Music Makers
Depeche Mode – alcohol = retro synthesizers. Plus, Taylor Swift plays…a singer!
By Ingrid Randoja
Depeche Mode...30 years on
If you’ve survived nearly 30 years in the music biz, and sold more than 75 million albums, you know a wee bit about making music.
That’s why synthpop band Depeche Mode (Dave Gahan, Martin Gore and Andy ‘Fletch’ Fletcher) felt using 20-year-old equipment to make their 12th studio album, Sounds of the Universe (available April 21st), was the right decision.
“The album doesn’t sound dated at all,” says Andy Fletcher on the line from London. “Some of the equipment were things we had many years ago, and some stuff was brand new.”
The retro synthesizers came courtesy of band member Martin Gore, a former hard-living rocker. “It’s quite interesting really,” says Fletcher, “Martin hasn’t drunk alcohol in the last two years and so his obsession with drink is now an obsession with buying antique synthesizers. It’s an eBay thing, and he really went a bit crazy, packages would come every day into the studio. Apparently Moby is doing it as well, so I think Moby and Martin are cornering the eBay market.”
Sounds of the Universe is brimming with moody, electro-based pop songs. And the band’s sound remains vaguely futuristic, even after three decades, which helps explain Depeche Mode’s staying power, and why it has inspired bands as diverse as Coldplay and Linkin Park.
“That’s always nice when groups say we inspired them,” admits Fletcher. “We never got that for the first 10 years — we were hated [laughing], we couldn’t inspire anyone.”
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Singers On Screen
If you notice Miley Cyrus looking over her shoulder during Hannah Montana: The Movie,
chalk it up to the presence of C&W phenom Taylor Swift (pictured left), who gets
the chance to strut her stuff in the film. Swift plays a singer at a
restaurant who warbles a tune called “Crazier.”
Check It Out!
It’s called “Obsessive Jonas Disorder,” and affects fans of the
three musical moptops known as the Jonas Brothers. The afflicted get
some relief with this month’s book Jonas Brothers Forever: The Unofficial Story of Kevin, Joe & Nick.
We get the story of their rise to fame, chapters on each
individual Jonas and behind-the-scenes tales of the making of their
albums, TV movies and concert tours.
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Out this month
April 7
Catalina Yue - Eternally
Flo Rida - R.O.O.T.S.
April 14
Metric - Fantasie
Papercuts - You Can Have What You Want
April 21
Chimaira - The Infection
April 28
Ben Lee - The Rebirth of Venus
Heaven and Hell - The Devil You Know
Disciplines - Smoking Kills