LFO
Oct 1, 2003 12:00 PM, By Martin Turenne
Between Björk and Dave Gahan of Depeche Mode, Mark Bell has worked with two of the most distinctive vocalists in pop music. But when it comes to composing his own music as LFO, the British producer can't figure out what to do with the midrange. Without a singer to accompany him, Bell often leaves an empty lane down the center of his tracks.
“After doing [Björk's] Homogenic, it was really hard going back to my own thing,” the soft-spoken producer explains. “I kept leaving that big space open for someone else to fit in. It was really frustrating; I couldn't do anything in that part of the register for ages.”
Nevertheless, as his new LP, Sheath (Warp, 2003), attests, Bell has finally figured out how to exploit that open space: He lets his synths do the singing. That is particularly true of “Mokeylips,” which features a keyboard line that sounds like a vocoded vocal. On “Mummy, I've Had an Accident …,” the Brit's modulated synth stabs are given a similarly human feel, recalling bloodcurdling cries from a Hitchcock film.
Given his impressive track record, Bell's ability to turn his synths into singing stars should come as no surprise. His technical proficiency first came to light on LFO's Frequencies (Tommy Boy, 1991), his debut collaboration with Gez Varley. Fueled by martial bass tones and a panoply of mechanical melodies, that release stands as one of techno's few canonical LPs. After the 1996 release of Advance (Warp), the producers parted ways, leaving Bell to carry the LFO flag.
Since putting his stamp on Depeche Mode's Exciter (Mute/Reprise) in 2001, Bell has concentrated on his own productions as LFO (not to be confused with the U.S. boy band of the same name). Sheath is a collection of tracks compiled by Shaun Kendrick, a friend of Bell's who borrowed the producer's masters and made himself a mix tape last year. Bell was so impressed with his friend's compilation that he decided to release it as-is.
“If I was sitting down to write an album, it would just scare me because it's too much to think about,” he says. “If I've just worked on a track, when I listen to it a week later, I never like it. I always think it's not finished and it needs more work. But for some reason, all of the tracks on Shaun's tape sounded really complete, so I'm happy to put them out.”
Some of the tunes on Sheath are eight years old, but like Frequencies, the album retains a stunningly contemporary feel. Bell describes himself as an old-school engineer, running his sounds through the mixing board several times to give them a tactile quality. The producer's analog approach pays off handsomely with the blunted beats of “Mokeylips.”
“I made the original rhythm for that track about eight years ago and recorded it onto a cassette,” he explains. “I'd played it hundreds of times in my car, so the muted result was from analog wear and tear. I sampled that original sequence like how you would sample an old 78 record — it's got this specific quality of how they recorded it. It would be impossible to get that unique character without that analog deterioration. Having that uniqueness is important to me — no matter how it's achieved.”
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