Starting on Monday, January 17th, Depeche Mode will be back in the studio with producer Ben Hillier. In a recent interview with German magazine Musikexpress, Martin Gore is quoted saying that going into the first 5 weeks session, taking place in Santa Barbara, he has a total of 7 songs ready and, "Dave has written a lot of songs. We will take two or three of them for the album."
That brings the grand total to 9-10 songs for the new album, but Martin will have more in the bag before the end of the record. "I will have time to write more songs before we start with the second session." About the process of writing songs, Martin Gore explains: "Sometimes I sit in my studio for two weeks and do nothing because I don't feel inspired. And then, suddenly, inspiration comes and I start writing a song." Asked about the Madonna thing, he also says: "I have never really got into writing songs together with somebody else. Gwen Stefani asked me to do a song with her, but to me that's a very personal thing. I just can't imagine to sit in a room together with someone else and think about song ideas. I don't know how Madonna works, but I guess it would be a bit like this. We would sit together and try to get some words on a paper and to compose some chords."
About the new producer, Martin has this to say: "Ben (Hillier) is a very different producer compared to the others with whom we have worked in the past. Our last producers were very fixed to electronics, Mark Bell and Tim Simenon. Ben is less electronically fixated. He's more a controller who brings different people into the boat, programmers etc."
Now behave yourself, Mikey!