Depeche Mode's New Album, "Playing The Angel", In Stores Now
(PRWEB) October 19, 2005 -- Playing The Angel, an astonishingly fresh, exuberant release, marks the 25th anniversary of Depeche Mode, the innovative, influential recording unit. The band have sold upwards of 50 million records worldwide and amassed a staggering 38 hit singles in the UK. With each successive release they have managed to progress musically and lyrically, establishing themselves as, alongside U2, the most consistently successful British band of the post-punk period. Playing The Angel, released October 18, conveys a sense of optimism, of renewed vigor, of pleasure at what they've achieved.
"I really felt, before we started this album, that there was unfinished business," says Dave Gahan of Depeche Mode's 11th studio album, Playing The Angel (Sire/Reprise). And so it is that the world's foremost subversive electronic pop group - the doyens of death disco - have reconvened for the first time since 2001's two-million-selling Exciter. It was a feeling that there was work yet to be done, and plenty still to prove. As their singer puts it, "We've made some really good albums together, but we still want to make the best record we can." They just can't shake the disease.
Not that they've been idle. The band toured in 2001, playing an incredible 85 shows to nearly two million people. Last year Depeche Mode released the Remixes 81-04 collection, which sold over a million copies worldwide and featured a new remix of the group's classic "Enjoy The Silence," issued as a single. Dave released an album of cathartic confessionals, Paper Monsters, his debut, to great acclaim in 2003, while Martin Gore issued Counterfeit 2, the second in his cover-version series of radically reworked homages to musical heroes old and new. Meanwhile, Fletch launched a record label, Toast Hawaii. Martin and Fletch also kept busy with various DJ commitments.
Despite the success they found with these diverse solo ventures, and notwithstanding the fact that they have separate lives and families as far apart as London, California and New York, they felt drawn back together for their second 21st Century Depeche Mode project.
Playing The Angel, an astonishingly fresh, exuberant release, marks the 25th anniversary of Depeche Mode, the innovative, influential recording unit (although their debut single "Dreaming Of Me" came out in February 1981 on Mute, Depeche had begun work on their proto-electro the previous year). In the intervening quarter-century, the band have sold upwards of 50 million records worldwide and amassed a staggering 38 hit singles in the UK (29 of them Top 20, a dozen of them Top 10) and no fewer than 13 Top 10 albums (including the two compilations, The Singles 81-85 and The Singles 86-98, plus 1989's live 101). With each successive release they have managed to progress musically and lyrically, establishing themselves as, alongside U2, the most consistently successful British band of the post-punk period.
Depeche Mode are brothers of reinvention. During 1981-2, with Speak And Spell and A Broken Frame, they were in the vanguard of the synthpop movement, then sweeping the nation. They made metal-bashing a commercial concern and pioneered sampling with 1983's Construction Time Again. The none-more-noir (for the pop arena anyway) Some Great Reward (1984) and Black Celebration (1985) featured as much anthemic balladry as they did aggressive industrial beats, ranging from hymnal devotionals designed for bedsits to explorations of psychosexual manipulation built for clubs. Music For The Masses wasn't fancifully titled - their first US Top 40 entry, it saw Depeche become the only synthesizer act to fill American stadiums and get name-checked by a generation of cutting-edge Detroit techno and Chicago house artists who cited them as a primary influence on the development electronic dance music culture.
By Violator (1990), considered by many their peak collection of digital existentialism and pristine woe, Depeche Mode were simply the biggest alternative pop group on the planet. For 1993's Songs Of Faith And Devotion there was a shift towards conventional rock instrumentation. Having survived and transcended every rock era of the past decade or so, from shoegazing and Madchester to grunge and Britpop, the dark, brooding, Tim Simenon-produced Ultra (1997) and underrated, Mark Bell-helmed Exciter proved nothing could stop Depeche Mode; not even the tumultuous, extensively documented events of the late '90s, during which all three band members suffered personal crises and Dave Gahan in particular pushed perilously close to the limit of what a human being can, physically and emotionally, endure in one lifetime.
And yet there are no signs of narcotic corrosion on this band’s muse. On Playing The Angel Depeche sound like a new band, not one halfway through their third decade together. "Precious," the first single from the album, is quintessential Mode, all cyber pulse and glorious chorus. "The Sinner In Me" perfectly balances the organic and synthetic, and climaxes, as do most of the tracks here, with staccato blasts of noise and FX. On "Suffer Well," Dave's voice is more powerful than ever, as it is throughout the album. "Macrovision," sung by Martin, is supremely shiny hi-tech pop with an enormous hook. "John The Revelator" is just awesome, and one of many potential hit singles on the album. "I Want It All" is one of the slower tracks with its minor-key menace, like trip-hop from hell. "A Pain That I'm Used To" kicks off what would have been Side 2 (in old money) in fine, furious style with its savage bursts of guitar.
The title for Depeche Mode's 11th studio album was taken, according to Fletch, from the lyric of another track called "The Darkest Star." The album was recorded in Santa Barbara, New York and London, in studios near the homes of, respectively, Martin, Dave and Fletch. Recording began in January 2005 in California, and within five weeks they had 11 new songs - according to Fletch, "That's a world record for Depeche Mode." After two years, he says, of being the boss (of Toast Hawaii), it was hard returning to the fold: "like going from a dictatorship to a democracy." The atmosphere in the studio was, he says, challenging and exciting.
This sense of challenge, of new directions being explored, was provided by producer Ben (Doves, Blur) Hillier. "You have to work hard at reinventing yourself," admits Dave, "so you have to work with new people; people who push you, with new ideas. We chose well when we chose Ben Hillier." All three members were, with typical Mode perversity, pleased to discover that Ben wasn't particularly into Depeche. "He wasn't a fan of our music," notes Dave. "I was excited by that." Adds Fletch: "It was quite nice because he had no preconceptions about us or what he had to do." The producer's cool, objective approach helped create the right atmosphere in the studio. "Ben's a very calm person, he's got an aura around him, and that helped us get on," says Martin. "We wanted someone to oversee, like a headmaster, to control us and make sure we were going in the right direction."
All agree that Playing The Angel is faster-paced than Ultra or Exciter, heightening the sense of urgency and vibrancy this time. Ben Hillier's fondness for analogue synths over digital ones also helped shape the sound, one that the band could identify with, harking back as it does to Black Celebration or Violator. The other major difference is that this is the first album to feature Dave Gahan composition credits - three of the tracks ("I Want It All," "Suffer Well" and "Nothing's Impossible") were written by the singer, who was encouraged by the reaction to Paper Monsters and determined to make his mark.
And yet he was worried about playing his contributions to Martin for the first time. "Was I nervous? Terrified; it was quite a painful experience. I think he was nervous, too." As candid and forthright as ever, Dave explains that "I Want It All," was about "having everything I need, so why don't I see that or appreciate what's good in my life, and in fact do my best to destroy it? I naturally gravitate towards looking for the negative in something, even when it's good - that could be my lovely wife or my lovely children. And I do gravitate towards things that aren't good for me - not necessarily drugs or alcohol, just the idea of having something good, then tearing it apart and being left with a piece of shit, almost like I want to push it away because I feel I don't deserve it. Today I'm in a much better place. I'm a lot more grateful for what I have, even if what I don't have is closer to the truth."
Martin was responsible for the remaining nine tracks. As usual, he was unflinching in his depiction of the dark side of the human condition. The titles and lyrics speak for themselves, with their near-biblical references to suffering and sinning, anger and pain. In fact, he jokes, the back cover of the usual beautiful Anton Corbijn art-directed sleeve may well feature the subtitle: Pain And Suffering In Various Tempos. "Dave said I've made a 25-year career out of one subject. I disagree: it's two!"
When asked what the broad, overarching themes of this record are, Martin smiles: "Anything that appeals to really dysfunctional people." More seriously, he explains that the lead-off single was written for and about his children as he and his wife are in the middle of getting divorced, although "The Sinner In Me" (I've never been a saint/Not renowned for my restraint) could, he says, "relate to anyone in the group." It would be wrong, however, to dismiss Depeche Mode as harvesters of sorrow. "I never see our music as over-dark. There's always an element of hope. And I hope that comes over in the music." Adds Dave, "We take the work seriously, and it can get pretty intense, heavy and dark. But there are times when it's fun and we're busting up."
A sense of optimism, of renewed vigour, of pleasure at what they've achieved, can be discerned from Playing The Angel. It's also obvious from the sheer delight Dave, Martin and Fletch feel at being back with Depeche Mode, on the eve of the release of a brilliant album and a mammoth, sell-out world tour that confirms the enormity of their global audience. "I feel like that every time," says Fletch. "That we're still making good records and performing well. It's a privileged position to be in."
Dave especially counts his blessings that he's still actually here to do this. "That we've achieved so much in 25 years, and survived so much...Of all the bands, this is the one I'd have put money on not still being around!" he laughs. "I see ourselves alongside U2 and R.E.M. more than any of the bands we came up with, although really we don't fit in and we never have, and I've come to embrace that - there's no one like Depeche Mode. But you really have to strive to find something new, and the challenge has to be in the work. It's not about conquering this or that. You've got to be prepared to tear it up, because there are always new bands who are way more driven than you. I lost that drive in the mid-'90s; now I've got it back. I feel like I've been given a second chance. It's better being in Depeche Mode now than it has been for 15 years."
Visit http://www.depechemode.com/ for video and tour dates.
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