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Black Celebration
1986 studio album by Depeche Mode From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Black Celebration is the fifth studio album by the English electronic music band Depeche Mode, released on 17 March 1986 by Mute Records. The album's co-producer Daniel Miller devised "a plan to capture the essence of the dark works" that Martin Gore created because Martin Gore had no intention of compromising the mood that his demos had set. Miller and Gareth Jones produced the album to be more like an environment rather than a collection of songs. Their production created "a tech-noir future dystopia" that "glitters of gloom".[4]
The album was promoted by the singles "Stripped", "A Question of Lust", and "A Question of Time". In the US, "But Not Tonight" was released as a single instead of "Stripped". In support of the album, Depeche Mode embarked on the five-month-long Black Celebration Tour across Europe, North America and Japan, which ran from early to mid-1986.
Black Celebration reached number four on the UK Albums Chart, and has been cited as one of the most influential albums of the 1980s.[5] Three years after its release, Spin ranked it at number 15 on its "25 Greatest Albums of All Time" list.[6]
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Background
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After touring through July 1985 in support of their previous album,[7] Depeche Mode released two non-album singles, "Shake the Disease" and "It's Called a Heart" in April and September 1985, and their US and UK labels released the compilation albums Catching Up with Depeche Mode and The Singles 81→85 in those regions, respectively, at the end of 1985. In starting to work on the new album, producer Daniel Miller stated that he "was a bit frustrated because [he] couldn't get the guys to think about working in different ways." Miller had wanted the band to attend the studio every day to work on the production to "live the album", wanting "a kind of intensity".[8]
With regard to the recording processes and song formation, samples were yet again at the forefront of the sound. Gareth Jones stated that they would always use their own samples and tried to avoid using samples from other sources. For example, the opening title track initially was to have samples of Winston Churchill saying "A brief period of rejoicing" because they enjoyed "that idea of a brief moment of rejoicing." However, instead of sampling Churchill saying it, they had Miller say the quote instead.[9] He said that, though they admired hip hop, they had no desire to sample in the same fashion. "We didn't want to collage other people's work and drop it into Martin's songs. We used samplers to grab real sounds from the real world to make sure our samples were original." On the song "Fly on the Windscreen", Jones recalled: "You can hear a rather young sounding Daniel again saying 'over and done with.' The breath sample noise at the start is interesting too."[10] On Alan Wilder's website, he stated that these "breath samples" were in fact Miller saying "'horse' repeatedly, very fast."[11]
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Critical reception
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Contemporaneous reviews for Black Celebration in the British press were mixed. Melody Maker's Steve Sutherland lambasted the album and wrote that Depeche Mode came off as "pussycats desperate to appear perverted as an escape from the superficiality of teen stardom"[22] and Sounds published a similarly scathing review,[23] while criticizing chief songwriter Martin Gore's "adolescent fragments of despair",
Sean O'Hagan of NME nonetheless praised Black Celebration's "perfectly constructed jigsaw melodies" and concluded, "When the songs address topics other than the composer's state of mind – as on the evocative exploration of loneliness that is 'World Full of Nothing' – Depeche Mode sound like a lot more than just a high tech, low-life melodrama."[24] Betty Page of Record Mirror felt that the band should be admired for their "refusal to follow anything but their own fashion" and "unswerving ability to come up with great, fresh melodies."[18]
Black Celebration has since been reappraised in retrospective reviews. In 2007, Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone referred to the album as an "instant classic for the band's fans" that at the time of its release had seemingly been "utterly ignored by everybody else."[19] Bandmate Andy Fletcher recognised that it was a "classic Depeche Mode fan favourite" among their albums in The Singles 86>98 Electronic Press Kit, saying "a collection of songs on there that's absolutely fantastic."[25]
Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails cited Black Celebration, and its subsequent tour, as an influence and said it helped inspire him to write the album Pretty Hate Machine, saying "DM was one of our favorite bands and the Black Celebration record took my love for them to a new level."[26]
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Tour
The Black Celebration Tour began with a UK leg, starting in Oxford, England in late March 1986 and finishing a month later in London.[27] A European leg continued from April through May, followed by a North American and Japanese leg in June and July that concluded with three shows in Japan.[27] In August, the tour began a second run of European shows, starting in Fréjus, France.[27] The group performed additional dates in France and two shows in Italy before wrapping up the tour in Copenhagen in mid-August 1986.[27]
Book of Love joined the tour as the opening act on 29 April in Hanover, West Germany, and continued for the rest of the first European leg and throughout all tour dates of the North American leg (ending on 15 July).[28]
Re-release
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In 2007, Black Celebration was re-released with a bonus DVD. It was released on 20 March 2007 in the United States, on 26 March in the United Kingdom and on 2 April in the rest of Europe, as a part of the third wave of reissues (along with Construction Time Again). The first CD was remastered and (except in the United States) released as a CD/SACD hybrid. The bonus DVD includes the album's B-sides in addition to the singles and B-sides for "Shake the Disease" and "It's Called a Heart", two singles released in the interim between Some Great Reward and Black Celebration. The reissue also includes several live versions of some of the songs from Black Celebration. The album is released as originally intended and ends with "New Dress" (not "Black Day" or "But Not Tonight").
As with the other reissues, the accompanying DVD includes a documentary film. The film's title, The Songs Aren't Good Enough, There Aren't Any Singles and It'll Never Get Played on the Radio, is a quote from the film in which Martin Gore paraphrases Daniel Miller's reaction to the album's early demos. The documentary includes much detail about the making of the album, its singles and the ensuing tour. Other highlights include the band meeting the Cure and behind-the-scenes footage of several of the music videos.
The remastered album was released on vinyl on 2 April 2007 in Europe and on 11 September 2007 in the United States.
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Track listing
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All tracks are written by Martin L. Gore, except where noted. All lead vocals by Dave Gahan, except where noted.
2007 Collectors Edition (CD + DVD)
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Personnel
Depeche Mode
Technical
- Depeche Mode – production
- Gareth Jones – production
- Daniel Miller – production
- Richard Sullivan – engineering assistance
- Peter Schmidt – engineering assistance
- Tim Young – mastering
- Dave Allen – recording on "Fly on the Windscreen – Final"
- Phil Tennant – recording assistance on "Fly on the Windscreen – Final"
Artwork
- Martyn Atkins – design
- David A. Jones – design
- Mark Higenbottam – design
- Brian Griffin – photography
- Stuart Graham – photography assistance
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Charts
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Certifications
References
External links
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