I was listening to Black Celebration yesterday and started wondering if the mood of the album owes something to The Cure’s Pornography which came out in I think 1983. Both mark a dark turn for both bands and start with opening tracks which sort of outline the emotional content of the albums although Pornography is a full descent into a gothic inferno while Black Celebration is like the pg13 version but still it feels like the band was announcing that they no longer live in a synthesizer candy store.
Goosebumps indeed. This performance is pure eargasm and quite surreal thing to watch.
I first heard DM in Violator era and really started to listen to them with Ultra. I think for start you can’t miss with Violator. This is the sound DM are probably most known for and it’s just a great album all around. But my favorite songs are actually on Songs of faith and devotion. Walking in my shoes, In your room , Rush… so much emotion in lyrics and delivery, incredible production and sound, those vocals, melodies, pure epicness. And then those live performance on Devotional tour, from music to visual… just haunting and beautiful. I really envy people that could saw this live.
I don’t care much for their albums prior to BC, although there are some cool songs. I would probably like them better if I listened to them in their time. I like their newer stuff though. Still, for me, best DM era was from Black Celebration to Ultra, peaking with Violator and SOFAD.
As of Digitakt - if they had it in '86 I think they might sound more like 2000+ era DM More glitchy, modulated and minimalist.
I saw DM on the devotional tour at Crystal Palace, probably the best gig I’ve ever been to, the atmosphere was electric, I’ve seen them many times since but that was special, also saw them at Birmingham on the violator tour and that was amazing as well.
I think ive followed DM since they began in 1980 or so. They are of their time. No rose tinted spectacles for me. I think the black and white grainy videos(Behind the wheel etc). by Anton Corbijn were the zenith.
Is that to say you have a somewhat critical view of them through the lens of time?
When we are exposed to music seems to have a lot to do with what we still are able to enjoy when we get over. I think a lot of ex-punk / hardcore kids sort of listened to a variety of stuff, like DM and the Smiths, or maybe Neu and NWA, on a sort of parallel periphery of their main listening habit and once they sort of grew out of punk and hardcore they start to spend more time with those bands. The inverse of this might be someone who was just listening to DM and the Cure, the Smiths…and end up growing out of that in a similar way despite those artists being very skilled songwriters and musicians. The Cure is a bad example as anyone who stops listening to them…something must of died inside them along the path of life…more so than most.
Sometimes it’s a bad thing to be exposed to great music too young. I stopped listening to the Beatles for a good 15 years because those were the only non-classical records my father had lying around, well, Joan Baez too…I liked listening to her for the sole reason that she would drop the f-bomb.
I write this as someone in my 40s while a person in their 60s or 30s likely have a totally different perspective on specific bands.
Thats a fair point. I guess someone new to DM would say they are original and inspiring still in 2023. But all i have is a subjective experience of watching a skinny Dave Gahan singing Just cant Get Enough and New Life in small Futurist clubs in the Uk and their journey after. I guess thats all any of us have to go on(Our own experience).
Ha, exposed too young… Probably the first record I remember in my life was Depeche Mode Singles 81-85 compilation - when I was 3 years old. And for the misunderstanding of lyrics; I was barely speaking my native language and not a single word in english… In the chorus of People Are People I understood “obludy” in the place of “awfully”, which is “monsters” in czech. I was not allowed to use turntable by myself, so everytime I had to ask: “Daddy, please, put on The Monsters!”
just can’t get enough…
everything counts…
people are people…
never let u down…
personal jesus…
enjoy the silence…
the inbetween no album attached single releases…
get the balance right…
shake the desease…
but for some reason, the song that catched me the most of all…leave in silence…
saw them live on their european tour legs for…
black celebration
some great reward
music for the masses
ultra
and as much as i love them…last three albums did’nt do the real trick anymore…
from what i can tell so far…their very last and final one to come this year…memento mori…will be the final curtain, final cash cow call and pretty standard modern schlager talk pretending…
but hey, that’s a good call, no matter what, after a most unique career of 40ty years…
the only indy band of the planet that filled stadiums on frequent bases…
and the next generation gets in place these days…
look/listen what dave’s daughter, mrs. gahan, is up to right now…
and oh my gosh…u can defenitly tell, hear and see…she’s his daughter for real…
Yes, just can’t get enough until we all had enough (albums)… at this point the best we can hope is that they don’t turn into the synth version of the saddest band on earth: The Rolling Stones. I just hope we never see them get behind the wheel of wheelchairs on stage and they just enjoy their own silence, finally.
Ultra is incredible. DM’s best album IMO and pretty accessible too I think. Music is expansive and inspires awe, and it’s sonically sublime. Massively recommended.
As for the Digitakt, well for DM I think it would have really needed to be stereo and polyphonic. Ideally for me too : )
More glitchy, modulated and minimalist.
