Tag: music

By Posted on Posted in Depeche Mode, Film, Music Tagged with , , , , ,

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.

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Since last year, Mute Records is celebrating it’s 40th anniversary. But instead of ending the celebrations on 2018, they made it into a future-driven slogan aptly named “Mute 4.0 1978→Tomorrow”. There’s a bunch of re-releases and a bunch of new releases.

One of them is both ingenious and well-hearted, but possibly disappointing. I’m talking about “STUMM433”. They managed to get 58 artists from Mute (there are even ones signed to other labels right now, disbanded or even deceased) and had each one of them do a cover of the same musical piece: American composer John Cage’s “4’33″” (sorry for the excess of quotation marks, but it’s supposed to be read “4 minutes and 33 seconds”).

But this is no ordinary song. It’s an experiment. The entire composition requires the musicians to not play their instruments. So if you think this means 4’33” of silence, you’re correct. Or at least on the right track. It’s by no means absolute silence. And it’s not supposed to last 4’33” precisely either. By what we’ve been teased so far, it’s a contemplation at musical silence, yet, at the noise around us. Pitchfork gave it a 6.3 comparing it to ambient noise you hear on your daily commute.

The list of artists is impressive: A Certain Ratio, A.C. Marias, ADULT., The Afghan Whigs, Alexander Balanescu, Barry Adamson, Ben Frost, Bruce Gilbert, Cabaret Voltaire, Carter Tutti Void, Chris Carter, Chris Liebing, Cold Specks, Daniel Blumberg, Danny Briottet, Depeche Mode, Duet Emmo, Echoboy, Einstürzende Neubauten, Erasure, Fad Gadget, Goldfrapp, He Said, Irmin Schmidt, Josh T. Pearson, K Á R Y Y N, Komputer, Laibach, Land Observations, Lee Ranaldo, Liars, Looper, Lost Under Heaven, Maps, Mark Stewart / Sonskrif / The New Banalist Orchestra, Michael Gira, Mick Harvey, Miranda Sex Garden, Moby, Modey Lemon, Mountaineers, New Order, Nitzer Ebb, NON / Boyd Rice, Nonpareils, The Normal, onDeadWaves, Phew, Pink Grease, Pole, Polly Scattergood, Richard Hawley, ShadowParty, Silicon Teens, Simon Fisher Turner and Edmund de Waal, The Warlocks, Wire, Yann Tiersen and Gareth Jones.

It is rumored that Depeche Mode’s rendition was recorded at the backstage of their final show of the Global Spirit Tour, July 25th, 2018. Maybe it’s the crew just having a chat while the band plays “Enjoy The Silence” on stage? Anyway, each version will also be followed by a visual piece. So that’s a lot of material on our way. Laibach, for example, made this accompanying video that clocks a bit over 7 minutes.

Meanwhile, Mute’s boss Daniel Miller himself revived his moniker “The Normal” for the first time since the creation of the label for a piece that is exactly that: ambient noise.

 

This release will be available on October 4th. There is a mammoth 5-disc vinyl box that comes along with candles with the scent of silence (?!) and a certificate of authenticity signed by Daniel Miller among other extras. This is limited to 433 copies and costs £220.00 and as of the day of this post (24/08/2019) they are still available. A regular 5CD box set is also coming, along the usual non-physical means. You can check it all out here. No wonder the deluxe version may take a while to sell out. Is it something people will play more than once in their lives, as the Pitchfork reviewer said?

Net profits from the release of the STUMM433 box-set will be split between the British Tinnitus Association and Music Minds Matter, charities chosen to honour Inspiral Carpets’ founding member Craig Gill who suffered from anxiety and depression as a result of his tinnitus in the years up to his untimely death. So there’s a very good charitable side to it.

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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.

By Posted on Posted in Music Tagged with , ,

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.

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‘Twas about time I came back to the backbone of this site: Depeche Mode. As part of the series of rereleases of their 12″ singles, they just put the boxes for “Black Celebration” and “Music For The Masses” out late last month. I was traveling, so I had to wait two weeks to finally get to savour them.

Let us get the elephant out of the room first. The mystery surrounding the singles taken from their first compilation: “Shake the Disease” and “It’s Called a Heart”. Specially the first one is a fan favorite. No one really knows why the band skipped them or where, when or even if they will be released. We were all being led to believe these rereleases would follow their remaster series from 2006/2007 where they were added as bonus tracks on the “Black Celebration” DVD. The band knows their fan base. I don’t believe for a second they don’t plan on releasing them at some point. But the label is also keeping it a secret. Even the David Bowie rereleases get some kind of statement when there’s a glitch in the matrix. So I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Starting with “Black Celebration”, this is the album that was the turning point for the band. From poppy melodies to “depressed mode”. You just can’t listen to “Stripped” and not imagine the reaction from the studio crew when they first played the final cut of the song. In fact, you can have that experience yourself if you happen to be in Berlin and book a tour of the legendary Hansa Studios. Depending on the availability of the mixing desk room, he can play this song through their speakers.

As a nice touch, they made one extra 12″ that didn’t exist – at least not in the UK – out of their first cassette single, a limited edition of “A Question of Lust”, the second single with Martin Gore on lead vocals. The booklet that came with the original single now became the inner sleeve. It was issued on vinyl in Germany in the 80′ (there’s even a colored edition that can be worth 3 digits), so maybe this 12″ is worth the entire box alone.

And the box finishes with the two 12″ singles for “A Question of Time”, which was originally released already by the end of the tour. You can read a very thorough story about it on David McElroy’s blog (aptly called “Almost Predictable. Almost). Highly recommended!

Less than one year later they were releasing the first single from their following album. Except the album was still far from being finished. “Strangelove” was a huge hit on the other side of the Atlantic. Back then the Brazilian charts used to follow whatever made an impact on the American charts. Depeche Mode had made a small dent in Brazil with “Just Can’t Get Enough”, but slowly fell under the furniture of their local label. It all changed because of “Strangelove”. The local division of Warner Music took over, reissued their entire back catalog and the song was an instant hit. I was 5 years old at the time and I still remember it playing on the radio. For many fans, this is their favorite DM song, or at least the one that got them into the fandom. But the band was not so fond of the 7″ version and remixed the song for the album, based on the Blind Mix of the song. I’m a fan of several remixes of this song: the Maxi Mix, the Blind Mix and the Pain Mix. The latter even made  its way into a soap opera soundtrack. The ultimate achievement an international artist could have at the time in Brazil. They’re all in this box. The instrumental B-sides “Pimpf” (or its alternate version “Fmnip”) and “Agent Orange” are very experimental. I quite love both. My mother did not. She said “Pimpf” caused her nausea and agony and I was not allowed to play it loud whenever she was nearby. It still is a challenging song to anyone’s ears. DM fans, however, loved it. The band used it at the intro for their shows of the “Music For The Masses tour”. It even has its own video. Would you dare watch it all the way through?

However, I don’t remember the following singles getting the same attention in Brazil. I do know the label tried to push them to the radios. They issued promos and everything. Because of a catchy cigarette ad on television that had a bluesy version of “Route 66” at the time, and because the label realized that DM also had their own cover version of the song, they put it as a bonus track on their reissue of “The Singles 81-85”, which in fact was just called “The Singles”, without the 81-85 part since DM’s cover version was officially released in 1988. You’ll find plenty remixes of “Route 66” in this box set. My favorite is the onde done by The Beatmasters. It’s 100% americana, just like the song itself.

Let me just skip to the final odd single: “Little 15”. Even the catalog number for this is different from the rest. Just “12Little15”, instead of the usual “Bong” numbers. There was a rumor this single was “only released in France” which is not true. It had a UK release, along several other European ones. It was the band that was not so keen in releasing it as a single, but went along with it. I agree it has null commercial potential, but a video was made and the most beautiful B-side of a 12″ is hidden here: Stjarna, which means “star” in Icelandic (and has cognates in other north germanic languages, such as Stjärna in Swedish). It is followed by another very odd song with also zero commercial appeal to the average DM fandom: Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Sonata Nº 14 In C#M “Moonlight Sonata”“. Rumor has it the band secretly recorded Alan just practicing this on the piano without telling him. As a way of excusing themselves, the song is rightfully credited on the liner notes like this: “performed by Alan Wilder”. Still, it’s the experimentation that is the secret of their success. That’s whyI love this single, both A and B sides.

You can order these and the previous 12″ box sets here. This is a limited run. You won’t find them on retail stores a couple of years from now.

By Posted on Posted in Music Tagged with , , ,

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 very… boring (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.