Dubstar: REDIRECTED MALE - Sarah Vocal

Redirected Male was one of the last songs written during the long and drawn out writing phase for Make It Better. I’d been living in Brighton (Hove actually) for nearly two years at this point, and although I’d settled in I still felt like I was living in self imposed exile from Newcastle Upon Tyne. Brighton was my home, yet I was constantly pulled back to my previous life in the North by remaining in regular contact with everyone I knew up there. It was difficult to move on, to say the least.

And that difficulty was the inspiration for Redirected Male. The feeling of having left everyone you know behind and existing in the halfway space between new and old lives.

That feeling of being stuck in sadness was not a new thing for me. I remember as a teenager dealing with the break up of a school romance and telling a good friend that it would be easier for me if ‘she’ had died rather than kept living without me. Our attempts to stay friends meant my heartbreak was drawn out over months, eventually a whole year. Eventually I arrived at the point where we had to break up a second time, this time ending the friendship too. Teenage romances are so intense aren’t they?

And so…Redirected Male is that moment when you know that you actually can’t be in touch with your ex, you can’t do this anymore.

So it’s Dubstar and heartbreak again, this time from the perspective of someone who’s moved out of their marital home. You’ve lost your relationship, your home, maybe your children too. How long until you lose your mind?

This song was written for Sarah as usual, you can hear her singing the entire song in this demo. But the wider public first heard Gary Numan duet with Sarah on the Self Same Thing EP, although they were never in the same room. Chris and I journeyed alone to Gary’s house in Essex in the freezing cold January of 2000 to make the vocal recordings. Gary is a very genial man as has been recorded in many other places, and when you’re with him there’s a strong sense of simply hanging out with a terrific chap from West London. But when he sings Gary Numan is in the room.

That was quite a moment, I made a note to send the ten year old Steve Hillier a message from the future. Steve Malins (Gary’s manager at the time) told me he’d never heard Gary sound like that before. I couldn’t have been prouder.

Of all the B-sides of this era, for me this one is the most successful. Things that sounded odd back in 2000 now sound awesome, like the incredible glassy sound of the Roland VG-8 on the guitar creating that faux 12 string guitar sound. It’s clearly artificial, it’s gorgeous.

Also, the half-time drum programming precedes the arrival of Dubstep by some years. I’m not saying the ‘steppers copied my drums on this song. That’s for others to say…

And by the way, the correct spelling of this song is Redirected Male, not Mail. It was a reference to the subject of the song being an estranged man, a rather obvious play on words but at this late stage in the Dubstar story I think I got away with it.

Want more? You can find the story behind every Dubstar song ever recorded including dozens of unreleased songs right here at Dubstar.com

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