Depeche Mode – Black Celebration [180g Vinyl LP]

Depeche Mode – Black Celebration [180g Vinyl LP]

Details

• Format: Vinyl LP, Album, Reissue, Remastered, Embossed Gatefold, Stereo
• Catalogue Number: STUMM26 / 88985336741
• Barcode: 889853367412
• Genre: Synth-Pop / Darkwave / Electronic / New Wave
• Label: Mute / Sony Music
• Originally Released: 17 March 1986
• Reissue Released: 2016
• Pressing: 180 Gram Vinyl
• Condition: New & Sealed

Description

Black Celebration is the fifth studio album by Depeche Mode — Dave Gahan (vocals), Martin Gore (synthesizers, guitar, vocals), Andrew Fletcher (synthesizers) and Alan Wilder (synthesizers, drums, piano) — released on 17 March 1986 on Mute Records, and the record that completed the band's transformation from synth-pop chart act into one of the defining groups of post-punk electronic music. Following Some Great Reward (1984) — which had begun the shift toward darker, more industrial-influenced production — Black Celebration accelerated the trajectory decisively, delivering a record that was explicitly gothic in mood, densely arranged, and lyrically concerned with isolation, desire, mortality and spiritual ambiguity. Produced by Gareth Jones and Depeche Mode and recorded at Hansa Mischraum in West Berlin — the same studio used for David Bowie's Heroes and Iggy Pop's The Idiot — it drew on the atmosphere of the divided city with deliberate intent, the Wall less than two miles from the studio. It reached number four on the UK Albums Chart and has since come to be regarded as one of the most influential records of the 1980s, cited by bands from Nine Inch Nails to The Cure as a formative reference point. It is notably the album on which Martin Gore takes lead vocals on five of the eleven tracks — more than on any other Depeche Mode record — giving it a distinctive dual vocal character that broadens its emotional range considerably.

The album opens with the title track "Black Celebration" — a glacial, processional piece built on synthesized strings and Gore's descending bass line, Gahan's vocal delivered with a formality that sets the album's tone precisely. "Fly on the Windscreen – Final" (a reworked version of a B-side from the Shake the Disease single) follows with a more abrasive production: metallic percussion, industrial noise and a lyric about watching someone die. The two singles — "A Question of Lust" (number 28 UK), sung by Gore, a quietly devastating piece of blue-eyed soul built on piano and synthesizer; and "A Question of Time" (number 17 UK), sung by Gahan, a propulsive, angular track with a lyric about an older man preying on a teenage girl — demonstrate the album's range within a consistently dark framework. "Stripped" — among the best-known tracks in the catalogue, its opening "Let me see you stripped down to the bone" immediately recognisable — urges a return to nature in a manner that reads simultaneously as erotic and philosophical; it was performed at nearly every Depeche Mode concert from 1986 onward. "Here Is the House" (Gore, vocals) is the album's most tender and intimate moment, a love song of considerable beauty; "World Full of Nothing" (also Gore) is a spare, melancholic piece unlike anything else in the catalogue. The closing "New Dress" — pointed political satire about the media's obsession with celebrity while the world burns — ends the album on a note of biting cynicism that provides an unexpected tonal counterpoint to the darkness preceding it.

This 2016 reissue on Mute / Sony Music — part of the same series as the 2016 reissues of Construction Time Again, Some Great Reward and Music for the Masses — presents the 2007 remaster on 180 gram black vinyl, pressed by Music On Vinyl (MOVLP947), with lacquers mastered by Mike Burnette at The Exchange. The hand-etched dead wax inscriptions read "A CLASSIC CASE OF OVER FOCUSING... AGAIN!" on Side A and "SO MUCH FOR THE MINIMAL ALBUM" on Side B — characteristic of the Music On Vinyl series. The sleeve faithfully reproduces the original embossed gatefold with spot varnish finish, ℗ 1986 Venusnote Ltd. under exclusive licence to Sony Music Entertainment International Ltd. Made in the EU. This pressing uses the UK tracklist — 11 tracks — and does not include the US-only single "But Not Tonight".

Tracklist

Side A

1. Black Celebration
2. Fly on the Windscreen – Final
3. A Question of Lust
4. Sometimes
5. It Doesn't Matter Two

Side B

1. A Question of Time
2. Stripped
3. Here Is the House
4. World Full of Nothing
5. Dressed in Black
6. New Dress

Credits

• Dave Gahan – Vocals
• Martin Gore – Synthesizers, Guitar, Vocals
• Andrew Fletcher – Synthesizers
• Alan Wilder – Synthesizers, Drums, Piano
• Gareth Jones – Producer
• Mike Burnette – Mastering (The Exchange)
• Label – Mute / Sony Music