Depeche Mode - A Broken Frame

I think this album is an incoherent mess but there some absolutely brilliant songs on it.

I voted "Nothing to Fear." The instrumentals are always important to look for on Depeche Mode albums b/c they sort of highlight the evolution of the band's approach to sound, from Casiotone/analog to analog/samplers to samplers/digital to softsynth. This is my favorite Depeche instrumental. Alan Wilder is one of my favorite producers/arrangers ever, but I'm glad Depeche Mode had an album where Martin Gore's martian genius could shine in its truest form.

I used to think it was an incoherent mess, but then I realized it's a supremely kickass incoherent mess.

I was always partial to "Satellite".

my monument ... it fell down. that, and everything passes when you wear glasses o_0

perhaps my favorite obscure depeche mode non-hit.

"The Sun and the Rainfall" = secret brilliance.

"Nothing To Fear". Love "Leave In Silence" too though.
(Well, in fact I love most of them)

curt1s, you rule :)

i listened the fuck out of this last year. nothing to fear is indeed immense but the sun & the rainfall is up there with the best things they ever did. so: that.

Really, other than some of the moody pieces on "Ultra", I don't like other Depeche Mode instrumentals much, but I love "Nothing To Fear".

I haven't heard any of these songs, but ... what a great sleeve

Alan Wilder is one of my favorite producers/arrangers ever

heartbomb

Hmmm. I'd be letting myself down if I didn't vote for "See You" on this one, I think :)

(though I equally love "Leave in Silence" and "My Secret Garden" and even "Monument")

but ... what a great sleeve

Sure it is. It is IMO one of the most beautiful sleeves ever. A fantastic photo, no less!

According to the documentary on the DVD version, it won an award for album sleeve of the year back then.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

"Leave In Silence" is my pick, it has been a long, long time since i have heard this...

What a weird album, so hodge-podgy. And even weirder is that I think the album is consistently good! (But I'll pass on "A Photograph of You" haha.) Voted for "See You", but "Leave in Silence" and "Nothing to Fear" are close behind. I love the long intro from the album version of "Leave in Silence".

Middle section of "Shouldn't Have Done That".

And yes, what a terrific cover shot it is.

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

3. Monument 1

;_;

;______________________________________________;

Monument was my other pick

My Secret Garden was my other other pick

etc.

"Shouldn't Have Done That" is really brilliant

i listened to this today on the way in to work. it really is such an underrated album: "photograph" aside, everything on it is borderline glorious at the very worst.

I love the long intro from the album version of "Leave in Silence"

this is only on the US version, isn't it? (i have both UK and US, because i'm sad.) but yes, it makes a great song awesome. first time i heard it, i assumed it was an long-after-the-fact remix: there's some almost-acid sound in there.

i think this really works well as an album up until the first few songs on side two. they should've dropped "photograph of you" and began side two with "now this is fun". then it would be pretty much perfect. saying that, it is also my favourite depeche mode album.

as individual songs though i can't think of one i wouldn't want to listen to at some point in time.

i love how "shouldn't have done that" sounds like something from a 1960s psyche album, like odyssey and oracle or something.

"see you" is one of the best singles of the 80s imo

there's something so melancholic and earnest and endearing about this era of depeche mode that i can't seem to find in much other synth pop of the time. the closest is omd, but there is still something a little austere and aloof in their songs. there's just a real warmth and humanity in this album that stems as much from martin gore's songwriting and dave gahan's youthful singing as it does the beautiful ppg wave 2.0 keyboard tones

anyone care to recommend some synth pop in the same vein? from any era...

add to that the two yazoo albums of course

the synths in this record are just so crystalline and pristine

"Photograph Of You" would have fitted perfectly into "Speak & Spell", but I agree it doesn't really fit into "A Broken Frame".

np "oberkorn (it's a small town) (development mix)"

this could've been an interlude on violator!

i still think that "monument" is one of their best little-known songs ... silly lyrics and all.

there's something so melancholic and earnest and endearing about this era of depeche mode that i can't seem to find in much other synth pop of the time.

OTM -- not to mention in comparison to DM from some great reward onwards. comparing the two DM eras, it's like discovering that some mousy-looking girl you vaguely knew is secretly a dominatrix.

"monument" is brilliant. that and "satellite" make me think martin gore must've been listening to some dancehall at the time

"see you" is one of the best singles of the 80s songs ever imo

leave in silence. the lead synth work. ooo.

bummer about 'the meaning of love' languishing all the way down there with nary a vote. that track soars in its simplicity, lyrically and otherwise. really tuneful too.

Bummer about the tiny number of votes in the poll, TBH.

anyone care to recommend some synth pop in the same vein? from any era...

Talk Talk's debut album has kind of the same kind of melancholic minor key mood, although you'd struggle to find something that sounds exactly like "A Broken Frame".

ministry "with sympathy" comes close at moments.

still the best depeche mode album

Um, disagree. But I did replace my ancient cassette copy recently and found ABF to have stood up well for the synth-pop it is. Lyrically, though, it doesn't hit my buttons like it did when I was full of teen angst.

Martin Gore produced this album right? The synth sounds on this album are amazingly lush. It's a shame Depeche Mode got so distracted by samplers that they couldn't find the time to put together dinky FM bell orchestras over their songs anymore.

But there were no FM synths in 1982, right?

Besides, the two most recent Depeche albums have had analogue synths all over.

i think the main synth used on this album was the ppg wave 2.0, a digital synth known for it's crystal clear bell sounds.

pretty daniel miller produced though. i remember reading an interview recently where they talk about leaving most of the analog synth programming up to him once vince left

just now listening to this for the first time ever. shouldn't have put it off. i'm absolutely loving it!

one of those days when you hear something that scratches an itch you didn't realize you had

Always thought this one was a mixed bag, albeit a mixed bag with a lot of naive charm. While I'll never like, say, 'Satellite', there's still one or two tracks here I find myself returning to: 'The Sun & The Rainfall' is the best song here for me by a country mile, but I still find 'See You' incredibly pretty. 'Leave In Silence' pretty much announces the direction that Depeche Mode would take and develop upon on subsequent releases - and it's the first track on the record!

This album is all about "The Sun & the Rainfall" and "Shouldn't Have Done That"; everything else is either okay or something I find actively irritating.

I remember hearing 'Shouldn't Have Done That' for the first time, and the vocal harmonies reminded me of Simon & Garfunkel for some reason(!)

listening to this for the first time in a while and I love it more than ever

the synth and drum machine sounds are so good on this album. before they started using samplers heavily, before Alan Wilder got fully on board, even then they were making the most immaculate sounds.

I guess a lot of that has to do with Daniel Miller, though.

Yeah... I, too, love the sounds that the band and Daniel Miller got on those first two Depeche Mode albums, and I've always been fond of the electronic snare sound on those albums too.

I will always love 'The Sun & The Rainfall' from this album, and I think 'See You' is better than most people remember it being, even if it isn't much the darker Depeche of later years.

I don't know how many of you are aware of this, but Marsheaux have released an album covering the entirety of A Broken Frame, it's on Spotify now!

http://static2.actualidadmusica.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/a-broken-frame-dm.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQstBl__3As

^ Did anyone get around to hear that, by the way?

*hearing

Yeah, I played that a lot; enjoyed it more than the original album

I enjoyed how they re-worked some of 'em: slowing down 'A Photograph Of You', and quite liked what they did with 'Satellite', 'Monument', 'Shouldn't Have Done That' etc.