Dave, does Tea and Biscuits reflect a new found maturity in the Depeche Mode camp?
Dave Gahan: [laughter] That’s nicely put! Yeah, I like that. I’ll go along with that. It was probably Daniel [Miller] who came up with that. There was some tea and biscuits involved in the making of this album; that was about as tough as it got during the making of this album as regards . . . refreshment! In the context of our output it’s probably one of the most disciplined records we’ve put out. Martin and I just turned up every day to work, both of us very focussed. It’s not something that we’ve sat round and talked about but he’s written some fantastic songs and I’ve got a few on there myself. When we first got together at his place in Santa Barbara it was a no brainer that we were going to work with Ben [Hillier]. We had a great time recording Playing The Angel with him. He’d expressed an interest in doing the record with us, and he was working with a different engineer and different programmer, which was appealing to us because it’s good to have new blood when you’re recording. A
