INTERVIEW: John Fryer, acclaimed UK record producer

The producer behind This Mortal Coil, Depeche Mode, Nine Inch Nails and more

John Fryer is best known for his work as a producer, having worked on such breakthrough albums as Depeche Mode’s debut, Speak & Spell (1980), and Pretty Hate Machine (1989), the seminal album from the industrial rock band, Nine Inch Nails. He is also one of the two essential members of the goth/dream-pop collective, This Mortal Coil, along with 4AD label co-founder, Ivo Watt-Russell.

Fryer got his start in 1980, as a producer at Blackwing Studios — an old church in South-East London that had been converted into a recording studio by engineer Eric Radcliffe and Daniel Miller, founder of Mute Records.

“Because all the indie labels were friends, back in the day. Most of them were friends. They were all music lovers, that’s why they had the labels,” Fryer said. “[Miller] used Blackwing Studio and then he said to Ivo that he could start using the studio. So it was all thanks to Danny Miller, actually.”

According to Fryer, This Mortal Coil originally formed after Watt-Russell asked 4AD recording artists Modern English to re-record a 12-inch composite of the two songs “16 Days” and “Gathering Dust.”

“That’s why This Mortal Coil started,” Fryer told Salute Magazine in a recent one-on-one…