Recoil

by MacKenzie Wilson
After officially splitting from Depeche Mode in 1995, longtime member Alan Wilder finally went ahead with his side project Recoil. Wilder started Recoil in 1985, but efforts were halfhearted due to his responsibilities with DM. But despite such conflicts of interest, Recoil issued a set of early demos entitled 1 + 2, which coincided with the release of DM's 1986 album Black Celebration. As the '80s were coming to a close, Wilder and his original bandmates were becoming international superstars with the chart-topping success of 1987's Music for the Masses and 1990's Violator. Subsequent Recoil EP releases such as 1988's Hydrology and 1991's Bloodline were naturally lost in the scope of events. In 1997 Wilder was freshly ready for Recoil, following up with the project's first album, Unsound Methods. This album, a cathartic set of techno-bombastic scores, brought in a wide range of artists such as spoken word sassy girl Maggie Estep, Songs of Faith and Devotion session vocalists Douglas McCarthy (Nitzer Ebb) and Hildia Cambell, and Recoil mainstay Siobhan Lynch. Unsound Methods was critically labeled as "difficult" and "dark," but it didn't distract Wilder. Certainly that was the reaction he was searching for. Three years later, his cunning musical mystery continued on Liquid. After a long hiatus, Wilder revived the Recoil name in 2007 with the album Subhuman