Recoil – subHuman

The PCM 'Reduction' stereo mix on the DVD is a thing of beauty - well worth the price alone. You can really hear the immense sonic detail Alan and Paul Kendall put into this, clearly their finest hour. Recoil is not easily accessible and therefore not for everyone - only for true (alternative) music lovers open to putting in the time, effort and open mind needed to be rewarded by it. But it is a very worthwhile sonic payback.

Well now here's a fine kettle of fish. Seven years of silence ended. Is it any wonder I've been playing this thing non-stop? One does not get new work from Alan Wilder very often. A more reclusive, reluctant musician would be difficult to find. Yet he ventured out of The Thin Line (his studio for those of you who're wondering) to work with a Texan named Joe Richardson. And a lass called Carla Trevaskis.

From the first track, the single "Prey", you suddenly why it is you suffer through the droughts between albums from Recoil. The sudden tempo changes, the atmospheres. Wilder's usage of tension has never been better. Recoil induce vertigo at times, Alan's singular ability to meld his production prowess into creatively viable yet thoroughly menacing tracks short-circuits the unwary who casually listen to his work. There is no such thing as a casual Recoil fan, by the way. The growth from his last outing (2000's Liquid) to this album blows me away.

"Allelujah" is at times reminiscent of "Missing Piece" and yet it is different enough that I cannot fault its basis of breathy feminine vocals, immense cinematic presence and almost dream-like tempo. "The Killing Ground" by contrast begins somberly, gently nudging you along until it just flat out explodes like some kind of tune from an all-night dance hall in hell with an exhortive message which when one looks beneath the mythological context is just devastating. It is currently my favourite track of the album. I wonder what this song would have sounded like with say, Johnny Cash singing on it... another question which must remain unanswered.

This album is the fruition of what began back in 1993 on an album we all know quite well. The continuation was 1997's Unsound Methods and now, some fourteen years later, I'm going to go out on a limb and posit that this is what he truly had in mind when he was wasting his time in a chart-courting prima-donna finishing academy who have since become neither creative nor viable in any sense of the word.

Reviewed 2007

My favorite Recoil album. Gorgeous presentation; warped disc two. Going to try for another copy.

My copy has a lot of clicks and pops on side A ((

Absolutely flawless. Perfectly and expressive. Absolutely gorgeous. Simple and elegant.

Is it possible to extract the DVD audio files as MP3? and how?

As a true fan of Alan Wilder's work recordings like this without vocals are a real gift. You get to see into what's happening in a lot of respects behind the music and into the eye of a true musical auteur. Not to take away from the original work as presented with vocals, this is a rare treat and a real vision into what is a a truly exceptional study in sound arrangement. The singular problem with Alan Wilder perhaps is that he does not care enough about the medium to continue hone his craft. Working with Depeche Mode he crafted such an amazing body of work but with Recoil he has barely as yet scratched the surface to what is possible. Never has there been such a reclusive and experimental figure in music. Sadly history may not look back and appreciate just what Alan Wilder's accomplishments have done to vitally alter the progressive landscape of arrangements in music. In retrospect he should have stuck with Depeche Mode and continued to ply his personal craft on the side as Recoil so that more people would have taken notice.

In 1997 Alan Wilder virtually cut all wires with his former mega-popular band and created what remains one of the finest albums of the 90s - Recoil's 'Unsound Methods'. Unlike previous work, where still-vivid Depeche echoed in his established solo project, 'Methods' were a considerable step forward; keeping the darker sound of "Songs Of Faith And Devotion" but adding edgy jazz-noir and ambient music structures to great effect, along with the impressive gospel and spoken-word type vocals - justifiably a great addition to one Massive Attack ('Mezzanine') and Portishead (their 1997 s/t album).

However, when 'Liquid' - literally a sequel - followed in 1999/2000, Recoil's surprise element established in "Unsound Methods" was audibly gone. Despite impressive deliveries by Diamanda Galas and The Golden Gate Jubilee Quartet, Wilder's submission to blues now turned into a cliché he chose to exploit further without particular results.

With die-hard fans constantly wishing for new Recoil material, to some extent it probably affected Alan to continue - and in that, "SubHuman" does sound at best like indulging the fans; at worst it is a collection of leftovers he didn't know what to do with earlier. While it doesn't entirely hurt, for a producer of Wilder's calibre to deliver something as "SubHuman", especially after eight long years, is a letdown.