On June 1st 1995, keyboardist/drummer Alan Wilder decided to leave Depeche Mode, stating unsatisfactory internal working conditions as the reason why he left the band. He was followed up by Christian Eigner who has been delivering the drums during live shows ever since.Christian Eigner was born in Vienna, Austria in 1971 and grew up in Lower Austria. He was four years old when he first sat down behind a drum kit and owned one a year later.

"Actually, that’s why even today I tend to sit so low – it dates back to the time when the drum kit was simply a bit too big for me."

Christian Eigner teaches himself how to play the drums and only takes up lessons at age 12. Piano lessons follow and soon he joins his first band. Eigner and his mostly older band mates are influenced by Billy Cobham, Miles Davis, Police, Peter Gabriel and Pink Floyd. From age 17 on, Christian Eigner worked as a session musician. Just how much in demand he has been ever since can be gathered by the fact that he has played on about 300 albums.

"For me, writing songs has always served as a counterbalance to drumming. It helps to re-establish a sense of equilibrium, to redevelop a sense of the sum that the individual parts add up to, to grasp the song as a song in its entirety. I’ve been writing songs since I was 13 years old – I simply never thought about releasing them“.

Until recently, that is. When Eigner – who is also a passionate arranger for orchestra – was commissioned by Universal Music Austria to do the score of a major Austrian film, some of the great songs were rediscovered that Eigner had all but forgotten since he had stashed them away in his drawers. Singing diva Barca Baxant, the extravagant voice of Silicone Pumpgun, was brought in and very quickly a collection of new songs started to take shape.

“I never had the burning desire to release an album, but in these sessions everything really fell into place – it simply worked better than I had dared hope.”

With the exception of two older tracks, all songs on „Recovery“ are brand new and were created in Los Angeles and in Eigner’s Viennese retreat. The two instrumentals come from an experimental live set that Eigner had tried out live but a single time, a configuration of laptop and live drums.

“The drum takes on the rest of ’Recovery’ were also recorded live, with no overdubs at all.“