Photo by Steve Gullick

Last week, Depeche Mode singer Dave Gahan announced the release of Angels & Ghosts, his second collaborative album with producer Rich Machin, aka Soulsavers. Angels & Ghosts is out on October 23, and will be accompanied by a tour. Listen to first single "All of This and Nothing", and check out the tour dates, below.

Pitchfork hopped on the phone with Gahan to discuss the record, his relationship with Martin Gore, and the future of Depeche Mode.

Pitchfork: Where was your starting point with Angels & Ghosts, following the first record you did with Soulsavers [2012's The Light the Dead See]?

Dave Gahan: You're always happy when you’re making music and you hit something where you know you’ve got a good chemistry with somebody. It was a record that was made not under pressure. For example, when I’m making a record with [Depeche Mode], there are expectations that you put upon yourself before you even get started. But this was really free of that completely, and after we finished that first record, we continued writing.

I still was playing around with a few ideas, but had to put some of it on hold because all my energy and focus had to go into the Depeche tour, which went on for a while. Once that finished, last April, I took a little bit of time off but then very quickly started writing again. I was skeptical at first because I wasn’t sure I had any good ideas at all. You feel like that sometimes after a tour; it’s a depleted feeling like you just don’t have anything good to do anymore. You put out all that energy and the adrenaline’s flying and suddenly you’re back home with the wife and kids and you have to go get the groceries, a lot of changes. That took a bit of time to adjust to, but I got into writing again and I just really enjoy that process with Rich [Machin of Soulsavers]. We seem to hit it off; there’s not a lot of discussion, really, which goes on in between the writing.

Pitchfork: Do you find yourself needing to stretch different musical muscles at this point in your career?

DG: It’s interesting with Depeche, and it always is. I’ve really come to that conclusion now that after Alan [Wilder] left the band, which is now 20 years ago, it became very apparent that the strength of Depeche Mode is Martin and myself—the two of us together. We could basically stretch anything we wanted around that, use whatever producers, engineers, programmers, other musicians.