disco side and on a more kind of personal level, and we were unusual. I think there

AM: No, I don’ t listen to music. It’ s fascinating. I’ m at college all day now studying sculpture. I know no artists. I make music. I don’ t listen to music. I write poetry. I don’ t read books. I can only explain this to you in a sense. I come from a very working class background where I never had a record player or all of these things. Whenever I wanted to do something, I couldn’ t participate, so I had to create it myself.

In terms of the sounds, this would be a [ producer ] Guy Sigsworth thing. What’ s

was a freshness to that. The whole period was one of the last generations where you were allowed to see the freak in the act. All of the success and all of the failures that bands of that period made were of their own doing and from their own creativity. Now you look around and everyone is beautiful because everyone’ s got a stylist, a choreographer and all this kind of business, so I don’ t think you can connect in quite the same way. There’ s a greater cynicism than there used to be.

IE: So many of the sounds on the new album are also so interesting and intriguing. How did you come up with the sonic landscape? Where there any other artists you were listening to?

brilliant about the way Guy and I work is, for example, he’ ll give me a real basic track with very little information on it and I write the song to that, usually from a basis of improvisation. I usually don’ t listen to the track until I’ ve got it in“ record” and I start singing before I even know what the next chord is going to be. So consequently, my melodic information becomes subconscious. You get moods you wouldn’ t naturally expect because I don’ t know what’ s coming next. So I build the song up that way and then it goes back to Guy. Then he literally strips it bare again and paints around me after we’ ve had this whole discussion of what the lyric means and what I’ m feeling. So we work actually as a band, which is the great joy about Guy, and I

Alison Moyet, 1982

love working with him because he trusts me implicitly and vice versa. We don’ t edit one another.

IE: What do you do to take care of your voice? You sound exactly the same as we’ ve always known you on this album. AM: Well, I think I never pained it. Because I was socially inept in the‘ 80s, I would work and I would go home. It’ s quite strange to me because if I speak too

much, my voice is lost, so I think the very fact that I had all those years where I was just isolated and I wasn’ t talking between shows because I didn’ t have any friends on tour with me, I think that kind of saved me from myself. And now in my spare time, I do art, which is a silent pursuit. I’ ve never over used it. IE: Your first four solo albums were recently reissued as deluxe editions with extra songs. To what degree did you look back

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