It’s quite amazing then, that this record sounds as sublime as it does. Opener Barrel of a Gun wonderfully sets the tone for the what is to come, with Gahan candidly detailing his personal problems for all to hear, and, for the most part, Ultra acts as a fantastic accompaniment piece to 1993’s Songs of Faith and Devotion. It's the broken, regret-filled comedown to the decadent, primal howl from a few years before. Speak And Spell In 5.1 And Stereo: DTS 5.1 (24bit/96k) / Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround (24bit/48k) / PCM Stereo Despite the occasional mood swings, Mk.1 Mode brought, as then-music scribe Neil Tennant wrote, “a new warmth to cold electronic pop”, thawing it with harmonies and hooks. On Speak & Spell, Depeche Mode – perhaps more than any other group – made synth music relatable. But in carrying its context with it-- and in being somewhat critical to today’s pop-- Violator just stands as a moving, solid, record, a classic for the archives of popular music; it doesn’t so much carry a lot of the things that made Depeche Mode feel so much themselves. With 1987’s Music for the Masses, that stuff is all there-- which makes the music both harder to “get,” from today’s perspective, and also more interesting. The Depeche Mode of this album is the one that brought together a rabid audience of trendy coastal kids and middle-American teens who got beat up over stuff like this-- all of whom saw them not only as the peak of style, but as something positively revelatory, something speaking only to them (even in a crowded stadium), something alien and cool, disorientingly kinky, and entrancingly strange. For many, this was probably one of the first dance-pop acts they’d heard that didn’t seem to be entirely about being cool and having a good time; their music had been dark, clattery, and full of S&M hints and blasphemy, and on this record it reached a level of Baroque pseudo-classical grandness (see depressed-teenager shout-out “Little Fifteen”) that lived up to those kids’ inflated visions of the group.

Also hitting the shelves that October was Speak & Spell, Depeche Mode’s debut. To some, this band – perky, cherubic, with their album named after an electronic toy – were the runt of this litter. Depeche Mode: Speak And Spell displayed little of the depth of Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret’s red-light experience, nor any of Tin Drum’s exotic muso chops or far eastern promise.

Release

Originally recorded as part of Some Bizzare’s Futurism compilation (where it was hailed as the highlight), Photographic restores the atmosphere. It all came to a peak in 1981’s latter stages with a series of landmark long-players from Soft Cell, the revamped Human League, Japan, Heaven 17 and OMD, records that smuggled the weird and wonderful into mainstream pop. British album certifications – Depeche Mode – Speak and Spell". British Phonographic Industry. 1 December 1981 . Retrieved 16 February 2022. Depeche Mode’s A Broken Frame displayed more compositional nuance, beefier electronics, and a more lucid lyrical viewpoint. Crucially, Gahan grew into a far more potent vocalist, less timid, emerging from behind that mic stand. Depeche Mode: Speak And Spell – The Sound of 1981

a b Sunie (7 November 1981). "Depeche Get in the Mode". Record Mirror. London. p.18. ISSN 0144-5804. From Living Doll to Roxy’s In Every Dream Home A Heartache to Kraftwerk’s Showroom Dummies , pop is full of mannequin fantasies. Sultry and sinister, Puppets is assembled from parts of all three… a taster of the darker ‘perv-pop’ they’d make after Clarke’s departure.The best DM album of the new millennium, Playing the Angel really does sound like a stadium band in their prime, at the height of their powers and delivering exactly what their audience wants. In essence, it mashes up all of the very finest elements of Depeche Mode from each of the 10 albums that had preceded it, whilst also sounding remarkably contemporary by 2005 standards. Many prefer the earlier, dirtier version, but this polished remake does have nerve-shredding tension and release, plus a firework display of synths. Miller noted that the young Depeche “weren’t touched by the art school aesthetic”, but Photographic is tinged with it – the opening lyrics could be the mounting of a modern art installation.