ANDY MCCLUSKEY (OMD): Universal Appeal

One‑time lords of synth‑pop, OMD have had a chequered 18‑year history, but frontman Andy McCluskey genuinely believes their 10th and latest album ranks among the band's best work. Nigel Humberstone talks to McCluskey and producer Matthew Vaughan about the making of Universal.

Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark were a truly '80s pop success story — an electronic duo (Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys) who had the knack of writing killer melodies. From their low‑key 1979 eponymous debut album through to 1981's superb Architecture & Morality, they balanced their love of Kraftwerk with epic Vangelis‑like synthscapes, and had a healthy tendency to encapsulate both of these influences in three‑minute pop songs. Singles like 'Electricity', 'Messages', 'Enola Gay' and 'Maid Of Orleans' met with enormous chart success as a result, and were guaranteed places on all future synth‑pop compilation albums.

Like many predominantly synth‑based groups of the early '80s, OMD hit a rocky patch in 1983. With the expectations placed on them by the public following the triumph of Architecture & Morality, the subsequent album Dazzle Ships was a commercial disappointment, although the duo were in fact continuing in the experimental vein that had led them to discover the successful Mellotron‑and‑Gregorian chant‑based Architecture sound in the first place; but this time their experiments used early sampling technology such as the Emu Emulator. After the relative failure of Dazzle Ships, OMD were never quite the same again, despite the continued adoption of then‑new technology, like the Fairlight CMI. The group embraced a much more obviously pop‑based approach on subsequent albums, but curiously this yielded a reduced success rate for their singles and albums overall, with occasional exceptions, such as the 1986 worldwide smash hit 'Forever Live And Die'.

As the duo's fluctuating fortunes continued and the decade wore on, conflicting interests within the partnership began to surface, and when, in 1989, Paul Humphreys decided to leave and pursue a career outside the band in The Listening Pool, Andy McCluskey had to pick up the pieces. "I was traumatised when he left," McCluskey admits today, "because he was the guy I'd written songs with since I was 16. But looking back, I realise that it had to happen. I think we both decided that OMD, as it was, could not have continued — it would have completely self‑destructed. I'm glad it ended when it did."

Following Humphreys' departure, McCluskey soldiered on with the OMD name and an ever‑changing round of production and songwriting collaborators, triumphantly returning in 1991 with the 2‑million selling Sugar Tax album. Like Architecture and Morality, it was another high point in what McCluskey freely refers to as his "zig‑zagging" career: the pattern then continued with 1993's poorly‑produced (and poorly‑received) follow‑up Liberator. "The trick is to learn from mistakes or problems," recounts McCluskey philosophically, "and try to rectify what you did wrong. I've now had three really bad patches, which should have ended my career, but I'm still standing, and I like to think that I've now made an album which is as good as any of my peaks. But I would say that, wouldn't I?"

Universal Traveller

The new peak in question is Universal, OMD's latest offering and an album for whose recording McCluskey felt the need to depart the confines of his home city Liverpool, specifically the Ministry, OMD's former rehearsal and studio space [see OMD feature in SOS August '93 — Ed]. Andy had three years to work on this album, so before commencing work, he went travelling around the world, took trains across Asia, and drove across America. During this time, he made some major changes to the way he wanted OMD to sound: "I made a conscious decision, both style‑wise and sound‑wise, to change. It was important for me to abandon some of the electronic stuff: nobody in the mid‑1990s really wanted '80s synth‑pop any more, which is essentially how OMD were perceived, whether correctly or not. But the current alternative to synth‑pop is ambient, which is not challenging enough for me, much as I like some of it. It hasn't got enough personality or interest factor for me. Call me old‑fashioned and traditionalist, but I like songs that have beginnings, ends and choruses!". The other synth‑based alternative was hardcore dance, but McCluskey felt no more comfortable with this style after the Liberator debacle: "On the last album, I made the mistake of trying to marry my pop sensibility with dance stuff, and ended up falling down the hole in the middle. In the end, I felt I had to be true to myself — I didn't take Ecstasy or stay up to eight in the morning, so why was I trying to 'techno‑up' some of these songs? It was important for me to ask myself what the new album should be like, and what would appeal to me and make sense for a band that is essentially 18 years old. And I didn't want it all to be electronic — I wanted to use real drums, and less synths".

Having taken these far‑reaching decisions, McCluskey commenced work on the album. But this didn't mark the end of his travels. First, he went to Eire for a year to write and demo material. "I rented a room at The Factory in Dublin, and took my gear over from Liverpool. It doesn't matter where I am — I take my desk, my speakers, my rig, and computer [see the 'Making Demos' box for more on the OMD demo rig]. There's a great vibe at The Factory, with good technical people downstairs working for Litton Lane [local PA company — Ed], so if something broke down, I could get some help."

After a fruitful but lengthy period in Dublin, McCluskey uprooted again, this time moving to Los Angeles to work there for seven months. The move obviously had the desired effect of raising the rate of progress (McCluskey: "My concern was that I was getting a bit laid back in Ireland") and the album demos were more or less completed there.

The final move in OMD's globetrotting recording tour was back from LA to the UK — not to Liverpool, where much of OMD's post‑Humphreys material was recorded, but to The Townhouse in London, selected for its SSL desk and 48‑track Sony 3348 digital recorder. As McCluskey goes on to explain, he changed his production team as well as his final choice of studio for the actual recording of the album: "When I got back from America, I had everything pretty much demo'd, and having changed the way I wrote the album, I wanted to change the way I was going to record the album; it was quite important for me to find the right people to work with. I loathe making records — I love the writing, and touring I really enjoy, but committing to that final product is really traumatic. Essentially, it's me programming and arranging, so I have a lot of trouble objectively balancing in the studio. I need a good engineer, somebody that I really trust, so that I can say, 'look, you do this, and I'll fine‑tune it'. When you spend all your time doing the programming, you can get so bogged down in the minutiae of pitching the vocal, or making sure that a rhythm sample is looping correctly, that you lose the overall picture. The songs were 80 to 90 percent there — it was the last 15 to 20 percent, which is always the hard bit, converting the good‑sounding demo into the great‑sounding finished record."

In the end, McCluskey chose two collaborators, producer/programmer Matthew Vaughan (see the 'Producer & Programmer' box), and engineer David 'Chip' Nicholas, both noted for their work with legendary producer Chris Thomas on Pulp's 1995 hit album Different Class. "They were like the right and left‑hand men for that record, with Chris Thomas sitting on the couch doing the crossword — and I thought, 'that's the way I want to do it!'. So I spent three months in The Townhouse doing the crossword on the couch! It took a lot of the pressure off me, because I could just delegate things to them and trust that they would do things I would be happy with — they were very much on my wavelength."

Organic And Digital

Matthew Vaughan certainly paid his way as the project's Pro Tools and Logic Audio operator: as Andy McCluskey explains, hard disk recording proved invaluble during the making of the album, for example when positioning vocals in the final mix. "That's where Mr. Vaughan came into his own, because not only have you got to spin the vocals in, but nine times out of 10, the final version is sped up a few bpm, so you have to time‑stretch them. Pro Tools was incredible — it allowed me to be more objective than I've ever been about making a record. It was also great to have somebody do all that spade work, but also add his own creative touches.

"The making of this album went in two opposite directions. Matt's programming with Pro Tools and Logic Audio was beyond anything I've done. But that kind of technology took some of the pain out of the work, and allowed some of the other things on the album to be more organic; trying to combine live drums and bass with a lot of programming is quite hard, and used to be very hard. But the best stuff I've ever done has not been completely electronic, it's been half and half, and I like to believe it has a certain humanity and emotional content. So in terms of instruments for the new album, there are a few old organs that I've used, like Farfisas and Elgams [see the 'Elgams & Eno' box].

"Interestingly, with all the fabulous samples you can get from things like the Emu Classic Keys, you often don't actually have to go out and dust down your real Mellotron, or get out your Hammond organ and lob it through the Leslie. For example the 'pipe organ' on 'Walking On The Milky Way' was from a Yamaha TX81Z. And the big organ sound is from an Emu Proteus — but it was put through a real Leslie. There are lots of strings on the album, and most of those are samples, but 'If You're Still In Love With Me' has a real 10‑piece string section [arranged by none other than strings superwoman Anne Dudley — Ed]. CD‑ROMs are also great — you can now get things like a choir of nuns singing block chords [from the Best Service CD‑ROM Hallelujah — Ed], which we used on the middle eight of 'Walking On The Milky Way'. Once again, you're using real organic sounds, but you're using technology to access them. I think we struck a really effective balance."

From Pulp To Ambient

Recording at The Townhouse took the form of a three‑month block session, with the majority finished before Christmas 1995 — but then there were two last‑minute additions. McCluskey explains why this happened: "We set out to — and did — record 16 songs, but I had so many that we first had to wade through what we were and weren't going to do for the album. 'Too Late' was one of the first songs I wrote in Ireland, and Chip and Matt ganged up on me and said they didn't want to record that — neither of them happened to get off on that song. Once we finished the album, though, I was adamant that something was missing, and that that track needed to be on too."

The other track added was 'The Boy From The Chemist Is Here To See You', which McCluskey wrote on holiday over Christmas 1995. "I just fancied doing another up‑tempo one. Strangely, of all the songs, it's the one that sounds the most analogue and old‑fashioned OMD." The track also seems strongly reminiscent of both Pulp's 'Common People' and 'Disco 2000' from Different Class. McCluskey doesn't wholly dispute the similarity: "With Pulp's mentality, and with Chris Thomas adding bits on that record as well, they do have this kind of cheesy pop '70s sound. I'm returning the compliment, quite frankly, because as far as I'm concerned, some of Pulp's stuff sounds like late Pulp playing OMD doing early Roxy Music. So this is late OMD, doing late Pulp, doing early Roxy Music! 'Boy From The Chemist' — and a lot of Pulp stuff — has that two‑chord piano, much the same as Roxy's 'Virginia Plain'."

The title track from the album had completely different origins, with its roots in the extended, proto‑ambient synth tracks OMD specialised in until Dazzle Ships, like 'Stanlow' from 1980's Organisation album, or 'Sealand' from Architecture & Morality. McCluskey explains the return to this style: "When Liberator came out, a journalist said to me, 'One thing that disturbs me — when you were 21 you were doing these epic music landscapes, and now youre in your mid‑30s, you're doing three‑minute pop songs. You're almost growing up the wrong way round'. He was right — I used to throw a lot more caution to the wind when I was younger, and did things that in essence sound more mature than what I'm doing now. 'Universal' was a conscious decision to do a big, ambient soundscape". The first section of the track features a typically old‑style OMD, analogue‑sounding synth line — but as McCluskey reveals, it's not as analogue as you think: "It's actually a JD800 card sound called 'Korean Lead', but with its bell attack sound taken off. Essentially, it's a JD800 mimicking a Minimoog; and then, of course, it's been lobbed through loads of long repeats to give it that grandiose synth rock feel. You can imagine Rick Wakeman or Keith Emerson playing it in a stadium. I was having fun, basically, and trying to knock down some of my own personally‑imposed boundaries with a prog‑rock intro — but I always knew it would finish with a song somehow." The intro nevertheless hung around unconnected to anything for a long time, being one of the first pieces McCluskey wrote for the album. The main song eventually appeared nine months later. "In the end, we cut down the five‑minute intro to two minutes, and added the song. The second part is in the key of C and the intro's in D sharp — it was really difficult to get one to slide into the other."

The Universal Lottery

Reasonably enough, McCluskey made no presumptions about how Universal would fare commercially (it was yet to be released at the time of our interview) — although as our conversation ended, he was confident that he had at least satisfied his personal standards, as he had intended. "I have a good feeling that I've done the right thing, and for the right reason. But as to whether the album will sell — that's still a lottery. It's 15 years now since Architecture & Morality, which a lot of people tend to regard as our pièce de resistance, never bettered since. I think that maybe in 15 years' time I could still listen to this and think of it being as good as Architecture & Morality. That's the real benchmark test."

Universal and the single 'Walking on the Milky Way' are out now on Virgin Records.