Violator!

Voted "Halo" btw, although like most Depeche albums this one is crowded with gems.

17 years later and I still can't figure out why "Sea of Sin" didn't make the proper tracklist. O wellz! "World in My Eyes" it is then!

"Sea Of Sin" may not even have been written yet by the time of the album's release. "Dangerous", however, is one of their best ever b-sides.

Would have been fun to write the book. And maybe one day I will.

Oh my. Most difficult poll yet.

http://thugradio.net/violator.jpg

http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/v/viol8r2.jpg

every song is a winner; i voted "Blue Dress" favorite, for personal reasons.

also: i betcha every song in this poll gets at least one vote.

- Yo, Miss Thing!
- Yo Merisa, what's up?
- You heard what happened at the Donut Hill the other night? - Yo I
was there and those De La kids was fighting, yo they was wildin'.
- Word man?
- Word, the whole thing happened in front of my face, yo, they was on
the dance floor, right, some kid stepped up to
them and said something about hippies, then punks, and the chubby one,
Plug Three?
- Yeah. Plug Three, yeah I know him.
- All right, Plug Three, all right, he walked up to this kid, hit him
real quick, think he didn't when he did, and then them
other kids the Jungle Brothers and Quest and, um, what's the other
ones, the other ones?
- The Violators.
- The Violators, right, right, throwing chairs, and they didn't care
who they was hitting, you think they wasn't?
- Yeah. I know, I thought it was supposed to be about peace signs,
things like that, you know...

Policy Of Truth

can't stp myself going for enjoy the silence...

I voted for "Clean" because I was in the mood for it, but normally I probably would have voted for something else. Not sure what.

unjustly praised song: Failure's cover of "Enjoy the Silence" which is utterly bested by the original.

agree/disagree?

"waiting for the night" ... it was between that and "enjoy the silence", but that seems a bit obvious, and i remember thinking WFTN was the most awesome thing i'd ever heard when i was 15. (and, indeed, trying to convince my jazz'n'blues-lovin' dad of the same. he wasn't convinced.)

i've had a discussion with ned about the "ping" noise at the end of "enjoy the silence", and about the "cru-ci-fied" interlude, so there must be some other violatin' thread going on here ...

Might have just been on a general Depeche thread, of which there are tons.

"Enjoy the Silence" one of my favorite songs ever. That song still gets played on the radio in Chicago all the time.

This is a good album, but not-so-good compared to Depeche Mode's earlier output. I think I like every single album they released before this one more.

even "a broken frame"?

(which i've recently rediscovered and think is wonderful. but i feel i'm alone in that.)

ESPECIALLY "A Broken Frame," which features some of their best songs AND their best instrumental.

All that you're saying
The games that you're playing

I think part of the reason "A Broken Frame" gets slagged off so much is that it doesn't work as an album like their later releases. It's more a loose collection of songs. Construction Time Again avoids this by being more or less a concept album; after that they played around enough with song textures & transitions to be a true album band as well as a singles band. But the songs on "A Broken Frame" are fantastic.

Hide what you have to hide, and tell what you have to tell.

"A Broken Frame" is OK, I guess.

I mean, I love all of their 80s output, and if there is one DM 80s album that is slightly overrated then "Music Is The Masses" is the one (their second worst album, only beaten by the U2/NIN-wannabe-album "Songs Of Faith And Devotion").

But "A Broken Frame" is slightly to shizo to be perfect in my book. The "dark" tracks are great, "The Meaning of Love" and "Photograph" are not.

Btw. I have now had the chance to hear the surround mixes, and they are fantastic. Particularly the ones for "Black Celebration", "Violator" and "Exciter".

"Photograph" is one of the weaker tracks on ABF but I still like it just fine. I'm kinda biased wrt stuff like "The Meaning of Love" because I spent much of my first year w/my current driving around listening to "Catching Up With Depeche Mode" and so all the cute early singles make me happy.

*w/my current gf

i've had a discussion with ned about the "ping" noise at the end of "enjoy the silence"
-- grimly fiendish, Sunday, October 28, 2007 5:00 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Link

i for one would absolutely *love* to read this.
anyone have a link? Ned? grimly?

come on guys!

i accidentally voted for enjoy the silence but should have voted 'policy of truth', i can't switch it though!

"Enjoy The Silence" is one of those rare Utterly Perfect Songs® and I had to vote for it, as much as I love about five other songs from this album.

I think I went with "Halo" last night but I want to change it to "Enjoy the Silence" now, argh.

"Enjoy The Silence' is awkward, bewildered romanticism on a par with some of the best New Order songs.

"Enjoy The Silence" is way better than anything ever made by New Order (not that I have anything against New Order either).

No, not better, I said "on a par with" ferchrissakes.

I'm going to wait for the final bump on this, I think. It's 'Clean' today, but will be something else tomorrow.

"enjoy the silence" is DM-do-NO and, while i love it, doesn't even come close to the great hewn-from-diamond NO moments.

somewhere i've got a massively lengthy mix of it on a cassette single, which is awe-inspiring.

"Enjoy The Silence" is one of those rare Utterly Perfect Songs®

my feelings exactly.

the sasha & digweed trance mix ain't bad.

Listening to "Enjoy the Silence" on Top 40 radio in the summer of '90 reminded me what "Like A Prayer" did to me the year before: it was filthy and utterly awesome.

I think part of the reason "A Broken Frame" gets slagged off so much is that it doesn't work as an album like their later releases. It's more a loose collection of songs. Construction Time Again avoids this by being more or less a concept album; after that they played around enough with song textures & transitions to be a true album band as well as a singles band. But the songs on "A Broken Frame" are fantastic.

I think this is exactly right.

BTW: "Waiting For The Night" is my vote but it was almost "Blue Dress" or "Policy of Truth". I'm guessing if one song doesn't get a vote, it will be "Sweetest Perfection".

A couple of years ago it would have been "Clean". Now I think I'll go with "Waiting for the Night". I fear that "World in my Eyes" will be overlooked, but it is an amazing opener.

I have to be predictable and vote for "Enjoy the Silence". You know, because it's one of my top two or three favourite songs ever.

"Sweetest Perfection" is definitely the ugly duckling here, but as the stopgap between two incredible singles, it works. They got the sequencing perfect with this one. Slot it anywhere else, and it hurts the album quite noticeably.

Sweetest Perfection is grebt! I used to think halo was a bit meh but really it's all good. No unfavourites on this album at all.

Policy of Truth doesn't get enough luv

^^^^^^^^ true

That reminds me I need to download NO's "Republic"...

wow. tough poll. was leaning towards 'clean' but in the end went with 'enjoy the silence' - it really IS one of those perfect songs.

and for those who haven't seen the new re-issue companion DVDs, the guys clearly didn't have a lot of love for 'a broken frame'. martin was quite frank about it being his least favourite DM album. however daniel miller was right - 'sun & the rainfall' is a killer track, neatly tucked away at the end of the album...

Sweetest Perfection is grebt!

It is, but I don't know a single person who wouldn't put at least one other song on the album ahead of it.

So many of the songs on A Broken Frame are really great in isolation (ESPECIALLY "The Sun and the Rainfall" and "Shouldn't Have Done That") but listening to that whole album at once really makes my skin crawl.

it's really only "a photograph of you" that upsets me about ABF. the rest of it -- all of it -- i love. yes, even "see you". and TS&TR is just blinding, yes.

agree with ledge: there's not a moment on this album that is less than wonderful. maybe i should have gone with "enjoy the silence" after all ... but it's bound to win, and i really do think "waiting for the night" is the pivotal track.

I wanted to vote "Enjoy the Silence," but couldn't bring myself to do it when half the arrangement is just a reworking of "Stripped."

As this has become almost as much a "Broken Frame" thread as a "Violator" one, just let me add that "Leave In Silence" and "Nothing To Fear" are both absolutely and totally ace!

I’d say Wilder is at the very least 50% responsible for Violator’s sound. It’s a shame the guy can’t write a tune cause his sound vision is really amazing.

I used to think it was very bold of DM to use a different producer on each album from MftM up to Playing the Angel. Which is almost true but for years I simply assumed SoFaD was a different producer than Violator. remarkable how different those two albums sound given it was the same producer

Bascombe had a fantastic run from 85 to 87, in between ..Big Chair and MFTM he made It's Immaterial's Life's Hard And Then You Die. It's a brilliant record but they were pretty damn lucky getting him looking back, maybe he owed someone a favour.

Watching the documentary that came with the 25th anniversary reissues for the first time and I suspect that François Kevorkian has a lot to do with the sense of space on this album. Gore talks about him spending 2 days mixing a hi-hat. I was then reading about the 5.1 remasters and it mentioned that it had been complicated to separate some of the sounds used as FK had used multiple delays on “waiting for the night”

I’d always thought that Flood had been mainly responsible for the production, but it also sounds like FK’s mixing was integral to the process.

Off the back of that I had the CD on and my copy is skipping so I thought I’d google and see if it had been released digitally on some hi def format. I wouldn’t have objected to buying some 24 bit lossless file but it doesn’t look like Mute have released any.

OOF!(check out the music))

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCgdWHwEnrg

Which is funny because if anything it's Roxy/Bryan Ferry who is a throughline in the actual documentary (very deft uses of "The 'In' Crowd" and "Manifesto")

Oh! I must watch that, the trailer looked fantastic.

thinking about how strange it is that this album has had a pretty limited influence on synthpop revival stuff of the last two decades, pretty everything seems to draw much more on earlier 80s synthpop?

like it's the sort of album a band could surely have a whole career ripping off but ... ?

Musically, I feel it had a huge influence on the sharper, more industrial side of things; a lot of the '80s stuff people reference is softer and mushier, and besides, this album isn't an '80s album, and the band has plenty of more traditional synthpop from which people can draw. I do, however, feel Depeche Mode has become a pretty prominent songwriting influence, so they're still in the DNA of a lot of backwards-looking stuff.

Oh my @ some of these poll results. Blue Dress robbed at gunpoint. Talk about the sweetest perfection.

Violator is so sophisticated and slick, it seems harder to "borrow" from than earlier, simpler synth pop.

Musically, I feel it had a huge influence on the sharper, more industrial side of things

oh yeah certainly, just that this album has such a distinct & perfect balance of things that i'm a little surprised there isn't more that's trying to capture the same sort of sound

Even Depeche Mode have struggled to recreate it!

It reminds me of how there aren’t many pet shop boys imitators taking on “behaviour”

Maybe it’s the songs that are difficult to recreate, though? Couple of tracks I don’t remember so well but iirc it’s wall-to-wall bangers.

Songs Of Faith.. was probably more influential than Violator (on NIN, Marilyn Manson, Garbage, etc?)

yeah its influence is way more obvious, though i've read that the influence goes both ways & they were into NIN when making it as well?

They were def. into NIN by then. "Rush" is the most obvious one. Of course "Pretty Hate Machine" was released in 1989, and also produced by Flood, just prior to "Violator," so chances are good they heard it pretty early and it might have made an impression. But then of course, "Pretty Hate Machine" clearly owes a lot to Depeche Mode.

Pretty Hate Machine is Depeche plus late 80s Ministry and that’s why it rules.

My god, it's full of samples

https://dmlive.wiki/wiki/List_of_Depeche_Mode_sample_sources_by_album/Violator

Hmm, at first I was surprised, but most of those samples are just kind of manipulated library sources, or otherwise just literally samples, in that a lot of the sounds weren't necessarily programmed or designed from scratch. Still pretty cool to learn, thanks! And yeah, some of the actual samples incorporated into this masterpiece are as inspired as they are invisible. Toni Halliday! Alan Moulder didn't engineer or mix "Violator," though, and I'm not sure they were a couple yet, so is that just a coincidence that she was (literally) in the mix?

It reminds me of how there aren’t many pet shop boys imitators taking on “behaviour”

true

xp yeah loads of emu library sounds but a few very interesting sources in amongst them - especially the uses of fleetwood mac, kraftwerk, and the bulgarian state female voice choir.

Very interesting to me too, a lot more samples of popular music than I expected

In which I once again exclaim that goddamn this album is a sonic miracle. Just impeccable.

It's so fucking good.

Pretty Hate Machine is Depeche plus late 80s Ministry and that’s why it rules.

― Ned Raggett, Monday, August 16, 2021 10:56 AM (three

NED you goddamn genius.

I watched the enjoy the silence video and remembered what it felt like heating that in eighth grade and yes I will follow you Dave through the mountains in your cape whatever the whole thing is perfect lfg.

That should have said that I watched it recently.

I can’t remember the exact shot, but there was a scene from that video that I so desperately wanted on a shirt 10 years or so ago.

It’s interesting that possibly the greatest synth pop album is made way after the consensus peak years of the movement

idk technique only came out a year prior

Hahah yeah Enjoy the Silence (and World in my Eyes) conjures so vividly the vibe of a personal time and place - 1990, listening to KROQ in my mom's car on the way to 8th grade. No other song has such a Madeleine de Proust effect on me

It’s interesting that possibly the greatest synth pop album is made way after the consensus peak years of the movement

That period at the turn of the 90s is so interesting for that reason - as you say, the synthpop moment had passed but the some of the survivors of that period really levelled up and produced their best work. I'm also thinking Pet Shop Boys with Behaviour, even (though not part of the British wave) Mylene Farmer with L'Autre?

_Pretty Hate Machine is Depeche plus late 80s Ministry and that’s why it rules.

― Ned Raggett, Monday, August 16, 2021 10:56 AM (three_


NED you goddamn genius.

One of the things I appreciate most about Violator is that Depeche seemed to be the best analog band to transition into digital and make it shine.

yes otm with behavior, what’s strange to me is I’m pretty sure I read that they/faltermeyer used a ton of analogue equipment on that one but it sure sounds state of the art

otm. Violator and Behaviour have a sonic richness that sets them apart from their contemporaries.

Tennant and Lowe have admitted they listened closely to Violator while recording. They even picked up a couple ideas, i.e. Tennant's twang guitar.

You get a sense that both acts really have figured out how to use the studio with intent. I'd argue Depeche slightly more so; even as early as Construction Time Again with Wilder first on board they were absolutely leaning into trying to explicitly fuck around with sound and samples above and beyond simply seeing what their synths could do.

One of the things I appreciate most about Violator is that Depeche seemed to be the best analog band to transition into digital and make it shine.

Ironically, once everything went totally digital, that's when DM started grunging it up with more murky lo-fi sounds.

Yeah very true

I’m pretty sure I read that they/faltermeyer used a ton of analogue equipment on that one but it sure sounds state of the art

Faltermeyer brought in his Moog System 15 for the bass sounds - as he had done on "Axel F"! - but his Synclavier, the cutting edge at the time, is very prominent in the arrangements too. So it's the best of both worlds.

another thing in common - “world in my eyes” and “being boring” are two of the greatest openers ever, like they’re so good it would be disrespectful not to keep listening

Too bad they never did an acoustic version

Unplugged with bongos.

enjoy the bongos

there’s an acoustic version of Personal Jesus on the b-side

there should be a song called "there’s an acoustic version of Personal Jesus on the b-side" by Robbie

Assuming these are done with AI but some of them actually sound pretty good

"Violator, if it was recorded in the 1950s"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vt69FeFz-ko

Enjoy the Silence is juuust about to hit 1B plays on Spotify.

How much will that have earned Martin? £1.20?