Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory may have spent the last couple of years out of the spotlight, but the polymorphing electronic duo has stayed busy following the release of their its album, 2013’s Tales of Us. Following a two-year tour, the vocalist-producer Goldfrapp and multi-instrumentalist Gregory wrote music for a London production of classic Greek play “Medea.” They rested only six months in all before getting back to the studio to record Silver Eye, which will be released March 31 on Mute.

“We never sit around doing nothing,” said Goldfrapp on a call from London one recent afternoon. “It took us a while to get into the being of things. We had ideas about what we wanted to do, but we weren’t too sure how to start doing them. We didn’t want to repeat ourselves.”

Avoiding repetition is not a new mission for the duo, which has shifted directions from album to album. Goldfrapp and Gregory, who joined the call a few minutes later, explained how they wanted to avoid all acoustic and organic instruments for Silver Eye. So far, Goldfrapp has released lead single “Anymore,” a metallic electronic track that sets the tone going forward. At the same time, the two leaned back to the glam rock of 2003’s Black Cherry and dance from 2006’s Supernature (which featured their biggest hit, “Ooh La La”).

Silver Eye is more atmospheric than Tales of Us, but there are also songs for dancing and moving, and the album, generally, takes a celebratory and uplifting outlook. The industrial grind of “Systemagic” gives way to a head-bopping rhythm. “Tigerman,” the third track, is the best example of the spacey, elemental themes (fire, water, the moon, etc.) to which Alison Goldfrapp said Silver Eye speaks. But it’s no concept album. The songs have unique narratives, she said.

RIFF: I get you wanted to do something different with this album. What kind of mindset did you have to be in to approach that?

Alison Goldfrapp: I don’t believe that you do have to be in a ‘mindset.’ I think you just have to get on and do stuff. I don’t think you can wait around and wait for inspiration. You have to get in and get your hands dirty, so to speak. It’s only through that process of working and trying things out that you discover what it is you want to do, or what it is you’re trying to do, anyway. I’m always collecting ideas; melodic ideas, lyrical ideas or visuals. Whatever. I’m always collecting things. But it’s only when Will and I are in the studio together and actually playing and mucking around that we start to understand what we want to try and do. We quickly realized we wanted to do something like Supernature and Black Cherry, but at the same time, we really didn’t want to repeat ourselves. So it was taking a little bit of time to discover how to go about doing that.

By creating something in a similar vein to those other albums, did you want to capture that energy and intrinsic danceability, or was it something else?

Goldfrapp: I suppose there’s no one thing. It’s quite hard to say what that is. I guess [something] very electronic. When we started writing this album, for instance, we were using the synths, but we were still playing with acoustic drums. And we quickly realized that actually we weren’t feeling that sound. We got more into things being purely electronic; digital and analog—trying out different rhythms. I kind of wanted to more space into the sounds, whereas Supernature was much more layered. It was quite busy, in a way. I liked the hardness of that. There’s a combination of things—production, songwriting, and just that atmosphere as well, I guess.

Besides trying out the acoustic drums, did you hit many other dead ends while writing and recording before finally making it out of the maze?

[A beep signals Gregory has arrived on the call].

Goldfrapp: There you go. You can ask Will that question.

Will Gregory: Ooh, I don’t know. We did, at the beginning, think we might be using guitar a lot more than we ended up using, didn’t we.

Goldfrapp: We quite quickly realized that it would go more and more electronic. The acoustic instruments got thrown out the window, didn’t they.

Gregory: Even when we did use guitar, it was very processed, wasn’t it. More of a soundscape than a twangy guitar line.

I’m not sure if you’ve had a chance to play live yet. Have you thought how the record will translate to the stage?

Goldfrapp: We’re sort of coming up to planning it all, actually. We’re going to be going into rehearsals in a month’s time, aren’t we, Will?

Gregory: Even less.

Goldfrapp: Oh my God. [both laugh].

Is that something you ever worry about, like, “Oh my God, I’ve created this textured, layered music? How am I going to play it for people?”

Goldfrapp: I’m actually really looking forward to playing it live. I think it’s going to be fun. But I guess it is always daunting when you haven’t played for a while. That first gig is like, “Oh my God!” It’s like getting back in the saddle.

Gregory: I don’t think you can think about it while you’re writing it. Otherwise, you wouldn’t do half the experimenting and messing about that you do. The stage is such a different place than the rehearsal room, with all your toys and the fantasy sound walls that you can conjure up. But then you have to think about it afterward. You sort of put that off.

How did you find your collaborators for Silver Eye?

Goldfrapp: [With] The Haxan Cloak (Bobby Krli), we were looking for a drum program, to begin with. On Supernature and Black Cherry, we worked very closely with a drum program. So it was very important for us to find someone that we could collaborate with on that. But then I heard something quite interesting. The record company looked at who it was, and it was The Haxan Cloak, who we’d never heard of.

Gregory: I’d heard of him, but I hadn’t thought of him.

Goldfrapp: He’s so much more than a drum program. I mean, he’s a producer and we really liked the fact that he’s involved in film music. He’s great with sounds, and his sound world wasn’t just a run-of-the-mill kind-of-thing. We felt he had a lot of diversity to him, which was very appealing.

Gregory: He had that dark thing. Once we got into a groove, it was something we wanted to flesh out. His sounds are very disturbing on the low end.

You went out searching for a program but found a human.

Goldfrapp: Yeah, no, he’s great. He’s forever a talented guy. [Brian Eno collaborator] Leo [Abrahams] actually is a friend of a friend. That’s how Leo came around. He’s really interesting because, he is a musician but is also a producer. He came in the studio and jammed a lot with us. It was quite inspiring, especially in the beginning of the album when we were still discovering a direction. We had a lot of fun exercising with him and he makes some really beautiful sounds with his guitar; quite unusual.

So you did end up using some guitar, then.

Goldfrapp: Yeah but there wasn’t very much for effect. Like Will said, you wouldn’t necessarily recognize them as guitars.

Did you write together like you usually do, or was the creation process a little different on Silver Eye?

Goldfrapp: I suppose the biggest difference was writing with other people.

Gregory: We did definitely infuse more heads and third ears this time, particularly going back to the more groove-based material. It was great to have some refreshing insights because we’ve done a couple of albums being quite stompy. It’s really refreshing to have that extra dimension coming to help with that, and maybe help us explore other avenues. We also had a couple of weeks in Dallas with [producer] John Congleton. I think the man who makes the album had a significant contribution too; [engineer] David Wrench. He’s such a vastly knowledgeable person. He’s a music lover. He understood a lot of the references that were being thrown up and was able to help us land maybe a bit further with them.

You recorded in London, Dallas and elsewhere. Did that ever interrupt your flow or break you out of rhythm, or was it all pretty seamless?

Goldfrapp: I think it was really helpful. In the countryside the studio has a lot of equipment and feels quite luxurious. Then in London it was much smaller, stripped-down studio. That was a bit strange to begin with, but actually, I think it was good as well. I think it’s good to get out of your comfort zone sometimes. If you go on holiday or you go somewhere new, you always have slightly different dreams. I think it’s good for creativity to be in something that feels a bit unfamiliar, even though it might feel a little bit uncomfortable, I actually think it can be really good creatively.

I want to talk about one of your new songs, “Become The One.” It’s about growing up transgender? That’s a hot-button issue in the States right now.

Goldfrapp: Well no, no, not really. It was inspired by seeing a documentary about a child. I just found this child very inspiring; they were kind of so articulate and confident about their feelings and their emotions. I was transfixed by this person, and what they said that at the end of this documentary was, ‘I’m not changing, I’m just becoming the person I know I am.’ I just thought that was very poignant and something that we can all relate to. The idea that we’re all trying to become someone we want to be. Having that confidence to go out and do something you really want to do or have the confidence to go out and get that job you want to get— whatever it is—because you want to be a better person. I could just relate to it. I think that song’s very celebratory of that. We took it on a bit of sci-fi feeling to it, changing the voice and the words, I’m not explaining it very well. It’s not about transgender children per se.

It’s about finding who you are and going to get that.

Goldfrapp: Yeah, having that confidence to change something, anything.

Follow editor Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter.