June 18th 1988 – a date that features massively in the now three-decade-plus history of Depeche Mode. The band had decided to cap the hugely successful tour to support the release of Music For The Masses with a massive gig – their 101st –
Continue readingPasadena Rose Bowl is an important moment in the story behind Violator
It’s extremely rare to hear both Daniel Miller of Mute Records and Andy Fletcher discuss together the state of the music industry. In a long and fascinating interview which took place at the Audi-O-Rama music industry festival in Switzerland last year, Miller
Continue readingAndy Fletcher and Daniel Miller on the music industry, Depeche Mode and crisps
Fans will remember how in 1990 one part of the Quad: Final Mix tried to reimagine Enjoy The Silence in a classical style. It was pretty good. But then American composer and conductor, Eric Whitacre, one of those rare, modern classical
Continue readingEric Whitacre creates beautiful choral version of Enjoy The Silence
The Almost Predictable, Almost blog asked us to write an article to coincide with its series about Black Celebration. The blog’s creator, David McElroy, kindly gave permission for us to also re-publish the article here. Scroll to the foot of
Continue readingBlack Celebration – The perfect dress rehearsal for Violator
We share ten reasons why the Violator period is worth celebrating. 1) The songs Whilst Martin Gore had written many fantastic songs up until this point, many would agree that even the two previous albums – Black Celebration and Music For The Masses – had
Let’s face it, you will not get through this week without every Depeche Mode fan on the planet talking about a certain gig over ten years ago. And quite rightly, of course! Depeche played at the Royal Albert Hall in London
Continue readingA Policy Of Truth – Royal Albert Hall was more than just about Alan Wilder
With the Dave Gahan and Soulsavers tour in full swing (well, almost half way through six dates), a little reminder of when the frontman performed tracks from Violator in the early 2000s. His first solo album, called Paper Monsters, had an
Continue readingWhen Dave Gahan goes solo with Violator songs
Missed this back in January this year, but British musical weekly NME decided to give Violator a rather gloomy title. The album came in 18th spot in a list of the darkest ever long-players. Said the list’s compilers: “Throughout the ’80s, they had
Continue readingViolator is the 18th darkest album of all time
It seemed unfathomable that, after years of enjoying his work and that of many of his collaborators, Anton Corbijn biopic Inside Out had passed me by. But, finally, a copy of the Klaartje Quirijns-directed documentary arrived via Amazon last week. Here is
Violator finale Clean wasn’t always the brooding, symphonic, multi-layered assault on the emotions that it is today. As with many of the tracks from the album, Clean started out as a fairly basic demo from Martin Gore – ready for the production team to
Continue readingClean – before a sprinkling of magic production fairy dust