Posted at 11:41 AM, 15 May 2009 -
Chris Lowe recently expressed Pet Shop Boys' desire to work with Xenomania again. Speaking about the work process, he said: «The whole thing worked out really well. I think we’re going to, hopefully, work with them again in the future.»Chris Lowe describes how things work at Xenomania: «There are a lot of people working at any one time on your record and the music is passed around the studio on little USB sticks. Brian Higgins sits down, monitoring the whole thing and pushing it in various directions and stuff like that. There are people from all around the world working there, (...) it's a very enthusiastic workplace and I imagine it’s a bit like the Motown studio was in Detroit. At the end of the day, everything gets judged by Brian, and if it’s good enough it sort of gets marked. It’s a very creative place to be.»
Neil Tennant: «What was unusual for them working with us was that they were producing our songs; they don't normally do that, they normally produce their own songs, and to them the songwriting and the production process is the same thing. I think it was probably as much a learning process for them as it was for us.»
When asked to compare Xenomania's style of production with Trevor Horn's style, Chris Lowe said that «with Xenomania it’s more short bursts of energy». Neil Tennant added that Trevor Horn «works in a more quality way»: «He goes for the individual sounds and then puts together the whole thing, whereas Xenomania go for the whole thing which is a bit more like we are». Neil also said that there are ways in which they are very similar, «in that they endlessly experiment, try things, scrap them».
Here's a few bits about specific songs:
"All Over The World"
Neil Tennant: «That song was originally called “I'm Not Crying I'm Laughing” and it was a totally different song. When we were writing it it was a bit frustrating, Chris and I just played the Tchaikovsky thing over the top of it and it sort of worked and it was funny.»
"The Way It Used To Be"
Neil Tennant: «“The Way Its Used To Be” is structured like a film as a series of flashbacks. It starts in the present, 'I'm here, you're there, come closer,' and then you go back to when they meet. I imagine it being a boy and a girl when they're students meeting and they go on this sort of student holiday to Rome and have an amazing time. (...) I think at the end they get back together again. So “I was there caught on 10th Avenue,” that melody wasn't written by me or Chris, it was written by Miranda Cooper of Xenomania, but I wrote the words to it.»
“This Used To Be The Future”
Neil Tennant: «Well, firstly we wanted the bonus disc to be spectacular, we don't see it as some sort of division two thing. The album was too long, when we finished the album with twelve tracks it was really long, it was nearly an hour and it just felt a bit long. “This Used To Be The Future,” I think, was the longest track on it. We had the idea of doing these dub mixes and we thought the song would be an amazing start to that. The bonus album, the dub album as we call it, is a sort of a tribute to the Human League’s album, ‘Love and Dancing,' where they did a dub album based on their album ‘Dare’ which was an amazing album, and that was where the idea for this dub album came from. I had a chat with Phil Oakey because it just seemed really appropriate. »
Labels: Pet Shop Boys
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