Coum

Richard Fearless, aka Death In Vegas, emerged in the UK in the late 90's with some of that era’s most unusual records, fusing electro, dub, rock, psychedelia, soul and solid-gone experimentation to create a sound that was spacious and other-worldly, while also segueing with the pop mainstream. His new album, ‘Trans Love Energies’, marks a return to his roots in minimal techno, deploying the rudimentary gear behind all the classics of the original Detroit/Chicago era to try and spirit up fresh atmospheres.

In Autumn 2009, Fearless was buzzing about being reunited with some of his vintage analogue electronic gear from his old Contino Rooms studio. After five years living in different cities, he and his old ’Vegas engineer, Tim Holmes, had gone their separate ways. Hiring a new room at Andrew Weatherall’s Rotters Golf Club studio in Shoreditch, Richard found himself newly emboldened to tinker around solo in his electro-sonic playground.

It's fun to note Richard's palette of gadgets-- a 303, an 808, a 909, a Korg MS-20 synth, a Roland SH-09 – the stuff that inspirational old Trax and Metroplex tunes were made on. In New York, he’d been grooving the whole Cold Wave revival of 1980s synth music, snapping up records on the Minimal Wave label by obscure old groups like Linear Movement, as well as tracking back to old favourites like Harmonia’s ‘Notre Dame’, or David Bowie’s ‘Low’ album. Also, by the by: Detroit’s Perspects/Le Car, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Syd Barrett, Jackno, Exuma, The Black Angels and Howlin’ Wolf.

When he played the first fruits of his labors to friends and associates, they’d all say, This doesn’t sound like Black Acid, this sounds like Death In Vegas – an alias, which Fearless had subconsciously considered laid to rest. Assuming that identity again, just him on his own, was finally something he was prepared to take on at this point in his life. It would also entail finally going properly public, on record, as a singer.

“It wasn’t a conscious thing for me to sing with Death In Vegas,” Richard says, “but one good reason for me to do it was, there weren’t going to be loads of guests singing on this record. You know what? I toured four albums without vocalists. I always had to treat the original vocal tracks [in pre-production], and really make them sound like samples, because, say, with ‘Scorpio Rising’, we obviously wouldn’t be having Liam on tour with us. If I did another whole album with just guests on it, I wasn’t gonna want to tour it. It’s just boring. So, it was a bit like, Right, I’m back on the vocal thing.”

So, that’s Richard you hear at the beginning of ‘Trans Love Energies’, reciting an elegy for a succession of songwriting heroes, against ‘Silver Time Machine’’s VU-meets-TG desolation, and yowling over ‘Black Hole’’s pulsating baroque-‘n’-roll grandeur. Originally, The Kills’s Jamie Hince had been lined up to sing and play guitar on ‘Black Hole’, but when scheduling proved difficult, Richard tried it out himself. “I’m really glad I did,” he says, “it feels like it’s more mine this way”.

Richard hadn’t entirely closed himself off from the idea of working with other singers. He had a certain epiphany on hearing ‘Beat On The Pulse’, the debut single from Austra, on Toronto’s Paper Bag label, particularly the operatic tones of Katie Stelmanis. He dropped them an email, and quickly received a reply gushing about her love of Death In Vegas. At the end of Austra’s European tour, Katie stayed on in London for a couple of days, which actually ended up nearer three weeks, and voiced her parts ‘Your Loft My Acid’, and ‘Witch Dance’, which have more of an ethereal, Cocteau Twins-y feel than the full-tilt operatic belting for which Stelmanis is becoming renowned.

Having just started out on the path to discovering his own voice, Fearless says he’s into using it with a firm consciousness of its place in the whole production. He cites Matthew Dear’s ‘Slowdance’ as his model – haunting electronic pop music, which points resolutely forward into the remainder of the 21st century. ‘Trans Love Energies’ is palpably, urgently, on the same page.

“The best dub and the best techno – it’s all about minimal components, conjuring up the most feeling from the least tools. If you can trigger emotion with the most minimal amount of sound, that’s job done as far as I’m concerned.”

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