Тема: Depeche Mode
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BREAKING THE LAW



Depeche Mode’s Martin Gore retraces the equipment-strewn path towards the world-dominating stadium electronica of 1990’s Violator.

I got into electronic music when I was around 16, started off by Kraftwerk, obviously. Later, one of my friends got a synthesizer and we started listening to the early electronic scene, like The Dignity of Labour by The Human League. I went to see The Human League in 1979 and it was exciting to see people playing synthesizers on stage so afterwards I went out and bought a very cheap Yamaha CS-5, which was all I could afford then.

I was fascinated by the possibility of making new sounds. It felt like moving into the future, doing something that hadn’t done before. I’d played in bands from the age of 13, always played guitar, but weren’t doing anything revolutionary. Punk seemed revolutionary and, after punk, electronic music seemed to have the edge.

In Depeche Mode we started out very young and had led very sheltered lives. Then we were thrust into the limelight. Vince [Clarke] left suddenly [after 1981 album Speak & Spell] and I don’t think we thought too much about what we were resenting to the world.

It was only we were starting making [third album] Construction Time Again [1983] that we had travelled and grown up a bit and thought we should take things a little more seriously. Being with Daniel Miller of Mute was a big part of our growing process. To this days we listening to everything he says. He exposed us to a lot of stuff that we weren’t aware of before. I remember being in Daniel’s car listening to Alles Ist Gut by [German electro-punk band] DAF and thinking, Wow, this is amazing.

These songs weren’t throwaway as the earlier songs. Everything we’ve done falls into the pop realm but maybe we’re on the fringes of pop sometimes. And the sampler came up, which opened up a new area. It was really fun time. We probably spent as much time sampling as we did making music. We sampled anything and everything could get our hands on. Things were just lying around the studio – you could always get some percussion out of the cutlery drawer. Then we’d go out with sledgehammers into desolate area and start smashing pieces of metal. It was about creating music out of all these different sound elements. [1984 single] People Are People, for instance: initial attack on the bass drum came from hitting a piece of metal and then we spliced that onto an actual bass drum. Something very simple but, until that time, those things had been really complicates to do.

We were using the Emulator [8-bit sampler], which was amazing technology at the time but, looking back, it was very limited. You had to store one sound on a huge floppy disc. There were times you’d be working on something and you’d forget to press save and you’d think, Shit, I’ve just lost a day’s work. There was one time around the 1982 when we were using a prototype PPG [eaerlier digital synthesizer] live and it was very unreliable. Kraftwerk turned up to see us play somewhere in Germany and the PPG went down during the first song and never came back. It was one of the worst concerts we’ve ever played.

From 1981 to 1983 we felt that there was no hope for us in America. Every interview seemed like a battle with someone who was obviously into Bruce Springsteen and didn’t consider electronic music to be real music at all. We dreaded going into every interview. But around the time of Some Great Reward went back to America and we realised that alternative music had taken off and we were flag-bearers for this new scene. There ewer huge alternative radio stations playing us, The Smiths and The Cure. Suddenly, it was good to be doing something different.

Black Celebration, for me, was the first album where we started putting all the pieces together. We were on a high because we were starting to get a worldwide following. We went back to Berlin and worked with Daniel Miller and Gareth Jones again and everything fell in place. Daniel invested in a Synclavier [polyphonic sampler], which at the time was a fortune. It opened up more possibilities. For Stripped we took microphones out and got Dave to rev his car. We went out and let off the fireworks. Gareth was very excitable, so if we had an idea he’d run around and setting up various mikes, trying to position them perfectly to catch the trajectory of the fireworks. It’s amazing how much energy Gareth had. If it had been left to us we’d have gone, ”It sounds like a really good idea but we can’t be bothered to set the mikes up!”

I think it was important that we were out there doing it live when there no one else, especially in America. I think people were shocked that they could come to a show and see people, pretty static behind keyboards, playing electronic music, and it was still exciting. Dave was a huge part of that. He was the human element engaging the audience when there wasn’t much else going on.

Before Violator I used to go out to a lot of clubs. The rave scene was happening and I was influenced by it up to a point, but we weren’t that aware of Detroit [techno] scene. When we got taken out to Detroit by The Face magazine to meet up with Derrick May we knew who he was but we weren’t big fans. But I was more opened to change with the songs on Violator. It wasn’t just about recreating the demos with much better sound. It was more ”Let’s work on this as a band.” At that point I was happy presenting a song idea and working on it but when it came to fine-turning – what Flood used to call the ”spanner work” – that used to drive me mad. It was days of tinkering but it created a great feel.

I usually start with some chords or an atmosphere and start singing along. The original demo of Enjoy The Silence was very slow and minimal, just me and harmonium, and Alan had this idea to putting a beat to it. We added the choir chords and Flood and Alan said, ”Why don’t you play some guitar over the top?” That’s when I came up with the riff. I think that’s the only time in our history when we all looked to each other and said, ”I think this might be a hit.” We’d done a lot of work up to that point. We’d put an album out almost every year in the ’80s and I think that helped build a fanbase so we were riding the crest of a wave when Violator came out. Sometimes you have to realise it’s just being in right place at the right time.

Electronic music seemed to be doing all the things that were exciting about punk and doing it in a futuristic way. I didn’t realise it could be as big as it became. I could see it flourishing but it was still a shock in 1981 to see Soft Cell zoom up the charts, because Tainted Love still sounded underground to me. Whereas nowadays, of course, you can’t get away from it.