LLOYD COLE DIMEN

If you still think of LLOYD COLE as a jangly popster, you’re in need of some re-education. His latest album, ‘1D’, follows on from his 2013 collaboration with krautrock pioneer Roedelius and finds him walking a fine line all the way to the future

Words: JOOLS STONE Pictures: KIM FRANK LLOYD COLE DIMEN

If you still think of LLOYD COLE as a jangly popster, you’re in need of some re-education. His latest album, ‘1D’, follows on from his 2013 collaboration with krautrock pioneer Roedelius and finds him walking a fine line all the way to the future

Words: JOOLS STONE Pictures: KIM FRANK XXXLLOYD COLE

“THE MINUTE I SIT DOWN AND CONSCIOUSLY TRY TO ‘MAKE SOME MUSIC’, WELL, I REALLY DON’T LIKE THAT FEELING”

What happens when successful pop stars withdraw from the songs for the next album but I still had a room full of synths, I can’t help thinking that the world of knobs, patches and the exact chords you’re playing, you just know what sounds spotlight? Do we expect to find them years later patiently so I started to make some instrumental sketches and was intimidatingly vast banks of control panels must have initially right. I find the idea of music as a showcase for virtuosity is sitting in the same little genre box we discovered them in, careful not to think of them as potential songs, which was how seemed entirely alien to Cole. Wasn’t he worried that he rather bad taste anyway. Once you’ve honed your chops, the obediently doling out their hits to a devoted fan base? Despite I’d always worked before.” needed a degree in electronic engineering to get to grips with skill lies in learning to underplay things.” being a huge admirer of his 80s and 90s work, I rather lost the analogue universe? track of Lloyd Cole around the turn of the millennium, so I was Does the way he thinks about a piece of music inevitably affect Cole was attracted to the modular route partly as a way of more than a little surprised to hear of his recent adventures. its eventual form, then? “Actually, I think you can make this music without really escaping the ubiquitous drudgery of working with computers. knowing what you’re doing at all,” he offers. “A lot of people And strangely, despite the potentially perplexing mass of wires, Lloyd Cole shot to fame in 1984 with The Commotions, his “Well, these things don’t even need to be songs or compositions, take the approach of, ‘I’m just oscillators and filters, he sees Glasgow-based, Rickenbacker-toting band, and their debut they can just be constructions,” he says. “And with generative going to plug this into here and this as a parallel to retreating album ‘Rattlesnakes’, enjoying a rash of jangly pop hits music, who even composes this stuff anyway? I simply put the see what happens’. I started into nature and spending time during the decade. After going solo in 1990, he maintained a pieces in place and it outputs.” to assemble a modular synth in a remote cabin in the woods reasonable profile, slipping comfortably into the role of acoustic for ‘Selected Studies’, which with an acoustic guitar. songwriter elder statesman. Lloyd Cole found his way into electronics almost by accident. was as much about learning as His first forays came via early stabs at film compositions, it was composition. At least 75 “I think the reason I like working Yet Cole’s latest album, ‘1D’ – subtitled ‘Electronics 2012-2014’ which he describes as “living somewhere between Brian Eno per cent of the pieces came not in modular is it keeps things – has none of his trademark lyrical flair. There’s not a single and John Barry”. from scenarios where I sat down pretty simple,” he says. “I can literary or pop culture reference (no sign of Norman Mailer, Eva with the intention of recording see my modulation patches, I Marie Saint or even Sean Penn). Nor is there any evidence of “Frustratingly, most of these film projects didn’t turn into paying something, but when I was just can see everything that I’m his distinctive vocal style, since ‘1D’ marks a bold departure jobs,” he says. “The competition’s so intense that nobody gets playing around with things. I’d doing because it’s there on the into challenging territory of generative music, a style that paid and I ended up with a bunch of material that I didn’t have be reading about something matrix. I’m comfortable working owes far less to Bob Dylan and Lou Reed than it does to Faust, any use for. So I decided to make a CD as a calling card to send in [modular synth guru] Allen this way and, frankly, I don’t Tangerine Dream and, crucially, one Hans-Joachim Roedelius of out to music supervisors who might want to commission me.” Strange’s book and just try it out.” want to go back to any other Cluster and Harmonia fame. type of synthesis.” The The’s Matt Johnson, who was working in the studio next How different is the modular This is not the first time that Cole has dipped his toe in these door, and record producer Chris Hughes (aka Merrick of Adam & process from writing traditional One measure of how enmeshed burbly waters. His electronic voyages date back to his 2001 The Ants fame) helped advise Cole on what to do with his new rock songs? Cole has become with the ambient album ‘Plastic Wood’ and he collaborated with sound reel. analogue world is the matter- Roedelius on their ‘Selected Studies Volume One’ long-player “To me, it’s very similar,” says of-fact way he sometimes gets in 2013. But fans of Cole’s earlier work might be surprised to “Pretty much everyone I played it to said, ‘Well, it sounds like Cole. “I write songs using tiny technical, talking at length learn that his love of the more experimental end of the musical an album, you should just put it out’,” he continues. “And so fragments based on things I hear about the role of binary logic spectrum pre-dates his own recording career by a decade or so. that became ‘Plastic Wood’. A lot of it was made in real time, or read and then I think, ‘That LLOYD COLE WITH ROEDELIUS in programming modules to Pic: Camillo Roedelius He traces it back to his passion for 1973’s ‘(No Pussyfooting)’ using an Oberheim Echoplex and recorded direct to DAT. I think could become the spark for create polyrhythms. He doesn’t album, made with two reel-to-reel tape machines plus Brian that was when I first realised I enjoyed making this type of something beautiful’. I believe take much encouragement to Eno and Robert Fripp. It wasn’t until the 1990s that any sign repetitive music.” there’s something in Eno’s idea of making everyone change start tackling thorny topics such as the difficulties of tuning of Cole’s penchant for electronics began to emerge in his own instruments on [David Bowie’s] ‘Boys Keep Swinging’. The best oscillators. music, though. ‘Plastic Wood’ caught the ear of Roedelius, who was sent the stuff you create is when you’re out of your element. album by a mutual friend and liked it so much he promptly ‘1D’ wouldn’t have happened were it not for Gunther at Bureau “I think it all started in 1993 with ‘Bad Vibes’, where I made his own overdubbed version of it, asking if Cole wanted “I have no formal musical training, I can’t always recognise a B Records nudging Lloyd Cole about the unused pieces he attempted to bridge my song-based material with more to release it. The pair agreed to work on a fresh project chord and sometimes I can’t even tell if it’s a major or minor, had left over from the ‘Selected Studies Volume One’ album. electronic music and weld it into one cohesive thing,” he instead, but it took another decade for ‘Selective Studies’ to and I think that’s what appeals to me about modular. You don’t The recording process for ‘Selected Studies Volume One’ was explains. “It failed dismally and I decided to pursue the two come together. have a keyboard, so you can’t even tell what key you’re playing, surprisingly simple, with Cole and Roedelius sending each other strands as distinct projects. I went back to recording traditional and that can be a lovely way to work. You often don’t know around 15 segments of music. They each completed six pieces XXXLLOYD COLE

“THE MINUTE I SIT DOWN AND CONSCIOUSLY TRY TO ‘MAKE SOME MUSIC’, WELL, I REALLY DON’T LIKE THAT FEELING”

What happens when successful pop stars withdraw from the songs for the next album but I still had a room full of synths, I can’t help thinking that the world of knobs, patches and the exact chords you’re playing, you just know what sounds spotlight? Do we expect to find them years later patiently so I started to make some instrumental sketches and was intimidatingly vast banks of control panels must have initially right. I find the idea of music as a showcase for virtuosity is sitting in the same little genre box we discovered them in, careful not to think of them as potential songs, which was how seemed entirely alien to Cole. Wasn’t he worried that he rather bad taste anyway. Once you’ve honed your chops, the obediently doling out their hits to a devoted fan base? Despite I’d always worked before.” needed a degree in electronic engineering to get to grips with skill lies in learning to underplay things.” being a huge admirer of his 80s and 90s work, I rather lost the analogue universe? track of Lloyd Cole around the turn of the millennium, so I was Does the way he thinks about a piece of music inevitably affect Cole was attracted to the modular route partly as a way of more than a little surprised to hear of his recent adventures. its eventual form, then? “Actually, I think you can make this music without really escaping the ubiquitous drudgery of working with computers. knowing what you’re doing at all,” he offers. “A lot of people And strangely, despite the potentially perplexing mass of wires, Lloyd Cole shot to fame in 1984 with The Commotions, his “Well, these things don’t even need to be songs or compositions, take the approach of, ‘I’m just oscillators and filters, he sees Glasgow-based, Rickenbacker-toting band, and their debut they can just be constructions,” he says. “And with generative going to plug this into here and this as a parallel to retreating album ‘Rattlesnakes’, enjoying a rash of jangly pop hits music, who even composes this stuff anyway? I simply put the see what happens’. I started into nature and spending time during the decade. After going solo in 1990, he maintained a pieces in place and it outputs.” to assemble a modular synth in a remote cabin in the woods reasonable profile, slipping comfortably into the role of acoustic for ‘Selected Studies’, which with an acoustic guitar. songwriter elder statesman. Lloyd Cole found his way into electronics almost by accident. was as much about learning as His first forays came via early stabs at film compositions, it was composition. At least 75 “I think the reason I like working Yet Cole’s latest album, ‘1D’ – subtitled ‘Electronics 2012-2014’ which he describes as “living somewhere between Brian Eno per cent of the pieces came not in modular is it keeps things – has none of his trademark lyrical flair. There’s not a single and John Barry”. from scenarios where I sat down pretty simple,” he says. “I can literary or pop culture reference (no sign of Norman Mailer, Eva with the intention of recording see my modulation patches, I Marie Saint or even Sean Penn). Nor is there any evidence of “Frustratingly, most of these film projects didn’t turn into paying something, but when I was just can see everything that I’m his distinctive vocal style, since ‘1D’ marks a bold departure jobs,” he says. “The competition’s so intense that nobody gets playing around with things. I’d doing because it’s there on the into challenging territory of generative music, a style that paid and I ended up with a bunch of material that I didn’t have be reading about something matrix. I’m comfortable working owes far less to Bob Dylan and Lou Reed than it does to Faust, any use for. So I decided to make a CD as a calling card to send in [modular synth guru] Allen this way and, frankly, I don’t Tangerine Dream and, crucially, one Hans-Joachim Roedelius of out to music supervisors who might want to commission me.” Strange’s book and just try it out.” want to go back to any other Cluster and Harmonia fame. type of synthesis.” The The’s Matt Johnson, who was working in the studio next How different is the modular This is not the first time that Cole has dipped his toe in these door, and record producer Chris Hughes (aka Merrick of Adam & process from writing traditional One measure of how enmeshed burbly waters. His electronic voyages date back to his 2001 The Ants fame) helped advise Cole on what to do with his new rock songs? Cole has become with the ambient album ‘Plastic Wood’ and he collaborated with sound reel. analogue world is the matter- Roedelius on their ‘Selected Studies Volume One’ long-player “To me, it’s very similar,” says of-fact way he sometimes gets in 2013. But fans of Cole’s earlier work might be surprised to “Pretty much everyone I played it to said, ‘Well, it sounds like Cole. “I write songs using tiny technical, talking at length learn that his love of the more experimental end of the musical an album, you should just put it out’,” he continues. “And so fragments based on things I hear about the role of binary logic spectrum pre-dates his own recording career by a decade or so. that became ‘Plastic Wood’. A lot of it was made in real time, or read and then I think, ‘That LLOYD COLE WITH ROEDELIUS in programming modules to Pic: Camillo Roedelius He traces it back to his passion for 1973’s ‘(No Pussyfooting)’ using an Oberheim Echoplex and recorded direct to DAT. I think could become the spark for create polyrhythms. He doesn’t album, made with two reel-to-reel tape machines plus Brian that was when I first realised I enjoyed making this type of something beautiful’. I believe take much encouragement to Eno and Robert Fripp. It wasn’t until the 1990s that any sign repetitive music.” there’s something in Eno’s idea of making everyone change start tackling thorny topics such as the difficulties of tuning of Cole’s penchant for electronics began to emerge in his own instruments on [David Bowie’s] ‘Boys Keep Swinging’. The best oscillators. music, though. ‘Plastic Wood’ caught the ear of Roedelius, who was sent the stuff you create is when you’re out of your element. album by a mutual friend and liked it so much he promptly ‘1D’ wouldn’t have happened were it not for Gunther at Bureau “I think it all started in 1993 with ‘Bad Vibes’, where I made his own overdubbed version of it, asking if Cole wanted “I have no formal musical training, I can’t always recognise a B Records nudging Lloyd Cole about the unused pieces he attempted to bridge my song-based material with more to release it. The pair agreed to work on a fresh project chord and sometimes I can’t even tell if it’s a major or minor, had left over from the ‘Selected Studies Volume One’ album. electronic music and weld it into one cohesive thing,” he instead, but it took another decade for ‘Selective Studies’ to and I think that’s what appeals to me about modular. You don’t The recording process for ‘Selected Studies Volume One’ was explains. “It failed dismally and I decided to pursue the two come together. have a keyboard, so you can’t even tell what key you’re playing, surprisingly simple, with Cole and Roedelius sending each other strands as distinct projects. I went back to recording traditional and that can be a lovely way to work. You often don’t know around 15 segments of music. They each completed six pieces XXXLLOYD COLE

and only one track had any further back and forth. Cole has spoken of the album’s recording process as “a type of circuit” and the way he refers to the collaborative process is equally NAME? cold and functional. While it may seem a little cryptic at first, the title ‘1D’ Cole might have unburdened himself of lyric writing duties this “With ‘Selected Studies’, nobody except Roedelius and I knows signposts the simplicity of the music on this album. time but there are other challenges to tackle, such as thinking who did what,” offers Cole. “But with ‘1D’, there’s nowhere to up suitable titles for these instrumental tracks. One piece was hide because it’s just me.” “It’s not complex, it’s one-dimensional music, one idea originally titled ‘All ModCan’, after a Canadian modular synth per piece,” says Cole. “To be honest, some of the ideas are manufacturer called Modcan, but he wasn’t convinced this When it comes to modular collaborations, Cole’s work with absolutely tiny. ‘One Voice’ is literally one synthesiser voice intensely geeky private joke was funny enough. He went off Roedelius is clearly only the beginning. So is the modular and that’s it. ‘Slight’ is the word I like to use to describe these googling for ring roads with interesting names, instead, leading community, with its enthusiast sites like the intriguingly- songs, but that doesn’t necessarily imply something negative. him to ‘Ken-O’, named after the Ken O Expressway, which named Muff Wiggler, a hotbed for this sort of meeting of I’m only interested in making beautiful pieces, even if they’re loops around Tokyo. minds? Is there an inherent openness to “modding culture” that at bonsai scale.” you won’t find in traditional rock circles?

“There is a whole subculture that’s very interesting,” says Cole. “But what I think is really exciting is that people are constantly coming up with new ideas for modules and new ways of making music. I’m working with an old friend to build my own module and there’s open source software which enables you to write codes to fine tune your modules and get the precise features you need.”

Now that he’s fully got to grips with the modular way, can he see himself marrying electronics with his lyrical songwriting? OFF PISTE

“It’s not out of the question,” he replies. “I have been thinking that, 22 years after ‘Bad Vibes’, I might have another go at trying to bring the two together, but I haven’t committed to DAVID SYLVIAN PADDY McALOON FRANK TOVEY doing anything concrete yet. There’s an entire folder of pieces from these sessions that are ripe for some form of collaboration, In just a few short years, Prefab Sprout were always As Fad Gadget, Tovey carved so I’m hoping for the next record to take those and maybe Japan graduated from be- far more esoteric than their out an impressively jagged work with five or six people, different voices working to one ing a boy band doing kitschy chart highlights would have niche in the early 80s, crafting unified aesthetic, which would be mine. pastiches of David Bowie and you believe, with songs about sinewy synth classics dripping the New York Dolls to craft- Cold War chess matches and with austere menace such “I feel I really have to be constantly learning with modular ing the sublimely atmospheric whisky priests, but it wasn’t as ‘Back To Nature’ and stuff. The minute I sit down and consciously try to ‘make some ‘Ghosts’, only for the band until after their 80s heyday ‘Ricky’s Hand’. But he enacted music’, well, I really don’t like that feeling. I also tend to think, to implode at the height of that their erudite songwriter a staggering volte face in ‘Who needs another piece of music by me anyway?’, so it’s got their chart success. As the 80s showed his true experimental 1989, eschewing electronics to be something new. It’s the same with painters in a way. You progressed, Sylvian’s vocals colours. Rendered temporarily and transforming himself don’t expect them to show you everything in their sketchbook, matured into a rich Scott blind and bedridden with into a folk protest singer on but they’ll keep on painting regardless.” Walker-ish croon, while his a serious illness, McAloon his ‘Tyranny And The Hired solo albums became increas- became addicted to late Hand’ album, which featured Whether it’s an abstract expression or a new spin on ingly less song-orientated and night talk radio, which covers of traditional labour Lloyd Cole’s classics of old, I reckon we’re poised for more less mainstream, eventually subsequently seeped into his songs like ‘Sixteen Tons’ and masterworks in the future. blossoming into full-blown, 2003 solo album, ‘I Trawl ‘John Henry’. Sounding like a 20-minute-plus ambient The Megahertz’, a patchwork noirish Billy Bragg, the broad compositions in collaboration of spoken word and random indifference meted out to this ‘1D’ is out now on Bureau B with the likes of Harold Budd recorded snippets layered brave digression may have and Can’s Holger Czukay. Let’s over a mesmerising orchestral been the final straw for Tovey, see Zayn Malik take a bash at soundscape. who retired from recording a that. few years later. XXXLLOYD COLE

and only one track had any further back and forth. Cole has spoken of the album’s recording process as “a type of circuit” and the way he refers to the collaborative process is equally NAME? cold and functional. While it may seem a little cryptic at first, the title ‘1D’ Cole might have unburdened himself of lyric writing duties this “With ‘Selected Studies’, nobody except Roedelius and I knows signposts the simplicity of the music on this album. time but there are other challenges to tackle, such as thinking who did what,” offers Cole. “But with ‘1D’, there’s nowhere to up suitable titles for these instrumental tracks. One piece was hide because it’s just me.” “It’s not complex, it’s one-dimensional music, one idea originally titled ‘All ModCan’, after a Canadian modular synth per piece,” says Cole. “To be honest, some of the ideas are manufacturer called Modcan, but he wasn’t convinced this When it comes to modular collaborations, Cole’s work with absolutely tiny. ‘One Voice’ is literally one synthesiser voice intensely geeky private joke was funny enough. He went off Roedelius is clearly only the beginning. So is the modular and that’s it. ‘Slight’ is the word I like to use to describe these googling for ring roads with interesting names, instead, leading community, with its enthusiast sites like the intriguingly- songs, but that doesn’t necessarily imply something negative. him to ‘Ken-O’, named after the Ken O Expressway, which named Muff Wiggler, a hotbed for this sort of meeting of I’m only interested in making beautiful pieces, even if they’re loops around Tokyo. minds? Is there an inherent openness to “modding culture” that at bonsai scale.” you won’t find in traditional rock circles?

“There is a whole subculture that’s very interesting,” says Cole. “But what I think is really exciting is that people are constantly coming up with new ideas for modules and new ways of making music. I’m working with an old friend to build my own module and there’s open source software which enables you to write codes to fine tune your modules and get the precise features you need.”

Now that he’s fully got to grips with the modular way, can he see himself marrying electronics with his lyrical songwriting? OFF PISTE

“It’s not out of the question,” he replies. “I have been thinking that, 22 years after ‘Bad Vibes’, I might have another go at trying to bring the two together, but I haven’t committed to DAVID SYLVIAN PADDY McALOON FRANK TOVEY doing anything concrete yet. There’s an entire folder of pieces from these sessions that are ripe for some form of collaboration, In just a few short years, Prefab Sprout were always As Fad Gadget, Tovey carved so I’m hoping for the next record to take those and maybe Japan graduated from be- far more esoteric than their out an impressively jagged work with five or six people, different voices working to one ing a boy band doing kitschy chart highlights would have niche in the early 80s, crafting unified aesthetic, which would be mine. pastiches of David Bowie and you believe, with songs about sinewy synth classics dripping the New York Dolls to craft- Cold War chess matches and with austere menace such “I feel I really have to be constantly learning with modular ing the sublimely atmospheric whisky priests, but it wasn’t as ‘Back To Nature’ and stuff. The minute I sit down and consciously try to ‘make some ‘Ghosts’, only for the band until after their 80s heyday ‘Ricky’s Hand’. But he enacted music’, well, I really don’t like that feeling. I also tend to think, to implode at the height of that their erudite songwriter a staggering volte face in ‘Who needs another piece of music by me anyway?’, so it’s got their chart success. As the 80s showed his true experimental 1989, eschewing electronics to be something new. It’s the same with painters in a way. You progressed, Sylvian’s vocals colours. Rendered temporarily and transforming himself don’t expect them to show you everything in their sketchbook, matured into a rich Scott blind and bedridden with into a folk protest singer on but they’ll keep on painting regardless.” Walker-ish croon, while his a serious illness, McAloon his ‘Tyranny And The Hired solo albums became increas- became addicted to late Hand’ album, which featured Whether it’s an abstract expression or a new spin on ingly less song-orientated and night talk radio, which covers of traditional labour Lloyd Cole’s classics of old, I reckon we’re poised for more less mainstream, eventually subsequently seeped into his songs like ‘Sixteen Tons’ and masterworks in the future. blossoming into full-blown, 2003 solo album, ‘I Trawl ‘John Henry’. Sounding like a 20-minute-plus ambient The Megahertz’, a patchwork noirish Billy Bragg, the broad compositions in collaboration of spoken word and random indifference meted out to this ‘1D’ is out now on Bureau B with the likes of Harold Budd recorded snippets layered brave digression may have and Can’s Holger Czukay. Let’s over a mesmerising orchestral been the final straw for Tovey, see Zayn Malik take a bash at soundscape. who retired from recording a that. few years later.