When ABC grasped their first music paper cover they were a five-piece-of-style, surrounded by an orchestra, assisted by fledgling producer Trevor Horn.

Today vocalist/songwriter Martin Fry is at Maison Rouge studio overseeing the final mixes for the forthcoming, third ABC album, 'How To Be A Millionaire'. They are now a two-piece too, producing their own LP.

This man has learnt a thing or two. Such as...

RECORDING

"The bulk of the recording for the new album took place in Jacobs Studio in Farnham, about an hour's drive out of London. We started off on a 32-track 3M digital machine, but transferred everything to analogue for mixing. Transferring anything from a digital machine to a digital machine is a real headache — first, finding one, and, second, it's a process that looks great on paper but doesn't sound quite right. I suppose it's still in its infancy.

"We sub-mix everything as we go. You can save it all to the end but it depends on the scale of your recording and how good your memory is. If you've got 62 separate pieces of music..."

AMERICA

"We originally went to the States, Mark White and myself, to record some songs there, and that's a completely different ball game. We scrapped everything we did.

"The vogue is to record everything really dry with no effects at all, and put them all on at the mix. That's why American records sound so clear and crisp, like they've got holes in them. Maybe it's because their engineers have been brought up on FM, not grubby old medium wave like engineers over here.

"We did some recording in LA, but I don't know... I missed Brookside. And in America you find you can't refer to a lot of records for sound. You can't ask for the handclap sound on 'Bom, Ooh, Yatatata' by Morecambe and Wise. They don't know what you're talking about.

"If you go into an American studio you have to rent all the outboard gear. Over here everything's provided. Perhaps that's why dub music — reggae — never took off in America... something built on an effect. I think people take more chances in studios over here. That's my sweeping generalisation about the recording process."

GEAR

"Mark and I have a fairly spacious flat, and a lot of our equipment is there, but since we bought the Emulator II, a lot of it has been going out the door, after being sampled. We've also got an Emulator I, Yamaha grand, Clavinet, Prophet, a couple of SH2s, plus Roland TR808 and Oberheim DMX drum machines. We sold the Linn drum last week. We've chewed our way through most of the beat boxes.

"The DMX is the favourite at the moment. It's user friendly, I guess, you can open the back easily, swap chips. It's personal taste. To my ears the DMX sounds more abrasive. We've been working with Keith LeBlanc who made Malcolm X 'No Sell Out', and we've swapped a few chips with him. But we've also been using the Fairlight to sequence bass drum, rim, snare and various percussive things.

"The Emulator II is really fast, and the samples are very high quality — higher than the Fairlight, I think. We used it in a track called 'A To Z', which has a live vocal where I say 'My Name is Martin Fry' and right next to it there's a sampled vocal, 'Who needs the moon when you've got the stars?' and I can't tell the difference. For me, that's ten gold stars."

SONGWRITING

"It's rare that we'll complete a backing track and put some vocals on top. I don't like the Moroder technique of a flat rhythm track with someone singing on top. Usually with me there'll be a title, and the lyrics for a chorus, half a verse, and a bridge part, then we toy around with the musical ideas on keyboard or guitar. The words imply the rhythm, like, if you were going to write a song called (stares around the studio relaxation room for inspiration) Rediffusion TV, it would have to go something like 'Re-Dif-Fusion... T-V. Say with 'Look of Love', that song had to kinda go 'It's the Look... It's the Look... do/do/do/do'.

"Otherwise it becomes a rock way of working and leads to a flat performance by the vocalist. I wish it was a case of the singer going in and doing his job when everyone else had finished. I'd spend more time sunbathing."

LEXICON

"We were filled with the notion of making a record that was polished in the way a lot of British records weren't. We wanted to sound like Steely Dan on drugs... if Frank Sinatra was 22 again and started recording.

"Polished, but syncopated, and we wanted to use strings, which at the time of that album was a novel idea. We used Anne Dudley (now one third of The Art Of Noise). She's brilliant. She stood in front of these lazy session players and kicked their butts, and she speaks their language. It's hard to get string sections to play in time, particularly if you've got a funky part. God knows how Norman Whitfield did it for the Temptations' stuff."

BEAUTY STAB

"Was in a way a reaction against that. We had the plan of 'forming a band', and a lot of the tracks were recorded virtually live for a raw, spontaneous feel. It works in some ways, but not others. There are no strings this time for 155 different reasons — too expensive, and it means you can't go on TV and perform it because the MU thing works against you. But mainly it's not necessary... we use a Solina String Ensemble..."

DEMOS

"We've got an eight-track in Sheffield that's gathering dust, and a four-track Fostex cassette machine that's too technical for me to operate so we only use one track and play everything live into it — me singing, a kazoo for the brass parts...

"These days we're not a 'band' in the strict sense of the word. In an ideal world it would be nice to be John, Paul, George and Ringo, but it's taken three years for us to realise that everything we've done has been a triumph of stylists over technicians. If you spend more time putting a plug on the cassette player than finding a middle eight... that's bad."

BILLIONAIRES

"The new album will be more polished — gloss where Beauty Stab was matt. Instead of being an approximation of a five-piece unit, it's something else again. Not having a band... sometimes... sometimes if you're not careful records can be dreary, if it's all machines and all you programming them. You can't share a joke with a TR8O8.

"This album swings more, has a syncopated beat. I like the idea of people moving to ABC's music... even if it's just commuting."

SESSIONMEN

"Why does everybody go to America for their session players? Don't know, 'The American Dream?', 'The Untouchables?'... horn players in LA and New York are ten a penny, and they're all brilliant. In London there are good ones, but there are so few of them. There's a whole tradition of playing live in America. You can play live for 40 years in America, make money, and never play the same place twice. Here you're repeating yourself in two years. That tradition of live music gives Americans a syncopated edge. That's what people go for."

AUDITIONS

"We auditioned for some musicians in February '84. Mark and myself found ourselves as a duo, and we didn't want to be. We didn't want to be Simon and Garfunkel. We didn't have the polo necks.

"We held auditions in Sheffield and it was a disturbing experience. Of 200 drummers there were maybe five that could play in time, and that's from an area with a strong tradition of bands for working men's clubs. It's a romantic notion to say, 'Oh, fuck the beat box', but you have to remember what a cardboard kit really sounds like... and a record lasts forever.

"We went round America looking for people, and finally scrapped the notion... violently, I suppose. We came back and hooked up with Eden and David Yarritu who are utter novices where musical instruments are concerned, but can introduce something of value.

MUSICIANS

"Being a musician these days goes beyond plugging into a guitar input and letting go. I've never been a fan of jamming... you could jam your life away.

"A musician today, like it or not, is a clothes designer, record sleeve designer, the world's greatest thinker, a tap dancer, a guitarist, a keyboard player, a drummer. That's my version. I'm sure people would disagree. I don't mean you have to be pretty to make a record, that's NOT what I'm saying. But where records are concerned, to make a statement, to make it original, you have to learn something about yourself.

"Somebody should make another film 'Son Of Spinal Tap' — how you're going to shoot the video, how you're going to airbrush the cover... perhaps the Roaring Boys would be interested."

LIVE

"I used to think you had to reproduce the sound of an album precisely on stage. After we recorded 'Lexicon Of Love' we built a 16-piece band. We took five violinists and a cello player, two keyboard players, guitarist, horn section, backing vocalist, because we were full of the idea that we had to recreate every last inch of the record. After playing 75 shows you realise some of the groundwork has to be there, but the excitement comes from something completely different. Even one snare beat can sound magical on stage if the PA's big enough."

VOICE

"I went to see the teacher, Tona de Brett, and now every time she does an interview she says I went to her for lessons. It irritates me because I walked in and she started talking about breathing exercises, and I thought, sure John Lydon came to you but the reason I like his voice is that he's got this innate character that isn't about breathing, and I feel it's the same with me, so I don't really recommend lessons to anyone.

"I'm afraid I smoke cigarettes, I have late nights. The best thing you can do is stay happy. You can do anything with your voice if you feel happy, and relaxed, you've had enough sleep, something to eat. If you feel great, you sing great, if you feel lousy, you don't, for whatever reasons.

"In the studio I'm tainted by the guide vocal epidemic. I'll put down a guide, sometimes when there's just drums and nothing to tune to. It's important to sketch the sound out at the first opportunity. Then at a later stage, when everything's practically on the track, I'll fret, scurry around and do five vocals A to Z, all the way through, and then compile a performance, but I often pick 85 per cent of the guide vocal. I don't know why that is, sounds fresher maybe."

TREVOR HORN

"I've got a lot of Trevor's records in my collection. 'Owner of Lonely Heart' slayed me. I remember reading in your magazine where loads of producers picked it out as their favourite piece of production. I can listen to Frankie and hear certain Trevor-isms, but I think what makes him great is that he has a different approach to each artist so the records sound genuinely different. Clarity is the main issue. And scope.

SATISFACTION

"I enjoy recording most of all. I enjoy the moment you realise you've created something even if it's on a shabby cassette. And there's the moment you crystallise something from nothing, it suddenly becomes a song, lives and breathes.

"I suppose I'm most pleased with '15 Storey Halo' for its size, 'Poison Arrow' for its originality when it came out, 'A To Z' because it was the quickest thing we ever recorded, 'United Kingdom' but I'd still like to record that song again, and 'The Look Of Love — Part 5' 12in mix we did with Trevor which was pretty radical at the time, involved a lot of sampling and scratching techniques which are now common, but in 1982 they weren't."

12IN MIXES

"How many 12in records are really worth owning? Many songs are entirely abused that way. Give me the 7in. 12in mixes don't have to be a sales ploy to convince Joe Public to buy the single twice.

"I like the idea of one day doing a 12in like 'Hurricane' by Bob Dylan — sing 17 verses of it until you've got enough for an album. If the 12in is going anywhere, it's got to be blown apart.

"Yes I suppose in a lot of cases it just puts the band further into the hands of the producer — not us, because we produce ourselves. But the idea of just mailing off your multitrack to Jellybean and waiting for the result to come back — forget it, who needs it."

ADMIRATION

"Hall and Oates, Sly Stone, Melle Mel... they've made some very radical records even though people just label them as rap. James Brown for the spirit, that scream. And son of James Brown — Prince. But by the the same stroke I enjoy listening to Joni Mitchell for her sense of perfection, though she does get a little wordy.

"Apart from the Gods there are just various pieces of music that hit you over the head — the first 15 seconds, a drum fill.

"Of British stuff, I don't know. I'm not a great fan. I think a lot of people have made some lazy records. Culture Club after making a fantastic record 'Time, Clock of the Heart'... they got lazy. And this whole school of Nik Kershaw and Howard Jones. I don't dislike them because they're dull, I dislike them because their records are dull. The focus of media attention is on people who aren't exactly heavyweights. There are not many ambitious records being made, and I think that separates people like Trevor Horn from the pack."

FINALLY

"I thought you were going to ask me for my prophecies. A Blondie revival and 80's nostalgia. They've already done the 50's, 60's and 70's. People will long for the time when it only cost two quid for a gallon of petrol."