable, as interesting, because the modulation section isn't as good."

Perfect Stranger
For me the album's one really weak song, and really something of a filler. It sounds too much like a weak basic idea that just ticks over for the duration, without a strong enough melody to support the rather standard synth decorations. "It was a hard one to do. You're probably right. It sounds better as a slow song - it started off as a ballad, and we recorded a ballad version with acoustic guitar which will come out on a special 12-inch somewhere down the line."

Home
The album's closing track is, as so often before, its emotional high point. "I think it's the best song on the album actually - as a song song. I see it differently from Andy I think, but Andy sees it as a song about someone being 17 years old in the Gulf, flown over, not knowing whether they're going to make it to the next day or not, and being very cold in the desert at night."