Rhodes: We were introduced by a mutual friend here in London, who actually had said to me, “I think you should meet, because you’re going to like Wendy. And I thought, “Well, she’d be great, if she’s up for it!” And I think she had a nice time, so that’s good. But it came to mind, because we needed to find somebody quite quickly. So the two of us got on very well, and Simon and I guested on a couple of Mark’s solo shows that Amanda was playing on, and we got to know each other. And of course, she’s an analog synth geek just like me. And we met through Mark Ronson-we met when we were working with Mark, and she was on Mark’s tour, and she was on Mark’s solo album. So now I know-I’ve got a stunt double for sure. Nick Rhodes: Yeah! I had to leave the Paper Gods tour for a few weeks to deal with some things in the U.K., and I didn’t want to stop the tour, so Amanda stepped in, and did a very good job, too. Paste: Oddly enough, I was just speaking to MNDR, or Amanda, and she was still amazed that she got to sit in on keyboards for you on a recent Duran Duran tour. The duo had much to say about Astronomia in the meantime … Given Rhodes’ deep affection for analog keyboards (his inventive work with early models like the Jupiter 8 just earned him a Lifetime Achievement Award from Roland), Lyra texturally feels like a more restrained Enya fronting a Sorcerer-era Tangerine Dream, with evocative titles summoned from Greek mythology: “Vega,” “Apollo’s Gift,” “The Charm of Orpheus,” and an appropriately ominous “Eurydice and the Underworld.” And while he’s already returned to punching the Duran Duran clock (a funky single, “ Invisible,” is already paving the way for a forthcoming Future Past album, with a cutting-edge video created solely by an artificial intelligence named Huxley), Rhodes will be collaborating with Bevan for some time to come, even after touring demands toss him back onto the stadium circuit again. And we suddenly realized, about five or six tracks in, that we had created our own unique sound.” Or I would come up with a little structure and some sounds and send it to Wendy, and then she’d send it back with these beautiful, ethereal atmospheres swooping over it. “It was tabula rasa, just nothing whatsoever-just a blank canvas, like ‘What do we do? Let’s just start making a noise.’ So Wendy would make a fabulous noise with her violins and vocals and layers and effects and then send it to me, and I would listen to it and just add layers of analog synths, percussion and sound effects. “I think the thing was, we didn’t really know what we were making when we started,” Rhodes elaborated in a recent phone call from his native London, with Bevan on the line, as well. Astronomia, his Dead Can Dance-classy new duo with British-born, Los Angeles-rooted singer/auteur Wendy Bevan, was a happy accident, a serendipitous surprise that, over the past year, has amassed 52 atmospheric tracks, which are being released seasonally, in four separate discs, starting with this spring’s Astronomia: The Fall of Saturn and continuing into the brand-new Astronomia II: The Rise of Lyra two more volumes are set for fall and winter releases. So he wasn’t intending to form another side project during his pandemic downtime, he swears. Throughout four decades with his New Romantic-era-spawned supergroup Duran Duran, keyboardist Nick Rhodes has busied himself with many diversions, like photography, a trailblazing skincare company called GENEU, and various short-lived splinter groups like Arcadia, The Devils and TV Mania.
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