Dave Gahan and Martin Gore are back with the group’s 15th album. But after losing the bandmate Andy Fletcher last year, their return was anything but certain.
Dave Gahan, left, and Martin Gore. The group’s new album, “Memento Mori,” is death-obsessed even by Depeche Mode standards.Credit...OK McCausland for The New York Times
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By Alex Pappademas
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — Martin Gore, who is now 50 percent of Depeche Mode, works in a studio on a low hill near Santa Barbara, hidden behind jungle-green foliage and fragrant flowering shrubs.
On a Tuesday morning in January, he sat at a console in the center of the control room, which was spacious and orderly and full of California winter sunshine — a clean, well-lighted place to make songs about power, desire, faith and a world spinning ever further off its axis.
Gore wore black clothes and spotless black boots. He looked like an Englishman who’s spent decades in California — vibrant tan, straight white teeth. He had the haircut you’d get if you asked a knowledgeable barber to give you “the Martin Gore”: high and tight, with several inches of unruly tuft up top.
Two summers ago Gore turned 60, and it “really slapped me in the face,” he said with a morbid chuckle. “I don’t particularly feel like I’m 60, but you have to accept the facts. It feels like you’ve got one toe in the grave, at least.”
On Friday Depeche Mode will release its 15th album, mostly recorded in this studio, by a pandemic-era skeleton crew: Gore, the vocalist Dave Gahan, the producer James Ford (Florence + the Machine, Arctic Monkeys) and an engineer/co-producer, Marta Salogni. As always, the sound is foreboding and sleek, sardonic yet soulful — music for lovers in black-leather-upholstered bullet-train compartments, racing toward ominous destinations.
The title is “Memento Mori,” and the dominant theme is mortality — which isn’t, in itself, a departure. “Death is everywhere,” Gore wrote years ago, in a song called “Fly on the Windscreen,” whose narrator goes on to beckon, “Come here, kiss me, now,” because you never know.
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The band's name was taken from French fashion magazine, Dépêche mode, which means "fashion update" or "fashion news dispatch". Depeche Mode became famous in the 1980s. The band has sold over 100 million records around the world.
Departure. In June 1995, Wilder announced his departure from Depeche Mode "due to increasing dissatisfaction with the internal relations and working practices of the group". After his split from the band, Wilder was approached by Robert Smith with an offer to join the Cure.
He was a lifelong vegetarian who liked to exercise and did not smoke or do drugs. Martin Gore – Founding member of Depeche Mode. Went vegetarian in 1983 because of the animals and for his health.
Dave Gahan is the lead vocalist and co-songwriter for the Alternative Rock and New Wave band Depeche Mode. He was born in North Wealed, Essex, United Kingdom on 9th May 1962. Depeche Mode was formed in 1980 by Vince Clarke, Andrew Fletcher and Martin Gore. They recruited Gahan later that year.
Alan Charles Wilder (born June 1, 1959) is an English musician, composer, arranger, record producer, and a former member of the electronic band Depeche Mode from 1982 to 1995.
Clarke didn't go to Fletcher's funeral, but he has maintained his friendship with Martin Gore, he says; a friendship not fostered in the early 1980s, but one that grew after they did the press together for the VCMG LP.
Depeche Mode are an English electronic music band formed in Basildon, Essex in 1980. Originally formed with the lineup of Dave Gahan, Martin Gore, Andy Fletcher and Vince Clarke, the band currently consists of Gahan and Gore.
Introduction: My name is Dr. Pierre Goyette, I am a enchanting, powerful, jolly, rich, graceful, colorful, zany person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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