Recoil - Unsound Methods (2LP) - Green/Clear Transparent Vinyl

Alan Wilder’s fourth Recoil album, Unsound Methods, hits like a midnight walk through an unfamiliar city, all sodium glow and whispered menace. Released in 1997 on Mute, it was his first major statement after leaving Depeche Mode in 1995, and you can hear the thrill of total control in every slow coil of rhythm and shadowy texture. Wilder had been the meticulous architect inside Depeche Mode for years, but here he lets the songs breathe and brood, building pieces around voices that flicker in and out like characters in a film.

The collaborators are perfectly cast. Douglas McCarthy, the serrated growl behind Nitzer Ebb, turns “Control Freak” into a ritual, his clipped phrasing riding a bed of lurching bass and shivering percussion. Spoken word artist Maggie Estep shows up on “Luscious Apparatus” with a noir monologue that curls around the beat like cigarette smoke, flirtatious and unnerving at once. Then there’s Siobhan Lynch on “Drifting,” an icy, late-night vocal that feels suspended over echoing drums and grainy keys. Each performance nudges Wilder in a slightly different direction, but he keeps the palette consistent, all cool tones, detuned synths, and small, tactile details that reward close listening.

Wilder’s production has that Mute Records DNA, the mix of precision and grit that made so many late 90s electronic records feel cinematic. Longtime Mute confidant Paul Kendall worked closely with him on the sound, and you can tell, the space around the drums is as carefully sculpted as the drums themselves. Little creaks, reversed breaths, and spidery guitar filaments creep through the arrangements, not as gimmicks but as dramaturgy. The tempos stay mostly slow, somewhere between trip hop and dark ambient, yet nothing ever sinks. The tension keeps you upright.

Unsound Methods plays like a suite rather than a stack of singles, though “Drifting” did fly on its own with remixes and radio play in pockets that still loved shadowy electronics. The sequencing matters. After McCarthy’s bark and Estep’s cool drawl, Wilder lets the instrumentals open up, with pieces that feel like interzones between the narrative tracks. Even when a song leans on a repeating figure, he refuses autopilot. He will bleed a sound into distortion, or pull the kick out for two bars so a vocal phrase lands a bit too close for comfort. That restraint is its own hook.

What makes this record stand out in the Recoil catalog is the sense of patience. Bloodline flirted with guest-led industrial pop, Liquid would sharpen the storytelling into something almost novelistic, but Unsound Methods is all atmosphere and implication. It sits beside mid-period Massive Attack and late 90s Coil in spirit, though Wilder’s sense of melody is cleaner, his drums more engineered, his low end shaped like architecture. Put it on at night and your room gets new corners.

This is also one of those albums that blooms on wax. If you’ve been eyeing Unsound Methods vinyl, do it. The low-frequency design and the soft reverb tails have more room to breathe on a good pressing, and it becomes a sitting-and-staring record rather than background mood. Among Recoil albums on vinyl, this is the one I tend to recommend first, especially to folks who come in looking for Depeche Mode-adjacent experiments but want something quieter and stranger. You can buy Recoil records online easily enough, but if you spot Recoil vinyl in the wild, grab it. If you’re crate digging in a Melbourne record store, even better, since quiet pressings are less likely to survive careless handling and the good copies vanish fast. For those searching from afar, ping your favorite shop that ships vinyl records Australia wide and get on a hold list.

Critical ears at the time got it. Reviewers talked about its cinematic sprawl and the quality of the vocal features, which still hold up. The album has aged into its mood, maybe because Wilder never chased a scene. He followed arrangement, mic placement, and instinct, the kind of craft that sidesteps trends. If you already love the forensic detail he brought to Depeche Mode’s studio era, this is where that sensibility turns inward and finds new shadows to color.

Spin it front to back. Let the voices pass through like ghosts, then return to “Luscious Apparatus” and “Drifting” to hear how carefully they’re built. Unsound Methods doesn’t shout for attention, it earns it, and on the right system, preferably through a clean copy of Unsound Methods vinyl, it will quietly rearrange your night.