Telekom Electronic Beats präsentiert: Dave Gahan & Soulsavers
Dave Gahan? Ist das nicht der von Depeche Mode? Ganz richtig, Freunde des 80er-Synthie-Pop-Sounds. Der ehemalige Frontman, zu dessen Stimme schon unsere Eltern hingebungsvoll getanzt haben, ist in neuer Konstellation zurück. Gemeinsam mit den Soulsavers bringt Grahan kraftvolle und emotionale Vocals, gepaart mit Elementen aus Blues und Gospel, zurück auf die Bühne.
Jetzt präsentieren Dave Gahan & Soulsavers ihr neues Album „Angels & Ghosts“ im Berliner Tempodrom. Am Freitag, den 30. Oktober um 20 Uhr habt ihr die Chance, live und ungeschnitten bei ihrem einzigen – und vollkommen ausverkauften – Deutschlandkonzert 2015 dabei zu sein. Im exklusiven Livestream im besten Telekom-Netz werdet ihr Zeuge der Reinkarnation eines Stücks Musikgeschichte. Nicht verpassen!
Das Konzert könnt ihr euch am Freitag hier bei uns oder auf der Telekom Electronic Beats Webseite anschauen.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=KhXMfENRfsk
Hier könnt ihr euch noch ein Interview mit Dave Gahan durchlesen:
Max Dax: Mr. Gahan, you’ve collaborated with Electronic Beats by Telekom in 2013, during Depeche Mode’s summer tour of Europe. How did that partnership benefit you?
It’s always good to collaborate. The definition of a good collaboration to me is when likeminded people do good things together. I think that’s why also my collaboration with Soulsavers worked, because you always learn new things from working with new people. In the best case, collaborations enable something. I remember the partnership in good spirit.
As compared to Depeche Mode, how was working with the Soulsavers?
Well, when Rich Machin and I write together, I might have melodies in my head or a particular phrase or a vocal line—something that’s buzzing around in my head. And Rich will send me these guitar lines or organ parts that he puts in an atmospheric ambience. And then I try to combine it all by singing these words onto the music. I often find that the song begins to write itself. Working with the Soulsavers is much less structured than working with Depeche Mode.
Why is that the case?
Maybe because I have an idea of what I think a song presented to Depeche Mode should sound like. With Soulsavers, I can present sketches and ideas because I know that my song will develop over the course of time, and all I have to do is to follow it. I really don’t know how a song is going to sound until it’s finished.
Electronic Beats by Telekom aims for long-term creative relationships with artists. How have you experienced your collaboration so far?
It’s good! I enjoyed it. I feel that these things happen for a reason. It’s always good when anybody is supportive of artists and trying to get their music out there—and that will definitely be the case when Electronic Beats is streaming our concert in Berlin.
The tour schedule reads like the ultimate rock star tour: Los Angeles, New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Milan. Only Tokyo is missing.
Yeah, that would have been the world in a week. But in all honesty, the reasons for keeping this tour short were mainly practical. I don’t wanted to spend another six months just touring around the world. This record feels maybe too personal. So we came up with this idea to play these small but interesting venues and theaters and to put together a band. It’s really just about the music. We will play the songs from the two records that we’ve made together. There will also be a few little surprises at the end of the show, if we feel that way.
You live in New York, but you were born and raised in England. America has such a strong musical tradition, and it’s deeply rooted in Irish and the Scottish traditional ballads as well as the African-American heritage of the blues and gospel. How do you adapt to that?
I find blues and gospel—and let’s not forget jazz—very inspiring. All this music comes from America, and New York City really represents that in many ways. When I moved to Manhattan, I finally could really understand the music of John Coltrane, for example. “A Love Supreme” suddenly made more sense to me musically. It’s the sound of New York, you know? Jazz is the sound of New York. And apart from that, blues and gospel music, to me, is where everything began. Combining these musical influences in what we do with Soulsavers, and even in what we do with Depeche Mode, feels like a natural conclusion.
Did you travel the hinterlands of Americana to feel what you’re describing?
Well, of course, over the years I’ve crossed the U.S. many times with Depeche Mode. But I’ve also done a little bit of traveling myself. I just feel very inspired by the visual side of what you can hear in American music. When we talk about my music, we have to talk about influences that express feelings that’re deep within your soul. And these feelings ask questions about who we are, or “who am I?” Especially when you consider that you face what’s going on around in the world around you. You ask yourself, “What does it all mean to me?”
So you’re basically reckoning with the human condition on your new songs.
I believe so, yes.
Let’s focus for a moment on a new song that you’ve recorded. It’s called “One Thing”. You sing the words: “Just lay down next to me / And we can watch these tasteless shows on our TV”. That’s genuinely evocative songwriting to me.
In this song in particular I’m trying to show some vulnerability and how I feel about life and the world that surrounds us. I wanted to show that particular balance between vulnerability and beauty. To me, the beauty comes in the melodies and in their reflection in the lyrics. With this record I think I really have allowed myself for the first time to just appear, rather than edit it too much or push it too far in a certain direction or for you, as the listener, to be steered in any particular direction. I wanted to contrast a lot of things in the new songs — the beauty of melody and the open space of introspection. This may have led to, I guess, some dark lyrics. But such is life, isn’t it?
You’re basically saying that, in our digital present, we’re losing our spirituality.
That’s so true.
You are 53 years old now. Would you say that you’re looking at the world as an adult person?
You know, on one hand that’s true, and getting older is a fact to me. But also the truth is that I sometimes feel that I’m just not there. But I want to be. And my hope is that the listener can reflect on that feeling. When was the last time that you asked yourself, “How do I feel about love? Do I feel love? Do I love people? Do I give the best I can? Am I kind?” You know, all these things. More often than not, I’m not so sure about myself. But I am sure about it when I’m lost in a song like that. I’m just a small part of it, as the song itself has become so much greater eventually. Love is like that. You have to hang in there and you have to believe it. At the end of the day, all this destruction that we cause around us and within us ultimately is all that we are left with. Love is the only thing that holds us together. I’m getting older and I have younger children, and hopefully they will have children too. But what kind of world are we bringing them into? I don’t know. For me, music has always been the key to feeling as though I belong, and it continues to do that.
Would you say you’ve become more empathetic over the years?
I think so. You get beaten down. I beat myself down pretty hard for a while and then I gave up on that habit. I’ve been fortunate enough in the last 20 years. I feel like I’m slowly sobering.
But you don’t regret the experiences of having beaten yourself pretty hard—or do you?
No, I wouldn’t like to miss anything, of course. This is my life.
It was a life in the limelight almost from the beginning.
Everything was public from the beginning. When Alan Wilder left Depeche Mode, it was basically Martin and me. Martin and I had to become something together, and we’re still becoming that. That’s still a work in progress. Yes, we’re making music together and then we perform that music. And we’re very much aware of how much the music has touched people. We see it in the concerts and we feel it onstage. But I think Martin and I still have this thing between us. It’s still two people coming together with music, but at the same time we’ve also always been very separate—even musically. But that’s also what makes Depeche Mode so interesting, musically. It’s that struggle between us, I believe.
You could call it a struggle, or you could call it Yin and Yang.
I would be interested how it’d sound if you actually mashed our last two records together. Martin did an album called MG. Like me, Martin is a big fan of blues and gospel music. But he’s also a big fan of turning something inside out, taking those elements and then doing something completely different with them musically, simply to make it interesting for himself. But within the band, of course, these two elements come together. And that’s why Depeche Mode’s music has always pushed the envelope of what pop music “should” sound like. We’ve always kind of been on the outside of pop somehow.
Beitragsbild: Screenshot electronicbeats.net