Depeche Mode box setA couple of months ago, a Polish website had a placeholder for the Violator 12″ box set, but it soon went away. Instead, multiple sites across Europe soon had placeholders for an “18 disc” set with prices that varied from €200 to €300. A set with all their studio albums was the most obvious assumption, but it wouldn’t account to 18 CDs.

So, after much conjecture, Depeche Mode announced last week a career-spanning box set containing all of their studio albums, plus 4 CDs with all of their B-sides with a surprise here and there (and also some omissions in the same proportion). It comes with a 227-page booklet, all album covers were also changed to greyscale. All of this inside a 7″x7″x7″ cube all in black. What a surprising palette!

Now, seriously, this box set is not for me, and that’s fine. I already have 99% of the contents here. I don’t really know what is the target audience of this. Maybe new fans that love the band enough to spend €250, because they own nothing at all and, yet, still buy CDs in 2019.

At least it helps my piggy bank for when the Violator 12″ box set comes out later.

So this author and a few other fans from across the globe have some stories to share with you on the big screen. All of them are unique, but have one thing in common: the devotion to Depeche Mode plays a part in bringing us all together. Here’s a sneak peak at “Spirits in the Forest”, the film directed by Anton Corbijn that follows the events in our lives leading to the final concert of the Global Spirit Tour on July 25th, 2018 (or watch the 30 second teaser with some exclusive shots here).

So head over to spiritsintheforest.com and check which theater is showing the film near you on November, 21st (and 23rd and 24th in some cases). In the meantime, I’ll see what behind the scenes anecdotes I can bore you with, like when I asked Anton to take a picture of me.

Just yesterday I was skimming quickly through the latest edition of Classic Pop magazine devoted to Depeche Mode that came out this week. There is an interview with D. A. Pennebaker about “101” and a candid revelation that a 4K restoration of the film could be in the works. I was very excited by this. He even mentioned extra material could see the light of day.

Then, just a few hours later, almost like a cruel prank from destiny, news of his passing away surfaced. Sadly it wasn’t an internet prank and he had died two days before the news were made public. Regardless of how an eventual restoration of “101” could be affected, it’s a sad loss. Music documentaries won’t ever be the same. But he died at the age of 94 leaving an immense legacy of political and music documentaries. Aside from Depeche Mode, he directed Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Look Back”, David Bowie’s “Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars” and “Monterrey Pop”.
RIP, Donn.

A band that often gets mentioned along with Depeche Mode is New Order. Yes, they have a lot in common, but also a completely different history and dynamics. For years they were on Mute Records’ Manchester indie counterpart, legendary Factory Records. Ironically, they’re now signed to Mute since 2015, while Depeche Mode is signed with Sony BMG/Columbia since 2013 (but still maintaining such a great relationship with Mute that they still carry their logo on their Sony-era releases).

New Order has a new live album out today. The full title can be puzzling if you missed some math classes in high school: “∑(No,12k,Lg,17Mif) New Order + Liam Gillick: So it goes..” The formula simples translates into New Order plus Liam Gillick and a 12-synthesizer ensemble from the Royal Northern College of Music at the Manchester International Festival, 2017. “So it goes” was the name of the show hosted by Factory Records visionary founder, Tony Wilson, on Granada TV back in the 70’s (I’m sure you saw that on the hilarious 2002 bio-pic “24 Hour Party People”). This performance was recorded at that very same studio. Conceptual artist Liam Gillick took care of the entire visual side of this short residency (in fact, it’s a pity there isn’t a video counterpart to the album). The album was recorded live on 13 July 2017 and includes the full show and encore plus 3 additional tracks recorded over the residency to give listeners a full representation of the breadth of material performed.

If you’ve seen New Order live before when Peter Hook was still in the band (until 2006) or when the band reformed without him as a 5-piece act (from 2011 on), this is like neither. Here, the band brought back some old album deep cuts, fan favorites that hadn’t been played in ages and everything de- and reconstructed for this setup with the 12 extra musicians. For the casual listener, the track list may look odd. Don’t let that scare you. It’s a very good album that makes you wish you were there. The casual listener of today may become the die-hard fan of tomorrow. Here’s their rendition of their 1985 single “Sub-culture”.

In fact, the band has resumed touring with their regular setup (not very different from what is found on their previous live album, NOMC2015, released in late 2017) for a Summer festival tour and some extra European dates which include Berlin. I’m still thinking if I should go or not, since I saw them play in support of 2015’s “Music Complete” right here, at the same Tempodrom venue.

Along the usual digital outlets (check here), you can order the album as a 2CD set or a limited triple transparent colored vinyl set here: mute.com/mute/∑no12klg17mif. You gotta love Mute’s URL with the formula in it. In fact, Mute never lets us down when it comes to design and packaging. It’s so much more than just a record label.

You might as well head down to Mute.com because they’ve been celebrating their 40th anniversary since last year (which makes them… 41 years old), but the celebration looks from the past towards the future. That’s why the whole campaign is called “Mute 4.0, 1978 → Tomorrow”. There’s so much going on it could render a few dozen posts. This one is already a bizarre temptation at making a singularity.

So you thought this blog would be about Depeche Mode all the time? Think again, but don’t close the tab just yet. In the solar system of my musical taste, there are quite a few artists worth mentioning here. Last Friday I received the Pet Shop Boys’ “Inner Sanctum” 2CD/DVD/BD set. Maybe I should have written that backwards: BD/DVD/2CD set. And here’s my impression of it.

I’ve been seeing Pet Shop Boys live since 2006 (yes, they have a special connection with Brazil, specially Rio where they recorded the “Discovery” concert film – which is the only PSB’s concert film never released on digital media to this day). The PSB have a tougher job than Depeche Mode on stage: the singer keeps a certain Englishness in his almost monotone singing, while the other guy takes a very Kraftwerkian role of not moving from behind his synth at all (well, I did attend one concert where they played “Paninaro” and he sang and made a short routine on stage he was so uncomfortable with, he even played some wrong notes – yes, he’s really playing). So an entire show with just these two guys would be veryboring (did you see what I just did there? tu dum tsss).

So their shows are filled with theatrical performances. In fact “Performance” is the name of their second tour (which exists in a highly recommended DVD out there) and it’s more of a musical than a concert. There’s even a storyline connecting the songs. Each following tour had the dancers and performance behind them, but at the same time evolving a little. I saw them on the Fundamental tour from the first row and was amazed at how the show revolved around neon signs on stage. Then on the Pandemonium tour, the entire concept of the stage and projections was all about pixels and squares and solid colors. Also, the setlist was so full of mash-ups, I think no fan was disappointed because they must have played, at least in part, some 30 songs. The Electric tour was the first one I saw more than once. I saw them in São Paulo and then later already in Berlin. The predecessor to Electric was a so-so album for me, but it was the end of their long lasting contract with EMI. Electric came out on the duo’s own label, x2. You could tell the budget for performatic dancers had been drastically reduced, yet, the show itself wasn’t a let down.

To promote “Super”, they embarked on the Super tour (there are so many names you can come up following their single-word rule for albums and tours). Again I had the chance to see them twice and I was not let down. Everything changed now. No more dancers. They finally have a band with them on stage. Well, three other musicians are there instead of dancers at the shows I attended. Always creative with their budget, two giant spheres on each side of the stage, together with the backdrop screen and a lot of laser beams make up for it all. But wait! This DVD, er…, concert film was not like the other shows. This was filmed during two special nights at the Royal Opera House in London, so everything was bigger, was… super! And yes, they brought a bunch of dancers for the final part of the show, all wearing ballon-like costumes, looking like spheres. Have in mind the visual identity of this album and tour was a simple circle. They looked like they had come out of a Flaming Lips show to me. My husband was more artsy and compared them to the three characters that appear on New Order’s “True Faith” video, directed by choreographer Philippe Decouflé, running  backwards.

Anyway, you will not be disappointed by the content of the main feature. They’re constantly remixing the old songs so fans are always surprised when an oldie gets a new treatment (“Left to my own devices” is the highlight for me both here and on the Pandemonium tour, as far as “oldies” go). But something that made little sense to me was the inclusion of their shortened show in… Rio de Janeiro as a bonus. They were the last act before the headliner that night at the Rock in Rio festival, who was none other than Lady Gaga (they missed an opportunity to repeat that duet from the 2009 Brit Awards performance). It just so happens that Mademoiselle Germanotta cancelled her show pretty much the day before. Concert organizers went crazy (not to mention the fans, lots of which had travelled from all over Brazil) and they ended up having Maroon 5 replace her that night (and M5 still played the night they were set to headline as well). I guess you couldn’t get a more disappointed crowd, could you? And besides, as a short 1-hour show which is merely a condensed version of the main feature… why? It doesn’t even have one song that is not on the main feature. Weird choice for an extra, but there it is.

The packaging itself looks great. The artwork is just a teaser of how trippy this show is. Then comes the disappointment. All four discs are crammed in card pockets of the digipak which unfolds in four pages. Also, the show is presented both in DVD and blu-ray. People who own a blu-ray will have no use for the DVD. People who only own a DVD player will have no use for the BD either. I guess it’s just cheaper to have one product out there in the market, than try to cater to fans with different packages and different products. The price itself was nothing absurd for a 4-disc set. Along with the blu-ray and DVD, the audio of the show is on 2 CDs that bookend the 4-sided digipak. In a very smart move, there is no digital release of this. You will have to buy the physical media and take the dust out of your DVD or BD player (as for the CDs, just rip and be happy, if you still rip CDs). You might as well move the furniture a little as well because you will get yourself dancing at some point.

4 stars out of 5. The tight disc pockets kind of taint such a nice release.

You can buy or stream (audio only) the show right here.

And if you’re into spoilers, here’s my shaky-phone video of “In the night”, a long forgotten b-side that I love, filmed when they played in Berlin the first time on this tour.

Is this thing on?… Testing, 1, 2, 3. Testing.

Ok (thumbs up), all good.

Well, where do I start?

Some of you may know me, some may not; some may know me personally, some only virtually (although I do promise that I do exist and I’m not a robot, according to all my CAPTCHA tests so far). Well, either way, you at least know my name ‘cause it’s written on this page, on the URL that bears my name and even written on my profile picture of Facebook (a social media that used to exist in the early 21st century and had almost engulfed the entire internet, in case you’re reading this in the distant future 10 years from now). But I will leave introductions for later because the story is more importante than the storyteller, even though the storyteller is part of it.

Back to my question from the first paragraph, I guess I can start with an email I got on the evening of Mar 16th, 2017. Yes, two years ago. It was a breathtaking message I wasn’t expecting to receive at all. In fact, I nearly left to read it the next day, because I wasn’t on my computer all day and I set up my devices to not notify me of emails all the time, but only when I open the mail app. Except for the computer. It was already early evening when I went to check something which I don’t even remember what it was anymore (it was not porn, I swear). The email notification showed up and once I started reading the first lines of that email, my heart started beating faster. I had to read it a zillion times because some strong catch words would draw my entire attention and I couldn’t finish reading it properly. It was like speed reading, except I couldn’t focus on the entire message only on the words: DEPECHE MODE, GUEST OF THE BAND, ALBUM LAUNCH CONCERT, FAN TAKEOVER.

Once I was on tranquilizers, I started to read it calmly. For privacy and contractual reasons, I won’t copy-paste the email, nor name anyone else other than those who agreed being mentioned here and the celebrities involved.

Since today marks the 2nd anniversary of when my Facebook Takeover took place and I became a takeoveree (thank you, Jenna, for the great name), I decided to launch this website which will go into some details, backstage stories, a lot about what happened since then and a few surprises that were even more breathtaking than just the takeover itself. Hang on tight because I’m about to take you on a trip.

And in case you’re wondering, this was my very first post during my takeover.