Artist: Depeche Mode
Label: Mute Records
Release: 2011
Runtime: 78:57
Rating: 4/5
The second round of remixes of the legendary Depeche Mode’s music is a hugely successful and welcome follow-up in experimenting with the sound of one of the most influential bands around, and it’s really a planned, calculated move during the band’s break from touring and the studio, a way to keep the group’s name afloat in the current music conversation.
In their golden age in the eighties, Depeche Mode were famous as a factory of 12-inch vinyl releases, packed with versions of songs that also appeared on the studio albums, only stretched out into longer variations, sometimes the real originals, later cut down and tweaked for the official studio album release. These extended versions usually spun in nightclubs all over the planet. Depeche Mode weren’t the only ones doing this. Every band that ruled the top of the pop charts in the eighties did it. From Duran Duran to New Order.
With the age of digitization, the 12-inch vinyl naturally lost its original purpose, since you could now create any number of different versions of one and the same song. Easy as that. Don’t like something? Delete it, or just paste any sample right next to it. The main players in this kind of restructuring of originals became the DJs. Seven years have passed since the first Depeche Mode remix release. This gap in saving time and money has only deepened over that period, and the new release no longer features any remixed versions of songs by Depeche Mode themselves, or re-recorded versions. This sequel to the first part from 2004 also comes in a short and an expanded version. The first is a single CD, the second a triple CD. I got my hands on the “plucked” version, the single CD, so that’s what I’m focusing on.
The thirteen new remixes on the single-CD release lean more heavily on songs from the band’s last two studio efforts, “Playing The Angel” (2005) and “Sounds Of The Universe” (2009). There’s also a clever and very welcome twist in the reworked material from the debut “Speak And Speel” (1981), represented by Tora!Tora!Tora! and Puppets. Then there’s the opener Dream On (“Exciter”, 2001), plus the hits Personal Jesus, Never Let Me Down Again and Everything Counts.
While this release is probably sacrilege for most Depeche Mode fans, friends of freewheeling electronic dance-music experimentation will take it with open arms. All the songs are stripped down and rebuilt, and the creators of the new versions have breathed their own artistic “DJ touch” into every track on the release.
Roughly speaking, we can split the songs into two camps. Those with a prominent, in-your-face dance rhythm and cranked-up basslines (Dream On, Everything Counts, Never Let Me Down Again, John The Revelator), and those that, though wrapped in a solid “trippy” groove, put the emphasis in the arrangement on leading melodic lines. In that sense, Personal Jesus is a track where both aspects live together brilliantly. The original, which comes across as menacingly aggressive, got an extremely pleasant and infectious mix of light samples wrapped around Gahan’s vocal in the remix. No wonder this version, which boasts more melody and flow than the original, came out two months before the official album release as a promo single.
The highlights of the release are its detours. The first to stand out is the remix of Peace. It’s incomparable to the rest. It’s driven by live string arrangements with Gahan’s vocal laid over the top. No rhythmic sampling underneath. That gives it the feel of a cover. Another detour, and an extremely positive one, are the remixes of both songs from the studio debut “Speka And Spell”, which are barely recognizable compared to the originals. The masterful makeover proves that both songs have stood the test of time. The remixes sound modern, fresh, exciting, with the artistic individuality of their creators clearly on display, and are immensely appealing because of it. Both tracks sit perfectly next to the remixes of their much younger brothers and sisters filling out this release. Puppets also feels like a cover. It sounds like Royksopp recorded their own version of the song and hired Dave Gahan on vocals. The early-eighties Gahan. Masterful!
The opening Dream On remix loses its job of pulling the listener in, since it doesn’t leave much of an impression. Gahan’s vocal is mostly backed by a bare rhythmic loop, which is just a touch too little. And In Chains right after it, which has a similar basic rhythm to Dream On but combined with an extra rhythmic loop (it softens the sharpness of the main “beat” driving the track while filling out the sonic spectrum), comes across, on a “first listen” basis, as far more gripping and catchy, so it would have worked better as the opener. The album really only starts to take off with the second track. An excellent remix of Personal Jesus.
The less successful moment of this release is Never Let Me Down Again. A solid rhythm dominates it, which does have a hypnotic effect, but over many repetitions, thanks to the “washed-out,” filtered sound, it gets downright annoying. That feeling is also there on the Everything Counts remix. The main reason for this end result is that both versions are actually completely vocal-free. The effect is the opposite of what was intended. Everything Counts, an extremely melodic, infectious evergreen hit in the original, is cut from a totally different cloth in the remix.
In these startling, but mostly very witty and well-judged makeovers, Gahan’s vocal behaves differently than in the originals and gives the remixes a whole other dimension of captured moods.
The triple version is a must for all die-hard fans of electronic rave hypnosis, since it contains the cream of the crop from across the entire discography. The triple-CD edition also includes reworked versions of Behind The Wheel by Vince Clarke and a different version of In Chains (compared to the one on the single-CD release). That one was contributed by Alan Wilder. So by buying the triple version, which costs just a few euros more, you also get versions from two former members of Depeche Mode. If you want to get to the bottom of this thing, get the expanded triple-CD edition with 33 tracks in total. No. These aren’t just unrecognizable club instrumentals! So fans of the real Depeche Mode have nothing to fear, because for all its witty restructuring, the content of “Remixes 2: 81-11” still sounds “Depeche Mode” enough.
Lineup
Depeche Mode
various artists
Production
various
Tracklist
1. Dream On (Bushwacka Tough Guy Mix Edit)
2. Personal Jesus (The Stargate Mix)
3. Suffer Well (M83 Remix)
4. John The Revelator (UNKLE Reconstruction)
5. In Chains (Tigerskin’s No Sleep Remix Edit)
6. Peace (SixToes Remix)
7. Tora! Tora! Tora! (Karlsson and Winnberg Remix)
8. Never Let Me Down Again (Eric Prydz Remix)
9. I Want It All (Roland M. Dill Remix)
10. Wrong (Trentemøller Remix)
11. Puppets (Röyksopp Remix)
12. Everything Counts (Oliver Huntemann & Stephan Bodzin Mix)
13. A Pain That I’m Used To (Jacques Lu Cont Remix)
