![]() However, the 15th-century Roman Catholic saint Joan Of Arc (who was burnt at the stake during Europe’s Hundred Years’ War) would inspire the OMD frontman to write not just one, but two Top 10 hits. With Organisation’s “Enola Gay” – named after the US fighter plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in August 1945 – Andy McCluskey had already proved he could craft rousing hit records from seemingly arcane subject matter. It gives the record this dark, orchestral beauty all its own.” Even the famous bagpipe sound on ‘Joan Of Arc (Maid Of Orleans)’ is actually a violin sound treated through the Mellotron. “There isn’t one song that isn’t laden with it. “The whole album was really the result of exploring what the Mellotron could do,” Humphreys enthuses. On Architecture & Morality, however, OMD’s newly-acquired Mellotron helped shape key tracks such as “Georgia,” the melancholic “She’s Leaving” and the glorious ambient drift of the epic, seven-minute “Sealand.” The Beatles famously employed one on “Strawberry Fields Forever,” while Brian Jones’ use of Mellotron enhanced classic Rolling Stones tracks such as “We Love You” and “2,000 Light Years From Home.” In effect using the same concept as modern samplers – except that it generated sounds using analog samples recorded on audio tape, rather than digital samples – the Mellotron was a singular keyboard which first made its mark on rock and pop in the mid-60s. “It greatly enhanced the palette of sounds we could choose from when we made the album.” “It has this dark, orchestral beauty all its own” “Andy loved the choral sounds on ‘Souvenir,’ so we bought a Mellotron, which effectively gave us choirs at our fingertips,” Humphreys reveals. This added a beguiling extra dimension to “Souvenir”’s sumptuous pop melodies and led to OMD acquiring an instrument which would shape Architecture & Morality’s overall sound. Humphreys built chords from these home-made choral samples by pushing faders up and down the desk in OMD’s studio, The Gramophone Suite. “We spent the whole day looping these notes and it meant we had all this choral music at our disposal.” “Dave asked if we could make loops of the choir singing single notes on our tape machine, and, if we could, he’d let us have a copy of all this choral singing,” Humphreys recalls.
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