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.

‘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.