Category Archives: Clash features

Spirits In The Forest: Depeche Mode’s Complex Fan Culture (Clash feature, 2019)

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Anton Corbijn‘s new film about Depeche Mode fans, Spirits In The Forest, is released in cinemas for one night only on Thursday November 21.

Ahead of its release I wrote a feature for Clash anticipating Corbijn’s film through two previous films – D.A. Pennebaker‘s seminal road movie 101 and the never-officially-released Our Hobby Is Depeche Mode, directed by Nick Abrahams and Jeremy Deller – as well as my own personal experiences of being a fan of this enduring Mute group.

Read the Clash feature here. Read my review of Our Hobby Is Depeche Mode here.

(c) 2019 Documentary Evidence for Clash

Alessandro Cortini (Clash feature, 2019)

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“I was moving around Berlin a lot when I was listening to works in progress for this album. I realised that I was maxing out on the volume, and after briefly thinking about the damage that I might be causing to my ears, I also realised that I’ve never really found myself making stuff that loud before. I remember doing that as a kid – I’d push the cheap, crappy headphones against my ears to get more bass while I was listening to the version of Duran Duran’s ‘Save A Prayer’ from ‘Arena’ which I used to play over and over.”

– Alessandro Cortini (Clash interview with Mat Smith, September 2019)

VOLUME MASSIMO, the new album from Alessandro Cortini and his first for Mute, is released tomorrow.

Ahead of its release, I spoke to Alessandro for Clash about his love of vintage synths, pressing headphones against your ears to get more bass and the enduring influence of guitarist Steve Vai.

Read the interview at the Clash website here.

(c) 2019 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence for Clash

Suicide (Clash feature, 2019)

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Suicide on the Bowery.

It was my absolute honour and privilege to talk to Martin Rev for Clash about the making of the first Suicide album. Released in 1977, Suicide was a shock to the system for anyone expecting New York’s punk music to conform to any particular mould.

The roots of Suicide go right back to a pre-punk Manhattan of the late Sixties and early Seventies, years of hard slog of playing gigs in art galleries before the likes of Max’s Kansas City and CBGB had embraced the burgeoning punk scene that Suicide were at the centre of. It is a story of friendship, pivotal decisions over how a band should be presented, Elodie Lauten’s Farfisa and a rhythm machine made by a manufacturer more used to very different industries; of chance events, label rejection, the occasionally violent reaction of fans, and an album whose status has only become more legendary in the forty years since it was originally released.

Suicide was reissued by BMG / Mute earlier in July as a special edition red vinyl LP, forming part of their Art Of The Album series.

My interview with Martin Rev, with additional contributions from the album’s producer Craig Leon, can be found here.

(c) 2019 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence for Clash

Maps (Clash feature, 2019)

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Six years on from James Chapman‘s last solo LP and his 2016 onDeadWaves project with Mute labelmate Polly Scattergood, Maps returns with the brilliant Colours. Reflect. Time. Loss. on May 10th 2019.

The album takes the signature Maps sound down bold new pathways, finding him collaborating with Erasure collaborators Echo Collective, live drummers and additional vocalists.

Ahead of its release, it was an honour and pleasure to speak to James for Clash about strings, synths and… SodaStream. You can read the interview here.

(c) 2019 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence for Clash

Daniel Blumberg (Clash interview, 2018)

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I have concluded that Daniel Blumberg is probably one of the most important signings to join the Mute roster in its entire forty years of releasing records. His debut solo album, Minus, written after immersing himself in London’s improvised music scene, towers above just about everything else around it, capturing a visionary songwriter and musician tearing up his own rule book for the sake of furthering his art.

To coincide with the release of ‘Family’, an unreleased song from Minus sessions, Clash have today published an interview that I did with Daniel Blumberg in July, wherein he explains the genesis of the album and the impulses that drive him.

In my humble opinion, it tells a story that needed to be told, and provides an insight into the mind of a prodigious talent; I am enormously proud of this feature.

Read the interview here.

Watch the video for ‘Family’ here.

(c) 2018 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence for Clash

Start To Move: A Short History Of 1970s Wire (Clash feature, 2018)

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On the occasion of last week’s release of deluxe hardback reissues of Wire’s three 1970s albums, I was asked by Clash to contribute a short piece reflecting on the (perhaps overlooked) importance of those albums. Sections of the piece appeared originally on the first version of the Documentary Evidence website about ten years ago and haven’t ever gone back online; the original piece formed part of a longer bio covering the three chapters in the Wire story.

The Clash feature can be found here.

(c) 2018 Mat Smith for Clash

Jono Podmore – Jaki Liebezeit: Life, Theory And Practice Of A Master Drummer (book, 2017)

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Jaki Liebezeit, photo courtesy of Jono Podmore

Metamono‘s Jono Podmore (aka Kumo) has arguably done more than anyone else in recent years to keep the legacy of Can alive, whether in groups like Cyclopean with Can members Jaki Liebezeit and Irmin Schmidt, or remastering the Can back catalogue and sundry unreleased cuts with Holger Czukay and long-standing Can supporter Daniel Miller.

To those initiatives can be added a new book that Podmore has assembled with US music journalist John Payne, Jaki Liebezeit: Life, Theory & Practice Of A Master Drummer, which seeks to document the unique approach practiced by Can’s late drummer, who passed away in January of this year. The book is currently subject to a crowdfunding campaign via Unbound which can be found here.

I wrote a news piece for Clash which explains more about the book and which can be found here.

In the process of putting my news piece together I asked Podmore for his recollections of working with Liebezeit, and that insight can be found in the Clash piece. “While we were having dinner one night, I was putting on some music,” Podmore also recalled. “At one point I put on some Charles Mingus. Without looking up, Jaki said, with a mixture of confusion and disgust, ‘Jazz? Been there. Done that.’ With that in mind I asked him if there were any other drummers that interested him. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘808 and 909.'”

(c) 2017 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence for Clash

People Are People – The Politics Of Depeche Mode (Clash feature, 2017)

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“If ‘Where’s The RevolutIon?’ is any sort of bellwether of what Spirit will sound like, it suggests that Depeche Mode are ready to stop dealing in vagueness, the cryptic and the shrouded, and instead feel inclined to go for a more direct approach to the message they’re trying to get across.”

– Clash, 2017

Ahead of the release of the new Depeche Mode album Spirit, I wrote a feature for Clash that explores the political messages within first single ‘Where’s The Revolution?’.

As a rule, I try to steer clear of politics if I can help it, but in the last twelve months that’s been pretty hard to do. And rightly so; to say we live in interesting times is a huge understatenent, and if there’s ever been a time to take notice of politics, amid the chaos and uncertainty in the wake of the votes against the status quo represented by Brexit and Donald Trump, now is most definitely that time.

Even so, this was a piece that I felt ill-equipped to write, until I got started. The piece was written in the second week of a fortnight spent working in the US, initially on the East Coast, then in the Mid-West, then from the East Coast ahead of returning to the UK, and maybe a sense of proximity to what’s going on over there allowed the piece to come together slightly easier. That and taking the opportunity to trawl back through the entire Depeche Mode catalogue in a bid to see whether the political dimension the band were showcasing with new single ‘Where’s The Revolution?’ was really that new after all.

My feature for Clash can be found here.

(c) 2017 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence for Clash