Mike Davies takes the advice of the leading electro-funk band to Get Fashionable...

It's been over a year now since Fashion stormed the charts with their outstanding album 'Fabrique', with a clutch of excellent singles 'Move on', 'Streetplayer' and 'Love Shadow', all marrying an urgent dance vitality with a strident sensuality of sound. Since that time they've suffered a range of setbacks that would daunt even the most established band, let alone one just beginning to make its mark on the music scene. Firstly there came a split in the ranks when vocalist Dee Harris quit; since Harris had firmly stamped his own vocal sound across Fashion's own individual musical flesh, there was the immediate outcry that the band would now merely fade away.

Not so; the strength that had taken Fashion through a variety of incarnations up to this time was more than enough for them to pull the chaos back together into a solid bond once again.

In came Alan Darby and Troy Tate, and the band quickly put together a short tour. It was through this that it became obvious that acting in haste might not have been such a good idea. While Darby provided an added dimension to the band with his often savage rock guitar injections, Tate simply didn't look or sound right on stage. There were also problems with the business side of things which created unpleasant atmospheres within the set-up. The band recorded one single for Arista in this line-up which never got released; this was 'Love Is', a powerful piece of Fashion popdance written by Tate which he eventually issued as a solo version in 83, a pale shadow of the band recording. Meantime Tate was out of the band, and again Fashion was short of a vocalist. Rumours abounded as to possible replacements, the most interesting suggestions including John Foxx (who was recording with Fashion's producer Zeus Held at the time) and Zaine Griffe. Ultimately it was decided not to bring in a new front voice but to spotlight Darby's not inconsiderable talents in that direction, plus Dik's own talk-vocal style which makes itself evident on the new album. However, even at this juncture things weren't running too smooth with the band.

No vocalist, no new record and now no label. Following a variety of complexities that are probably best left untold at this point Arista and Fashion parted company. Dik: "I don't think Arista could handle what was going down at the time what with us, Haircuts and Huang Chung all splitting. The A&R guy Simon Potts was really behind us, but I don't think the Accounts Department were that keen." Eventually the band got a total release from their contract while at the same time negotiating with Muff Winwood at CBS and subsequently signing what was, at the time, whispered to be the biggest deal for the label since they signed The Clash. It not only signed the band to Epic but also gave them their own label identity with Distijl. At which point silence reigned again until the release of their debut single for the label in January in the shape of 'Eye Talk', a potent, surging and meaty slab of electro funk and no-non-sense swaggering guitar.

Now comes the new album (tentatively titled 'Twilight Idols' at the time of this interview) which adds a lot of extra weight to their rep as well as ringing several changes in both approach and sound. There's a definite move towards a slinky, laid back mood at times which certainly shows the influence of Darby and stands out to perfection on the mesmerising allure of 'You And The Night' which in its 12" version is almost breathtaking in its fusion of electronic rhythms and softly undulating melodies and vocals. Check out too the instrumental 'Wet And Warm' (again a tentative title), where Darby drifts with ease into a soothing, masterful acoustic guitar creation that has definite soundtrack overtones to it. It was one of the tracks that was given birth to in the early demos recorded at Bob Lamb's studios while the band were in the process of switching labels. Mulligan; "After these initial demos were done we were supposed to go to Paris, but there were a lot of problems with the schedules and the availability of the studios and getting Zeus free at the same time. He was working on the Dead Or Alive and John Foxx albums, so we had to bide our time a bit. As it turned out Dead Or Alive had some problems with their album which meant they couldn't start it on time, so they gave us their studio time over here and instead of going straight off to Paris we did the initial four tracks, which we saw as the most single oriented. For the dub mixes I wanted to use a lot of computers that had got interfaces we'd had built here and which we couldn't take to France, and also Dik used a Movement computer which we couldn't have used there. So we did all the tracks that we wanted to use this hardware on over here; we didn't finish the tracks, we just laid down the basic rhythm and experimented. Having got the demos so far we then wanted to improve on them in terms of both the sound and the instrumentation".

Dik: "If you listen to the production on the Dead Or Alive album it's absolutely brilliant. Zeus is really coming into his own and I think he's going to be one of the producers of the 80's. We decided to stay with him, and the only different combination was that we also used Christian Gence, the French engineer, who's also absolutely brilliant.

"We started to gt involved with computers during the first Fashion using a sequencer to play the bass, and that created a lot of problems."

Mulligan: "If you describe a sound to him, say like someone dropping a nail on to glass, and tell him that's how you want the guitar to sound, he'll actually get it for you." Dik: "Mind you, you'll have to translate it first because he doesn't understand a bloody word of English!"

Mulligan: "Anyway, back to the music. We put down the initial tracks and then went to France and started to record the rest, and as we'd been through so much rehearsal and demos the songs were already there. So we laid things down in a very precise order, computers first and percussion was to be the last thing to go on, the real percussion that makes the tracks swing. So we'd got everything laid down and well ordered, waiting for the spice, and then Dik goes and gets run over! He'd done the initial drum tracks and put down the beats, but the actual movement had to come from him first and then the guitars and everything else starts to move on top after you've got the initial programmes and keyboards and the straightforward bass lines. So we were all sitting thinking we could really start moving now, and Dik decided to go off for a ride on his bike while we had something to eat before going into the studio. We finish the meal and we're waiting for him and he doesn't come back. Three in the morning the phone rings and it was like the room was made of glass and someone punched in both sides."

Dik's much reported road accident, knocked off his bike by some lunatic French hit and run driver, meant that the album was immediately hit by a lengthy delay. "Short of bringing someone else in to do the percussion there was nothing we could do except come back to England and wait for him to recover, and if we'd brought someone in it wouldn't have sounded like Fashion so there wouldn't have been any point. Anyways Zeus being the kind-hearted soul he is, the minute Dik's hands were out of bandages he had him back in the studios in London for four days and made him put down all the drum tracks. But again it was a play-off situation because Martin (Recci) had covered by putting down some of the bass, but the minute Dik put the drums down the bass didn't work because they have to work together as a unit. So Dik and Martin had to go back to Paris to do additional recordings before we could do the mixes. We all traipsed back out with the equipment to do the percussion and put in the bass fills. Finally though we got it all finished and spent another month mixing it down."

Moving back to the tracks there's the choppy 'It Girl', which curls around the ears with a cobra-like strength and is one of the tracks to feature Dik on vocals. "It's a talk-over vocal because I've never been able to sing, like pitching a note, but it does have a lot of character." 'Dreaming' features some Mulligan vocoder work across Darby's ferocious guitar rock-blues style, the whole thing being underpinned by a dark swirl of keyboards. The same soaring guitar is evident on 'Hurricane', one of the album's definite highspots and a potential single. It's a slow-paced, atmospheric piece that enables Darby to show his vocal command as well as illustrating the maturity of sound that handle the slow burn as keenly as the more pulsating dance material. The latter is amply evidenced on 'Trader' and 'Delirious', with some throaty bass throb from Martin, as well as on the determined attack of 'Eye Talk'. One thing in evidence on the album and which is playing an increasing importance in creating the identifiable Fashion sound is the use of computers in formulating and producing the music framework.

"It's always been our philosophy to shock people in some way, but soundwise you can always tell it's the same band."

Computer Moves

Mulligan is the main moving force behind the technological side of the input, and indeed has been since the early days of the band. "We started to get involved with computers during the first Fashion using a sequencer to play the bass, and that created a lot of problems since we'd never worked with one and it needed incredibly strict time-keeping. It was computer oriented in that it was a step by step binary system and we were dealing in analogue voltage and gates, which are actually quite primitive now but at the time only one album was using that technology and making any dent and that was Donna Summer's 'Love To Love You Baby'. It threw us in at the deep end and it was incredibly difficult for us to stay in time; when Dik finally got in time I'd have lost track of where I was in the song because I'd forgotten to count the bars! Also at that point we could only use it in one key, so we'd have to construct the songs round one key where the verse and the chorus still had this thundering great bass line running all the way through. It helped us though; in fact I've actually learned to sight read music by computer. None of us could read music when we started and we learned because with the technology we either had to translate it numerically or with patterns. We've become increasingly involved with computers since then. The drums are programmed, although of course the basics have to be there in the first place, so its a real drum sound.

Songs are all worked out on acoustic kit, but we use Linn drums, Emulators, Fairlight drum sounds, Movement computers and so on to build up the sound, plus live snares and bass to thicken it. Actually on the last album we wrote down everything we used, but if we did it this time it'd be bloody ridiculous. But on to the computers; for the core I use an MC4 because it's mine, it's at home on the table, and it doesn't cost us studio time. I can work out on that what we're doing and what we do then, instead of hiring and programming a Fairlight, is cut around it by having an Interface built so we can get into the Fairlight from an external brain. We use the MC4 as the brain to trigger the Fairlight and we use the Fairlight's computer power to actually sample and contrive the sounds. I started working stuff cut with the Sinclair ZX81 and then used the Synclavier on one track; the actual programming on a Fairlight and Synclavier is a lot easier than on an MC4, it's just that that's what I'm used to using. It isn't very user-friendly because it's only got a numeric pad with various shift functions so everything has to be in a sort of machine code.

The MC4 has a 48K memory, which is purely the information memory; if you use a Synclavier or a Fairlight or a PPG you get two disc drives and one will be the menu that runs the system which then gives you 48K of programme that's purely there to help you, and translates everything into plain English. When you get the menu through you can explain what you want to do, sample the pitch value or look at the waveform or whatever, and it actually comes up and says 'pitch value' and so on. On the MC4 it's pure machine code and if you want to know the value of a note you're working in you type in numerically that you want to know that, so you've got to remember how to get there, and then it'll give you a numeric value. If you want Middle C it won't say 'Middle C' it'll just say '24', if it's a quaver it'll say '48'. It's all down to the time base you give it. The time base of the MC4 doesn't match anything else unless you reprogram it to start with, so when you switch it on you have to change the time base to get it compatible with the Linn drums or whatever. We're actually getting two BBC computers so we can just pass a cassette to each other. A lot of the time you're just using terminals so me and Dik could link up on two terminals somewhere rather than have to travel all over the place to work something out." Fashion are adamant that their live sound isn't going to become swamped by an unworkable electronic network of effects. "It's a mistake to do something like Herbie Hancock because he's not a band and he's not expected to go out and play it live, whereas we are, and if we do anything that's too studio oriented we'd find it very hard to perform. We really want the live show to be impressive this time round, after all we've got a reputation to keep up. We do have a lot of ideas using computers and although we don't want to say too much at this stage let's just say that we're sick and tired of seeing bands with hundreds of lights. This will be a different idea of a light show and a different idea of a stage show, and we'll be out there sometime in March."

One thing for certain is that the album is easily identifiable as Fashion, even if it's moved away from the style of 'Fabrique' in many areas. However this instant familiarity isn't necessarily a good thing. Mulligan: "No matter what sort of music we play we've got a millstone round our neck, a sound that is very hard to break away from, and that comes from both the technology we use and the personalities of the band. Although there are different elements in a song it's very obvious that there's a hallmark that you can't shake off. Now while that is a good thing initially for building up an identity, if we don't do something about it, if we don't constantly progress, it will ultimately hold us back." Dik: "It's always been our philosophy to shock people in some way, but soundwise you can always tell it's the same band. On this album we run the whole gamut of our abilities as musicians."

Spaceriders

Looking ahead, the band are also providing the soundtrack for a bike movie starring Barry Sheene, provisionally titled 'Spaceriders', to the extent of a title track and incidental music. The original idea had been for the band to actually appear in the film as a band fronted by an American bike star as well as do all the music. CBS weren't too keen on the latter (since the soundtrack is released on EMI and wouldn't sit well in promotion terms alongside their own album) and after seeing the script and budget the band weren't that struck on the former! However, films are certainly an area into which they intend to move, having already set up their own video company, Archipelago, to make videos for both other people and Fashion themselves. It's all part of the Fashion structure that enables and encourages the individual members to work on projects outside of the band. It's not always been looked on favourably in the past by their record companies however; Dik and Mulligan's involvement on the Tin Tin singles had to be cloaked in secrecy when Arista and Warners got to loggerheads, and CBS have blocked (for the time being at least) a version of 'Walk On By' that Mulligan recorded with Dee from Wham (although her signing to the label might prompt a future issue of same). Mulligan also did some session keyboard work for Visage, Darby's been working with Max Middleton (as well as doing an early session for Paparazzi, a source of much ironic amusement within the band), Dik's been drumming for Pyramid and Martin's working on songs for Patti Belle. "There was even talk of us doing a single with Steve Harley for a follow up to 'Ballerina' under the name of Steve Harley and Fashion, but CBS didn't think it would be a good idea since Fashion itself has had such a low profile over the past year." Certainly that profile is much more in the public eye now, and this album must surely establish Fashion as the strong force they have always promised to be. Fashion are back, and more cohesive than ever. Dik; "We're a team. We've been through a lot of problems since Troy left us, experienced more problems than ever, and we've stayed together. It's more unified than ever. We're all together now." So get Fashionable.