What’s with the monkeys? Everything on this EP is tied to vervets or capuchins or some other primate. When I sent those demos to the mixer, and he set his levels to where they normally sit, he said his hair was blown back. I think that what I liked about the demos for “Howler” and “Mandrill” is that there was a power inherent into those tracks, perhaps starting with the bass line. “The Third Chimpanzee” and your last solo album, “MG,” use industrial sounds even more than Depeche Mode’s earlier work. But not moving for nearly a year now, not travelling to another country, state or anywhere more than 10 minutes from my house… I don’t want to complain, but, there are days where it does get to you. We have a handful of friends – a little pod – we see occasionally.
A lot of people across the globe are hurting, struggling a lot more than I am. I’m fortunate in that I’m able to isolate with my family and be able to work. Without turning this into a psychoanalyst’s session, how was your mood was affected by the quarantine? From there, you can manipulate it time-wise some really interesting sounds are possible through this. You put any sound you want into it, and it replicates it in a re-synthesized way. The main thing that I used is a Eurorack module system called the Panharmonium, which is a re-synthesizer. It’s certainly not your usual angelic vocal tone - what did you do to it? That somehow connected it to “Howler,” and gave the project a concept. “Mandrill” was born out of that, and once its basis was formed, I decided to manipulate and re-synthesize its vocals. I was going into the studio and wasn’t inspired to write lyrics – I usually find that I can do something musically a lot easier than I can lyrically – so the instrumentals came out.
Then the pandemic hit, and I was at home and thought I should do something. I already had the demo to “Howler” finished back in 2019, but it was just a one-off sitting around that I didn’t know what to do with. What was your mood when you started it, and how did your approach change the further you got into the pandemic and its lockdown? The sound of “The Third Chimpanzee” is quite harsh and isolationist, but in a cinematic sense. Variety caught up with Gore at home in Southern California on the eve of the EP’s release.
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