After taking more than two decades to get around to his debut solo album, Paper Monsters, in 2003, Depeche Mode lead singer Dave Gahan spent only eight weeks putting together his second disc, Hourglass, in 2007. “I think I definitely got some more confidence in doing the stuff with Depeche,” Gahan says. “It was kind of like I passed my exam or something.” Gahan wrote Hourglass with Depeche Mode’s touring drummer and programmer at Gahan’s small New York City studio. The idea was to just jam and see what transpired. “There was very little of that, ‘Okay, we’ve got to find a studio, we’ve got to find a producer.’ We cut out the middle man.”