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!

NOT ENOUGH LOVE FOR "HALO."

There's that awesome moment when the string swoop right before doubletracked Gahan sings "It will be worth it" that's my favorite DM moment ever.

soooo. any other "Blue Dress" voters?

*crickets*

John Justen, if he sees this thread.

oh by the way: i don't think this has been linked yet. it's definitely worth a read for those who haven't seen it before. Ned's top 136 albums of the '90s. Violator placed second. It's one of my favorite Ned pieces in the entire 136, really does a good job with the album: http://www.netcomuk.co.uk/~tewing/ned/n2.html

Sure, "Halo" is the hidden highlight on that album. It's an absolutely beautiful song, my favourite on the album, and it is often cited as one of the most influential electronic tracks ever.

Blue Dress would be my no.2 vote. The interlude after it is a little gem too; all those strange clicks and whirrs and animal noises bookending a simple organ and vocal harmony piece. Hard to tell but is it Gahan and Gore both singing?

(incidentally: stephen, i can't find that thread anywhere. perhaps it was on the sandbox or something. annoying. sorry.)

enjoy the silence is one of their best and creepiest love songs

Poll closes November 05?! Goddamn why you set these things to run so long.

on the other hand i was listening to "personal jesus" while high the other day and i had a vision of wearing an all-black suit and driving a really fast black motorboat at sunset and generally being bad-ass

TS: Mode vs Cash vs Manson versions.

Just kidding. Cash's is alright I guess. Manson's is the one I have to sing along to on Singstar (but then they brought one out with Enjoy the Silence!!!)

i was listening to "enjoy the silence" while wearing an all-black suit and driving a really fast black motorboat at sunset and generally being bad-ass the other day and had a vision of ... no, this hasn't worked. forget it.

grimly: thx for looking

Absolutely has to be "Policy of Truth".

Policy of Truth doesn't get enough luv

-- Catsupppppppppppppp dude 茄蕃, Monday, October 29, 2007 5:03 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

otm

even though there are so many great songs on this, i picked "policy of truth" because i think the lyrics are the height of gore's sleight of hand morality play and because of the guitar. i think i prefer the beatbox drums on the remix though.

Policy Of Truth.

Always did, always will.

Never again
Is what you swore
The time before

... Perfect.

Among other fine things about that song -- how it ends. Gore's concluding guitar parts are further evidence, as I muttered elsewhere, his ability at performing anti-solos.

Someone should start a Flood-as-producer poll. Certainly this album is the apex, despite considerable achievements. For all the deserved talk about the guitar on Violator, I've always admired how you can't distinguish between guitar and synths -- a tribute to the band and Flood. That's partly what made the three singles so unusual and extraordinary on Top 40 radio.

There was a period of time where I looked for Flood-produced albums, regardless of artist.

Haha yes, me too, or rather all the bands I liked seemed to be involved with him and Alan Wilder. What are these guys up to these days?

Flood's busy as sin. Alan Wilder does occasional Recoil stuff.

Seems like these two guys never really recovered from their early 90's glory days.

Wikipedia has more on Flood. I'm actually terribly amused by the fact he and Moulder worked on the Killer's last abomination of an album, because you just know Brandon Flowers was all "If only I could get them to work for me like they did for Depeche and NIN and the Smashing Pumpkins oh please oh please oh please..." I assume at some point Flood and Moulder exchanged looks of the 'well we can't polish a turd but here goes' variety.

Killers', obviously. Jerry Lee Lewis presumably does not need Flood.

although i for one would love to hear that ...

Who needs to hear the album, I just want to hear the studio chatter outtakes.

"I eat sunuvabitch limeys like you for BREAKFAST!"

oh god I need to buy so many of those albums (probably not The Killers tho)

I see Wilder is now married to Ms. Hallyday...

Damn, I've been talking about Alan Moulder all along!

i had trouble choising between 'halo' and 'world in my eyes'

the former was my initial (and long time favourite). the latter is the track i return to these days the most. i sometimes specifically play it for the 'that's all there is' bit :)

i listened to the whole thing this morning, incidentally, inspired by this thread. good god, it's a work of wonder.

i'm beginning to think i should have voted for "enjoy the silence" because it does approach perfection, but ... nah, i stand by my choice.

I'm listening to it right now!

I am remembering, again, just how much "Personal Jesus" just OWNED the radio -- at least, KROQ -- in 1989 when it first got released. It was Depeche but it was utterly unlike them at the same time, and that stomping beat was the key. Still is!

every time i listen to "personal jesus" i want to be in some kind of action movie

but i stand by "enjoy the silence" because i could write thesis about it

Why because it footnote interstin

the spooky coda of "Personal Jesus" is really the best moment on this record

as far as i can tell, "enjoy the silence" is basically just derrida's essay "violence and metaphysics," but with the opposite opinion. also a better beat and melody.

haha that makes me sound like an asshole. i stand by it.

Glad I'm waiting for the final bump. It's "Halo" at the moment.

My take on "Personal Jesus": Great verse, awful chorus!

John Justen in "not voting for Blue Dress" HI DERE-SHOCKA!

It was really really close though. Voted for "Clean", but it took about 20 minutes to decide between the two. Also, why don't I ever listen to this album anymore?

Because you are INSANE

No, that's not it. John's been insane for years and he used to listen to this album all the time.

Personal Jesus is why I bought this album, but Policy Of Truth is my favorite track… Hmm…

And man, Mog Stunt Team did a great version of PoT.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

surprised so little love for "personal jesus". otherwise happy.

also: i betcha every song in this poll gets at least one vote.
-- stephen, Saturday, October 27, 2007 9:58 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Link

stephen OTM ^^

good point, actually: rare, that. a testament to its brilliance.

even the cover is evocative. i love this album to pieces.

"Blue Dress" deserved more.

The lurkers won. Personally I am happy to see "Personal Jesus" not getting a lot of votes. It's the most "Songs Of Faith And Devotion" sounding song on this album after all.

"There's that awesome moment when the string swoop right before doubletracked Gahan sings "It will be worth it" that's my favorite DM moment ever."

yeah!!

god how fucking good is the sensual mix of "dangerous"?!? that sexy acid riff that snakes around the beat is ridiculous, flood is responsible for this right? or was it francois k? my only complaint is that it should go on for twice as long!

Nearly all the mixes around that time are flawless -- "Kaleid" doesn't get enough love, I think.

does anyone know what synthesizers were used on this record ? some of the sounds they got out of their synths are brilliant.

more and more i am of the opinion that "sweetest perfection" is the best song on this album. lyrics just on the right side of camp so as to be melodramatic as opposed to just angsty, those almost jazz-y brush strokes during the verses and the growling guitar menacing beneath, that fucking orchestral breakdown, martin's voice and the deep satanic backing vocals, dave joining in at the end during the huge swollen swirling outro... it's like some mutant post-industrial broadway number or something. just amazing.

Sweetest Perfection would fit perfectly on the Counterfeit EP. Halo has been my fav. on this album for the last year or so.

"pass undetectedly" rankles somewhat </grammarnazi>

blue dress is my secret crush.

I'm pretty new to this album, and I'm totally addicted to World In My Eyes.

every song's great

i have this on constant rotation on my computer and in my car's tape deck. right now 'Waiting for the Night' is my jam.

I think "Halo" is really underrated.

heard "waiting for the night" on shuffle last night in the middle of a cold night run, it was glorious

Halo's one of my faves too. The production and arrangements on the whole album are so meticulous and forward-looking. I wonder if they were aware of NIN? It reminds me of Pretty Hate Machine in a lot of ways.

This album is front-to-back great; I think the weakest song on it is "Sweetest Perfection" which is a mere 9/10.

Halo.

Loved the video too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCjeEqKWhpE

Halo's the heart of this album for me - not the best track necessarily but the most quintessentially Violator-ish.

^^^ yeah, in some strange way, a lot of the non-single tracks seem to be the most "quintessentially Violator-ish". Maybe that's because the singles are too familiar, or maybe it's because the album tracks are darker and therefore more representative of the album's overall mood.

"blue dress" is my hands-down favorite here

ok that 'halo' video is not what i was expecting.

um, so, i've been thinking about this a lot, and i'm just wondering: does anyone find it REALLY WEIRD that none of these dudes are gay? or at least not out? i mean, really....

as a heterosexual fan of this kind of music: why?

you've got it all wrong -- Martin Gore is a sexual deviant, not a homosexual.

half their songs are about balling chicks and their vids got hot chicks half the time plus they got alot of hot chick fans = red flag obv

OTM:

NOT ENOUGH LOVE FOR "HALO."

There's that awesome moment when the string swoop right before doubletracked Gahan sings "It will be worth it" that's my favorite DM moment ever.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Monday, October 29, 2007 6:08 PM

Seriously, this makes no sense:

Halo 5

meaning it got 5 votes
an eventual fifth Halo video game would make sense

haha

"Never Let Me Down Again" is, like, one of the gayest pop songs ever. an old flame of mine used to do it to the fuckin track, ffs. DM are a bunch of closet cases.

not that this changes the fact that they rule, and i love them more than almost any other musical group of the past 30 years.

me personally: halo > world in my eyes > waiting for the night > policy of truth > enjoy the silence > clean > personal jesus > blue dress > sweetest perfection

this plus de la soul is dead plus goo = the music i learned to drive to

halo + waiting for the night for me
then the singles
then everything else

straight ppl do drugs also, not sure what's gay about 'never let me down again'

Hoping your best friend doesn't let you down again, which is such an odd sentiment (I'll ignore chatter that the "best friend" is a drug metaphor). I've always thought it was a sound in search of a song.

it's awkward and ungainly, despite the awesome mix and arrangement. The lyrics don't sound finished.

and i guess that i just don't know

AS LONG AS I REMEMBER WHO'S WEARING THE TROUSERS.

i dunno, it seems pretty explicit to me. maybe i'm just biased cuz i used to have great sex to that song all the time.

always thought that song was homoerotic

'I'm taking a ride with my best friend' ffs

The swagger of the arrangement is definitely two bros in a car.

I finished my run today with Halo coming on random. Great track and probably my favorite off Violator. Is there a better sounding live recording of that tour than the SF show?

Halo was robbed here. ROBBED.

i love this remix

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8onMJT7Os6g

As another Halo stan I'm looking forward to the Depeche Mode tracks poll in a few weeks

"Halo" is ace, no doubt about that.

I always found it a bit of an also-ran compared to the rest of the album. I just wasn't convinced by the lyrical imagery: "a halo in reverse", "a discomfort in your seat" (time to buy a new armchair?), and those terrible "lips of tragedy". I seem to have warmed to it over the years though and I can't criticise it musically - Alfred is certainly otm about that awesome moment when the string swoop right before doubletracked Gahan sings "It will be worth it".

halo is awesome, the end.

the strings!

"halo", along with the rest of this album, has incredible bass parts.

Happy 25th to "Personal Jesus" in particular.

http://nedraggett.tumblr.com/post/96459898922/as-i-mentioned-in-a-comment-on-facebook-last

I've been "Enjoying" the "Silence" of this band*!

*they're broken up

lol

How is "Blue Dress" not way, way higher?

add another vote to "Halo." have been listening a lot to this album lately.

Probably would've gone 'World In My Eyes'. Nothing approaching a dud on this album though.

Video of their LA concert, 25 years ago today:

http://archives.depechemode.com/video/archives_concert_series/900804_losangeles.html

Unfortunately there are no complete songs, just two minute clips, but still!

i was watching the 'closed circuit feed' clips from Pasadena 88 from the archive site this week. funny seeing the raw footage of that night. Alan Wilder looking a combination of bemused, terrified and thrilled all at once. they look so young too, just like kids almost. no wonder it sent them doolally.

https://vimeo.com/album/2186716/page:2/sort:preset/format:thumbnail

Wonder if the same person recorded Electronic's set from that LA show.

One of the best albums of all time, IMO.

I was at that Los Angeles show. Depeche mode were great, Electronic not so much.

prob the most popular 'modern rock' album for scoring gay pr0n in the '90s

this is my go to for "this thing is so and so many years old but so and so many years before that thomas edison invented the tampon." enjoy the silence my ass. the void is screaming back at you. time is fucked up seriously. there were at least full three cultural cycles in the 1980s by my count but this was barely one and a half cultural cycles ago? the beatles barely got off the plane yet two violators ago. three violators ago people were buying war bonds. this shit was just yesterday.

I've been spending so much time with Spirit this year that I've realised I haven't returned to Violator in a while. Listening to this with that in mind, I'm struck by how different both Gahan's and Gore's voices are now - and not neccessarily for the better either.

Like, Gahan's vocals on Violator are definitely untutored, but the overall sound of his voice is far easier on the ear, I think.

Oh yeah, and I'll always love the way 'Blue Dress' segues into 'Clean' via 'Interlude Nr. 3' ... this is one of those albums where side one is awesome and side two still manages to blow it out of the water.

yeah Gahan's singing is obviously more skilled now but I defintely prefer his old hoarse drone

good god i love "policy of truth"

Yeah, it's probably my favourite track on the album, although it's a tough choice!

This thread inspired me to listen to the whole album end to end for the first time in god knows how long, and Jesus Christ it’s all killer isn’t it? The sound design is so much more detailed than I remember it, a weird collage of familiar 90s presets with textbook Fairlight sampling. And correct me if I’m wrong; but there weren’t many electronic bands at that point embracing 6/8 the way DM did?

Side note: me and a friend covered Policy of Truth for an 8-bit compilation a couple of years back: https://8bitoperators.bandcamp.com/track/policy-of-truth

it really does sound incredible... flood is an iron chef here.
i was thinking about that cascading feedback/e-bowing that closes "policy of truth".. it's an amazing sound and it's mixed so well.

Francois Kervorkian mixed the album and apparently he was really anal about it - there's stories about the band listening in to him mixing and all they can hear is a hi-hat or something and they're thinking "what is he doing!?"

*Kevorkian, sorry.

He also mixed Kraftwerk's Electric Cafe.

Violator is the last good Depeche Mode album

"Kervorkian" is the misspelling they used in the Violator liner notes iirc

ut i stand by "enjoy the silence" because i could write thesis about it

― max, Wednesday, October 31, 2007 1:00 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Why because it footnote interstin

― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, October 31, 2007 1:00 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i sang Policy of Truth at karaoke tonight....the song is just fuckin infectious

xxpost:

Yeah, it's understandable to think that. Violator represents a peak of sorts - the one it was all leading up to, and the one that everything after was in the shadow of. I still think Songs of Faith and Devotion and Ultra are great records, though - and generally see 1984-1998 as one long extended period of greatness. After that, it gets spotty.

As of last week, "Personal Jesus" is now thirty years old.

Your own
Middle-aged
Jesus

I have a good friend, a bit older than me, who used to be at least a casual fan of Depeche Mode throughout the '80s... until Violator! I can't really conceive of that album being the jump-ship point. He reserves a huge hunk of animus for "Personal Jesus," specifically.

There is a subset of DM fandom who went "ew guitars" on that song

That Rich Cotton Dub of Enjoy the Silence is so good.

All discerning Depeche Mode fans bailed after Violator. It was obvious on SoFAD that the band were done creatively and now it was just Junkie Dave thinking he's Jesus and over-singing every song. There's nothing essential released after 1990.

Er... no.

Yeah, that's...wrong.

There is a subset of DM fandom who went "ew guitars" on that song

"...you know there's guitars on "Never Let Me Down Again" and "Behind the Wheel," right?"

"NOT LISTENING!"

I was going to follow up with "these are, of course, the same morons who lose their shit when any given MFTM single pops up" but got distracted

I have a good friend, a bit older than me, who used to be at least a casual fan of Depeche Mode throughout the '80s... until Violator!

display names vmic

they peaked with Speak and Spell

more like peak and pell

lol

I hate the term “bucket list” but this band is one of my top “bucket list” bands to see live

Not that I haven’t had zillions of opportunities!!

All discerning Depeche Mode fans bailed after Violator. It was obvious on SoFAD that the band were done creatively and now it was just Junkie Dave thinking he's Jesus and over-singing every song. There's nothing essential released after 1990.

― brotherlovesdub

This is clearly trolling, and yet it describes my relationship with their music pretty accurately

I can sort of see why someone would think that Depeche Mode didn't do anything worthwhile after violator or that an 80s Depeche Mode fan would not like Personal Jesus, but I can't imagine why a Depeche Mode fan would not like something like World in my Eyes or sweetest perfection

can we post 50 reasons why we love "Halo" like we did in the Tusk thread?

I’ve said this before, but “Halo” is a proper second verse short of greatness.

Thirty years old today.

Happy birthday! The production on this has aged very well.

Yeah it really pops

Still one of the GOATs.

Celebrating the 30th birthday by blasting this today. What an album.

I have nothing bad to say about this album (except maybe ... 'undetectedly'?) Listening to the bonus tracks though makes it all the more remarkable, they are entirely lacking in whatever kind of magic was captured in the album proper.

Totally, the drop in quality is pretty incredible. The album seems to have been born fully formed

"Dangerous" and "Sea of Sin" are two of their best ever b-sides, but it's true that neither would fit on the album proper. They're great songs, but they still can't touch most of Violator.

sea of sun and happiest girl are songs I would place pretty high in my ranking of Depeche Mode tracks, but as mentioned, neither would have fit in this album.

this is almost certainly the album I've listened to the most in my life and while I don't really listen to it that much anymore (I can play it entirely in my head whenever I want) it still holds up surprisingly well

“Dangerous” comes closest to feeling like it could slot in. Then again, I’ve always had that feeling about “Never Let Me Down Again”, too. Production-wise especially, that track sounds like a sonic bridge from the record before.

man this is the best album ever made

It's burned into my brain to the point I barely need to listen to it anymore, but I think this probably is still the best album ever made. I've never really taken to the Violator b-sides though (or many DM b-sides at all)

I don't think I've ever heard a song from this, on the radio, on the stereo, in the car, where it hasn't made me think this could be the best produced and mixed album of all time.

Yeah I'm always struck by how crisp it sounds. Obviously this album has its forebears and influences, but from that standpoint alone you could make an argument for it being the "first nineties album".

It also makes for a very interesting contrast to the previous album, since Music for the Masses was almost scaled to sound like it was echoing in an arena, not that they were there yet. But there's a lot of reverb, echo etc. throughout, a thick-sounding release for lack of a better term. Whereas Violator clicks out of the gate and you can always hear the space in each song, for the most part.

Absolutely. I'd say that one of the things I always struggled with on Music For The Masses (only in relative terms - it's obviously a great album) is that the sound of it made it feel quite distant for precisely the reasons you identify - as compared to the "up close" sleazy intimacy of Violator.

To be fair, if you were up close to “Never Let Me Down Again” all of the skin would be blasted off of your body

Why here's Dave shedding some skin now in just that circumstance:

https://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/dm-rose-bowl-101.jpg

help i'm addicted to listening to violator

since Music for the Masses was almost scaled to sound like it was echoing in an arena, not that they were there yet.

they were already playing arenas on the Black Celebration tour!

Hmm, fair. Stadia, then.

The Perfecto mix of "Never Let Me Down Again" solves my intimacy problems.

I'll add another vote to the movement making Violator among the best mixed of albums. The guitars, keyboards, and vocals get discrete spaces yet sound as if they could turn into each other -- not even Achtung Baby sounded like this.

er, Split Mix of NLMDA, I meant.

I loved it as a cassette in my Ford Escort then, I love it on fancy-schmancy speakers now

not even Achtung Baby sounded like this.

It's funny, because not long after I posted I started thinking of other candidates and I briefly considered "Achtung." And of course that is an impeccably made album (one that clearly had an influence on subsequent Depeche, and everyone else, too), but it has the benefit of a kind of at times intentionally blurry, imprecise shoegazing element to it. Whereas "Violator," yeah, it's just got such a perfect sense of space. Everything is exactly where it needs to be, and yet it's never static. It's electronic, but so alive. Things are bouncing around, moving, the balance of low end and treble is astounding, things sit and float and pierce right where they need to, at the exact right time and place, and it's never distractingly dense with information. Flood is a genius, of course, but François Kevorkian was no slouch.

I think New Order got it with PC&L, or Simple Minds on New Gold Dream

Achtung Baby sounds very much like the album you make if you’re hip to both the precision of Violator and the blurriness of shoegazer/early grunge and want to pay tribute to both at once.

I remember that in an interview with Alan Wilder, in the Violator era, he commented that he had come to dislike the use of reverb, "because of the distancing effect it gives". So that sensibility was probably what lead to the unusual tautness of the album's sound.

agree that Violator is one of the cleanest, best-mixed albums I've ever heard, but it's also one of the best albums I've ever heard. MftM's reverb works too though, to different effect

It's curious that this record does sound so good, because the hallmark of their earlier records was cheap and junky sonics.

It's also curious that it sounds better than a lot of records sound today!

Flood is a genius. This album and Technique are the two best examples of "band goes digital" imo

I do know what you mean but it's very odd to me to say a the band that did all of the singles from "Everything's Gone Green" on "went digital" on a subsequent album

... or indeed, that a band that was using a Synclavier in 1983 only "went digital" in 1990. If anything, Violator saw a reemergence of their interest in analog synths, for basslines in particular.

for MftM, didn’t they intentionally seek out the dude that did songs from the big chair?

did = produced

When I say "band goes digital", I don't just mean sound sources so much as workflow. Pre-Technique New Order sounds light years away from Technique to my ears (same goes for Junk Culture and to a lesser extent, Very). I'm not particularly sure about "how DM worked in studio"-- Violator's sound sources sound largely analog, and I know that Vince (at the very least) was extremely resistant to using MIDI-based forms of composition, and preferred polyphonic CV-transmitting objects-- (who knows what cross-pollination in process there was between 90s DM and Vince, obv). Nevertheless Violator is the first DM album that sounds, conspicuously, to me, composed with digital sequencers. I could be wrong, just intuiting a process based on what I'm hearing

I parsed what you meant and got it, hence "I do know what you mean"; it was just meant to be a funny aside

“Technique” was the next album that came to mind when thinking about how well “Violator” is mixed.

I think I read an article once where Vince was bemoaning "MIDI stutter"-- that is, the fact that his ears were allergic to the non-synchronicity of sequential MIDI events. So, like, even using MIDI to control analog synths didn't work for him, so he sought out (and maybe even collaborated in the design of?) polyphonic CV boxes. Ironic then that "A Little Respect" is one of the most digital-sounding songs I've ever heard (and in general I don't really get along with Erasure's sound world at all)

Marianne Faithfull’s “Broken English” for some reason just popped into my head as well, but that doesn’t really fit the digital mode.

The starkest dip in quality re: "moving to digital" is ofc OMD who immediately went from "this is the best album ever" to "turn that shit off" and it took them til 2010 to go back to analog

Jean-Michel Jarre's relationship to analog-vs-digital is hugely interesting to me, the early low-bitrate MPC sound of "Zoolook" developing into full-tilt General MIDI Mike Postism ("Cousteau", "Chronologie")

Anyway, I bought the Violator vinyl reissue and it sounds great, listened to it this morning :)

mm I guess JMJ was using Fairlight, not MPC, similar idea tho

A JMJ quote (VMIC) that has always stayed with me, re: analog/digital, from around 1988 or so: "Do you want the girl who wears too much makeup, or the girl sliced into tiny pieces?" Something like that, anyway...

Which Erasure stuff did Flood produce? Pretty sure it was pre-Violator, but could be a good point of comparison.

Wonderland, no?

I think of so many albums I love as random but there's definitely through lines across the decades when you look at producers... Peter Walsh, John Fryer, John Leckie, Flood, etc.

Ross Robinson

for MftM, didn’t they intentionally seek out the dude that did songs from the big chair?

Dave Bascombe and yup, very intentionally. Incredibly good call! They had an excellent run with Miller and then Gareth Jones before that point, and it was a good switch and step up to try something further. (And I mean, if you're Jones and your last album with them is Black Celebration, you can definitely relax and think "Yeah, job well done.")

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’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