"We've always had an ear for technology," says Watt from his West London studio. "There is some drum machine on one of our early albums, Eden. And Idlewild, our touchstone acoustic album, is entirely drum machine. Of late, technology has become the main tool that we use. We haven't always been taken with technology, but these days in the morning I prefer to power up the sampler than pick up the guitar."
Though Watt learned the techno ropes from such innovative technicians as Howie B., Todd Terry, and Spring Heel Jack's John Coxon, now he takes full control in the studio, with Thorn adding final thoughts on production and vocal parts.
"Tracey has no patience with the way I compose now," chortles Watt. "She's not into a clever hi-hat edit. She responds to something if it has soul and a bit of heart. She doesn't spend much time in the studio. I run off a cassette and she thinks of a lyric and melody ideas."
What was the impetus for abandoning their former style, which had gained them a considerable cult audience and decent record sales?
"We just got bored," replies Watt. "That music just seemed irrelevant, old-fashioned, and claustrophobic. After my illness [Churgg-Strauss syndrome, an auto-immune disorder which destroyed a sizable chunk of his small intestine and left him some 30 pounds lighter] in '92 we started to rebuild our career again, and we started on Amplified Heart. Half of that album was done in a very traditional, folk-rock approach. But there are also four tracks on the record we did with John Coxon from Spring Heel Jack. We wanted to have acoustic tracks driven by breakbeats. He started to chop up breaks and I watched the way he worked. 'Get Me' and 'Trouble Mind' and 'Missing' are all put together with a crossover of technology. On one hand, it's samplers and breakbeats, on the other hand it's acoustic guitars and traditional songs. That was perhaps the moment of change. Todd Terry delivered his remixes of 'Missing' and gradually I got more and more interested in those techniques."
For Watt, debilitated by Churgg-Strauss and unable to tour, the privacy of the recording studio provided both solace and escape, a place to recover and write music. But Thorn was the real firestarter. Inspired by working with Bristol trip-hop masters Massive Attack on their 1994 album Protection, Thorn found she no longer had time for moon-faced audiences who simply sat there and stared while she worked.
"Tracey was more and more inspired," recalls Watt. "She had found working in the traditional way to be very limiting. We did the Acoustic album, which was mostly cover versions, because we were sick of songwriting! Shortly after that, Tracey received the music from Massive Attack, and she was blown away, she was so inspired just to sing over something different. They sent six completely skeletal backing tracks, just these dead-slow breakbeats with atmospheric noises on them. Tracey was completely hooked and she wanted to explore what she could do singing over that music. That gelled with the instincts I had as well; I wanted to move away from what we had been doing and into something new."
Temperamental is as gorgeously dark as previous EBTG albums, but with a focus on the driving beat and diva-drenched atmospherics of house music. Watt has been holding down a semi-regular DJ slot in Notting Hill club Lazy Dog for a while, the experience providing him with access to the latest sounds in London's explosive house re-revolution. With artists like Basement Jaxx and Sasha & Digweed hogging the spotlight, it looks like it won't be long before Madonna and Cher take the Nu House plunge.
"I wouldn't diss Madonna," snaps Watt. "Her dance music has always been fairly groundbreaking. She made some classic crossover dance records. She was totally hip during that period. Obviously, like every artist, sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The road is long."
Speaking of that long road, do Watt and Thorn ever look back and wonder how they can repeat the global success of "Missing"?
"No," he retorts. "If you worry about past achievements, it will just bring you down. I enjoyed just being part of a pop phenomenon. 'Missing' had actually become bigger than us. It's not something that I ever need to repeat, because I never will. I can't. Do I go crazy until we go to No. 1 for just a little bit longer? I don't think of it like that. I'm just grateful that it's given us some leverage in the '90s."
And if Temperamental produces another hit on the scale of "Missing," will he change his tune, then?
"I don't know," he laughs. "Ask me again in three months."
