The electronic pop group Erasure consists of Andy Bell and Vince Clarke.
This duo is hitting the road on their first tour in five years in support of their new album, Tomorrow's World. The new single "When I Start To ( Break It All Down ) " was just released. We caught up with Andy while he was down in South America recently.
Nightspots Magazine: Hi, Andy. I am calling from Chicago. You are in Brazil?
AB: Yeah, we are in Sao Paolo. It has been cloudy all day, just starting to break through now.
NM: I wanted to ask how your solo album Non-Stop influenced
the new Erasure album Tomorrow's World.
AB: I think it did but I don't know whether Frankmusik heard it or not. I know Vince heard it. I think all of these things work subconsciously. I think just by the very fact of doing it you set the bar up a bit. You put more energy into it. That definitely has happened on some subliminal level. Whether people are aware of it, I don't know. I think definitely with the synth programming with Vince's and Frank's work it has given it an energetic input.
NM: Right now you are currently on a Total Pop! Tour.
AB: Yes, we have finished the first half so the next bit will be Tomorrow's World.
NM: Do you get a break?
AB: We don't really get a break but we get to turn it around in Tampa. We have all our new production stuff there coming in. We have to reinvent a whole new show in six days.
NM: Wow. Is there a theme, like space?
AB: We are doing six tracks from the new album so they are quite difficult, performing wise. Then there will be songs from this part of the tour so still singles and stuff people know. There is a whole big set that looks very Tomorrow's World-ish. It is quite Dune-ish with our stained glass window motif. Hopefully it will be really nice.
NM: Light visuals, I am sure…
AB: Yeah, a whole lot!
NM: The first song on the album, "Be With You," really has you stretching vocally.
AB: Oh, right. That is really high, that one. That is one of the most difficult songs to sing on the album. I think that will be the next single as well. It was very high, when you think about it. I was doing vocals in Frank's LA studio. He uses loads of EQ and compression before you even go into his Mac so you have to sing on the top of your voice. It was quite hard.
NM: Do you have a video coming out?
AB: We haven't seen it so we don't know what it is going to look like. They just took some live footage of us, on the road, backstage and stuff like that.
NM: Is there an opener for the tour?
AB: Frankmusic will be doing it in the United States.
NM: You have quite a variety of fans. I remember on the Cowboy Tour
it was gay, '80s and a lot of Asians.
AB: I think that is all the techno people or geeky people, I am not sure. We are grateful to all of our fans.
Give "A Little Respect" for the two playing two nights Sept 16 and 17 at the Congress Theatre, 2135 N. Milwaukee Avenue. For information and tickets visit www.erasureinfo.com .
Andy will do a live DJ set after the Sept 16 show at Spin, 800 West Belmont Ave.
