Depeche Mode - Song By Song/Album By Album Discussion Thread.

When I saw them in 1998, I hadn't heard any recordings from the tour so I had no idea how terrible the live solo was going to be.... and it was terrible. All atonal widdly woo that I'd expect from Steve Vai, not from Depeche.

 

Interesting that you didn't like the 98 Singles Tour Synth solo as it's probably my favorite that he's done. It's been far worse in later tours.

 

This 100%. Absolutely perfect pop song. They've done a ton of great music since but nothing as great as this.

 

Hmmm.... I personally think that 'Precious' gets quite close to EtS in terms of quality. But, we've got a while to get to there.

 

ETS: I saw them play on the US Violator tour. I am sure this happened at many shows, but someone in the front row had brought with them a cardboard Burger King crown which they passed to Dave. He kindly obliged and wore it for part of the show.

 

Not doubt a great song, easily their best track over the past 5 albums.

 

Yep, the Burger King crown was popular for a while. I've seen multiple people wearing it or some other crown over the past few tours.

 

Even more, I’d say Precious is as close as DM would ever get to replicating EtS, the song itself, wholesale. One can debate whether or not that’s a good thing, but I think it’s certainly one of their best songs in the past 20 years, if not their career as a whole.

 

Enjoy The Silence B-side time. There are two b-sides, Sibeling, and Memphisto. Unsurprisingly, neither have been lived live, and in all probability, the B-side versions only have Alan performing on them. Since the formats were released a week apart, if you absolutely couldn't wait and had to listen to everything then you had to buy the cassette single in week 1, and the 7"/2nd CD in week 2. Good old British chart rules. Luckily, this nonsense didn't apply in the US.

Sibeling is a tender, haunting instrumental that would, in another world, be the final track on an LP as the record fades out into nothingness... or maybe a track they donate to a moody early 90's film about God and broken hearts. Despite being written solely by Martin, like every DM song of the era, this has Alan's influence in textures and atmospheres all over it. It's great, but quite a way away from the A-side. Pretty much everything from here on for a few years is pretty much perfect. 4/5.

 

There is a circulating demo of Sibeling. You can hear Martin's arrangement, at a faster tempo, more music-box, traditional, less threatening and less mournful, which shows that even on B-sides, Alan added a significant input. This is more poppy, more vibrant, and well, not quite so Depechey. 3/5, but idea for a box set.

 

The EtS b-sides creeped me the f#&$ out. Maybe that’s why I wasn’t quite sure about the band at first—for such a piece of pop perfection as EtS, there was a dark, creepy other side to them that I didn’t quite get.

I came around to these pieces over time—particularly Sibeling. (At one point I’d made an effort to learn the piece on piano.) This one sounds practically classical, like a Chopin nocturne. Of course it’s not album material, but it’s ultimately nice to see their range of styles.

 

1988 to 1990 was such a phenomenal run of singles for DM. Like most people, I threw away all of my old high school mix tapes years ago. But one I wish I'd hung on to was the tape I made of my favorites of the single remixes and B-sides, with a cover that incorporated a collage of an old Boston parking ticket so that the word VIOLATION appeared along the spine. Here's a picture of one of the tickets for illustration:



Side A
World In My Eyes (Mode To Joy Mix)
Personal Jesus (Pump Mix)
Policy Of Truth (Beat Box Mix)
Enjoy The Silence (The Quad: Final Mix)

Side B
Personal Jesus (Acoustic)
Sea Of Sin (Sensoria Mix)
Kaleid (Remix)
Happiest Girl (Jack Mix)
Sibeling
Route 66 (The Nile Rodgers Mix)
Memphisto
Dangerous (7" mix)
Enjoy The Silence (Harmonium)

 

For a second comp you could include a picture of the boot.

 

The ETS instrumentals are simply beautiful. While Memphisto has more of an aggressive evil sound to it, Sibeling is quite relaxing in its moodiness.

 

Just saying hello. Violator is the only record of theirs I've owned and loved, so far. Never made myself play the other records but this thread will help. Thanks!

It's one of my seminal albums as a music fan. I was 10 years old, heard all the singles, saw all the videos, many many times. I was still too young to really be INTO music but I always liked these singles. My older sister had the CD eventually. It was way different than the rock music I got into later, but that didn't prevent me from coming back around to Violator in college and truly getting it then. Great stuff. Such a clean sound, but not cold.

I was a good little evangelical when Personal Jesus came out. I remember no one in my family being offended. It's possible to read it straight and it makes exact sense from an earnest, protestant viewpoint. I was like, yeah, Jesus is personal. That's what I'd been taught.

It works perfectly both ironically and earnestly. Always thought that was interesting.

 

Second B-side from Enjoy The Silence is Memphisto.

Like pretty much every b-side from now on, it's not been played live : that said, as a coiled instrumental that unravels and expands, it's - again - a fine example of how the band were able to build on instrumental demos and transform them. Sure, Roger Waters might get the writing credit for some of the Pink Floyd songs, like Martin does here, but, it's the process of the musicians adding to the songs that make them what they are.

In fanclub magazine Bong, issue 18, (link here: https://web.archive.org/web/20080303183428/http://www.sacreddm.net/fanclub/bongmag/bong18/text1.htm ) Martin said "It was the name of a make-believe film I invented about Elvis as the devil.", and in 1990, an unnamed band member said "We like cinema and we like to create special [atmospheres] with our music. In a way, 'Memphisto' is our homage to that esoteric cinema" in a magazine called Poster Seductores. It's pretty good, but B-side level. 2.5/5

 

Here's Martin's 1989 demo of it (14m59s in) and you can deduct from this demo, what the other members of the band brought to the songs with their production work.



p.s. Violator tomorrow.

 

The Memphisto demo sounds more complete and true to the final product than the Sibeling one. It's a shame the working relationship eventually gave way. When they were on their games, Alan and Martin could be magic together.

That entire clip was pretty cool, though. First time I'd heard the demos for Sweetest and Halo.

 

Memphisto seems like a cousin to Pimpf. I might almost prefer it, but I can’t say it’s frequent listening by any stretch.

 

Memphisto

I see the compuarison to Pimpf.

It's a good instrumental that unfolds slowly, and I can see it as film music. The choir sounds are a bit dated, but fortunately it focuses on the piano.

But, it's not something that I will seek out and play frequently.

3.5/5

 

OK, March 19, 1990. The seventh album. The make-or-break album. And it both made them, and kind of broke them too. Violator made No.2 in the UK, No.7 in the US, sold more copies than anything that the band had released up to that point, and put the band (mostly) in stadiums in the US and Arenas everywhere else, including Australian and Japanese tour dates (which was, and still are, a rarity for the band).

9 songs that changed the Depeche Mode world.

1. World In My Eyes
2. Sweetest Perfection
3. Personal Jesus
4. Halo
5. Waiting For The Night
-
6. Enjoy The Silence / Interlude#2 (Crucified)
7. Policy Of Truth
8. Blue Dress / Interlude #3
9. Clean

p.s. I'm not sure where Interlude #1 is, actually. I don't think it's anywhere on the album.

It's probably the closest thing Depeche came to making a perfect album. It sold like hot cakes. I presume hot cakes sell very, very well indeed. There are two unlisted tracks (labelled Interlude#2 and Interlude#3, after the sheet music edition of Violator). The cover is also curious : Dave Gahan painted his own version of the cover, that later appeared on the 1990 World Violation Tour Programme. [see below, though it might be Anton.]

The album:

Initial sessions at Logic, in Milan, resulted in Personal Jesus and most of World In My Eyes, and the bones of some other songs. Fletch was not present for much of the recording at Puk in Denmark, the album was effectively completed as a trio by Alan, Martin, and Dave, and Flood as producer, and Francois Kervorkian mixing every track apart from Enjoy The Silence. Violator was also a significant shift for the band creatively : Alan suggested to Martin that the demos are less complete, so the band aren't just replicating Martin's demo arrangements in the studio, but are able to add, change, and expand upon the songs.

Steve Lyon added : "I came in to the production of Violator when there was one song finished and the rest of the songs were kind of half way through but had no vocals. I didn't see Dave really much involved in the creation of the sounds or the directions of the songs. He would come in and sing and did a fantastic job but wasn't really involved in the creativity of the material. He was very positive on his part and very supportive in what we were doing. I think the team work really worked. There weren't many conflicts.... Depeche functioned so very well in the studio. There were never any doors closed. It was quite the opposite. The more you could bring in ... you know, I could turn to Alan and Flood saying 'What about this? What about this sound?' ... the more excited the whole crew became."

Sometimes Martin would come in saying, 'I don't like this' and 'I don't really like that', and then we would work on things to get a different version but he would trust a lot in the three of us, Alan, Flood and myself. And Fletch as well, y'know. Fletch would come in, say his thing but leave it to us because he knew something good would come out."

Lots of information can be found at : Shunt - the Official Recoil site - editorial - Depeche Mode - the Singles 86-98

Alan : "That's how we made the group work at that time, by accepting that we all had different roles and not actually all trying to do the same thing. So we ended up with this unwritten agreement in the band, where we'd all throw together a few ideas at the beginning of a track. Then Fletch and Mart would go away, and they'd come back after we'd worked on it for a while to give an opinion." (from Malins 2001 biography).

In the NME in February 1990, Alan said : "Usually we begin the making of a record by having extensive pre-production meetings where we decide what the record will actually sound like, then go into a programming studio. This time we decided to keep all pre-production work to a minimum. We were beginning to have a problem with boredom in that we felt we'd reached a certain level of achievement in doing things a certain way."

On his site, Alan adds : "There were no hard and fast rules - sometimes the songs drastically changed from the demo and sometimes they were pretty similar. Martin didn't like to explain his songs to anyone and, knowing that, the other group members would rarely ask him what they were about. It's clear to me that the ambiguity of his words and the subversive quality of some of them (with their possible dark meanings) is what makes them interesting. It is also probably right to say that from 'Violator' onwards, the final results bore less resemblance to the original demos than ever.""

Talking of Flood's addition to the production team, Alan stated : ""Flood and I worked well together. Our styles complimented each other - my musical angle coupled with his technical prowess. He was undoubtedly an important factor in the development of the 'Violator' and 'S.O.F.A.D.' albums.

Alan also writes about the (coughs) less musical members contributing to the band : "Studios can be incredibly claustrophobic places - even more so for those who perhaps don't play a big part in the nuts and bolts of the process. Boredom is an especially powerful and destructive force. For example, one of the most annoying things is if I'm working on a complicated sample (which I want to cut up into many pieces and reconfigure into something new), the process is inevitably complex and until the procedure is complete, things will usually sound chaotic and meaningless to anyone listening in. If someone who doesn't fully understand this procedure interjects negatively at an unfinished stage, it can be really irritating.""

Less formally, I remember reading somewhere that one incident that particularly annoyed Alan was during recording when Alan had spent some time trying to get a good drum sound, only for Fletch to come in and say something like "That sounds a bit sh!t", which was both unsurprising - as Alan was working on creating the drum sound, and annoying as Fletch had undoubtedly been somewhere else not working for a number of hours before swooping in and proclaiming judgement on an unfinished snare drum sound. Fletch and Alan seemed to be earning very nearly the same money though Fletch was starting to miss recording sessions, and Alan was getting slightly more as being credited with album production.

The album also had a compelling rhythmic approach : Alan wrote most of the basslines to the songs as Martin's demos were very skeletel, alongside Alan's approach to drum sounds from loops and samples.

Q:On 'Violator', did you use any drum machines in particular or are they all samples? I've found getting hi-hats and crashes to sound good through a drum machine very difficult. I've used Boss, Alesis and others and they all sound weak, thin and well.... like a drum machine.
Alan : "Are you surprised? Part of the reason drums from drum machines sound that way is because of the lack of human feel. No two snare beats sound the same when played by a drummer - I like that. That's why I prefer to use lots of drum loops with all the feel (and flaws) of the original performance. Most of the drum sounds on 'Violator' were sampled (apart from obvious electro sounds) but the rhythms were still programmed. Some hi-hat patterns ('Policy' for example) were played and sampled as loops and in the case of 'Halo' and 'Clean' it's all loops. Again, I prefer the looped parts because of the performance element"

In the editorial for the Singles album, Alan added "there are plenty of live drums in the form of loops on 'Violator' and a whole range of different acoustic instruments as well as the electronics. I think this album represented the perfect combination of played and programmed sounds.""

The album was finished at Church during mixing and final recording sessions. For "Dubspot", Francois Kervorkian said ".. Sometimes we’d stop in the middle of mixing and say, ‘No, no, no, Dave’s gotta re-do it.’ …there may have been a couple of synthesizer parts Martin wanted fixed, or we were going, like, ‘Ah yeah, this is not really working like this, we gotta change that.’ So then we switched to recording mode…Then I had all kinds of ideas on effects that I wanted to add to the track, where I recorded some of my own vocals doing, like, weird vocal effects…or percussive vocal things that I added as layers". (Electronic Music History: Depeche Mode 'Violator' (Mute Records) | Dubspot )

The Title

In the NME, Gore addressed the title of the album : "We called it Violator as a joke. We wanted to come up with the most extreme, ridiculously Heavy Metal title that we could. I'll be surprised if people will get the joke." As a joke, it's quite subtle - it's not as if the band were all photographed astride motorbikes next to a river of fire. (The motorbikes came much later in their career).

From Alan's site at Shunt the Official Recoil Website - q+a archives , he added :

Q:Who actually came up with the title 'Violator' and were you happy with the choice? Were there any other suggestions for the album's title?
Alan : Martin proposed it. I don't remember many other suggestions although there must have been some.

The album was also designed to sound like a single cohesive whole, with effects and sounds being borrowed from other songs in the same session :

Q: On 'Violator', the production is very consistent between songs to the point of 'Personal Jesus' employing a treated snare from 'World In My Eyes' and the Kraftwerkesque "pewt" noise liberally sprinkled among several of the tracks. Was this intentional to bring the album into a nice level of congruency or was it simply a matter of conveniently recycling otherwise excellent sounds?

Alan : "It's called continuity. Violator's a lot more electronic than I remember it being. Obviously, that kind of sound was what felt right at the time even though we were also introducing drum loops and more guitars as well. The snares you mention were actually different sounds - there was very little recycling, just similarities. Francois brought an electro influence too."

Q: In a 1990 MTV interview, Martin referred to 'Violator' as "Alan's album." If the statement regarding 'MFTM' is correct (in MFTM archives), why did Martin have such a change in policy between albums?
Alan : My answer on 'MFTM' should help you with this one. I've also read that Martin cites ' Violator' as his favourite Mode LP. I wonder what it all means.......?

Summing up the LP, Alan wrote : ""The interesting thing is that over the years, DM just carried on producing music in our usual way and the band has moved in and out of fashion, depending on what's trendy at the time. It's always preferable to remain true to your ideals and try and maintain one's integrity rather than jump on the latest bandwagon."

Yeah, this is a great LP. 5/5.

Here's the tour programme, with Dave Gahan's painting / illustration of the LP cover. At least I think it's Dave's. It might be Anton.



Individual track breakdown starting Sunday 1st August.

 

Interlude #1 is Mission Impossible, the hidden track from Music for the Masses.

 

Ah!

 

What can you say about Violator? Of course it’s practically perfect, where even non-singles have become classics and concert staples—just about the only album of theirs where that’s happened.

Both in terms of songwriting and production, I can’t help but feel this is on a completely different level than anything that came before it. Maybe being the first album of theirs I’d ever heard helps that impression, but MFTM almost sounds amateurish by comparison. The sounds here are rich and detailed—there’s not a note or a tone that sounds less than perfect. I don’t even know how they got such good sounds. Programming must have taken ages.

Tonally, it’s a dark, sometimes creepy album. The all black sleeve, the sometimes quite negative lyrics—it all seemed a bit exotic and taboo when I first got it, and was quite different from my other favorite band at the time, U2. Especially those Interludes, which had me wondering if there was some Satanic aspect to the whole thing. (Don’t underestimate the effect the 80’s “Satanic panic” in America had on us kids at the time.)

I’ve seen every song but one performed live.

 

Here's a good reference site that went through all the depeche mode singles.
Almost Predictable. Almost

Here's the entry for : Personal Jesus
Almost Predictable. Almost: DEPECHE MODE - THE SINGLES 1981 TO 2021 PART 23: PERSONAL JESUS

They are up to 'its no good' right now.

later
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