Number one for seven weeks from 11th July 1981
The camera on Top Of The Pops focuses on Simon Bates. He appears to be about to go into some kind of public announcement for the benefit of families at home, standing on command. Bates as a broadcaster never seemed to know how to express excitement for music, news or ideas, instead clinging purely to a Reithian idea of mature gravitas. His Bisto brown voice, perfect for piracy warnings on VHS rental tapes, also loaned their authority to subjects as diverse as teenage lost love and the unexpected death of partners on his “Our Tunes” segment, or occasionally irritated disappointment about an irresponsible act (such as the KLF trying to “ruin it for everyone else” at the Brit Awards).
In this case, he tells us that he’s going to introduce us to a new group. The last single of theirs, “Dreaming Of Me”, didn’t do “all that it might” (he sounds slightly pained as he says this) but this time it’s going to be different. That feels like a threat more than a promise, as if he’s almost daring us not to buy the record. It’s strange he should care so much – whatever else you want to say about Bates, he rarely threw his lot behind new bands.
It’s stranger still that the band he should pick would be Depeche Mode. On the surface, they were an unpromising long-term proposition. Despite press acclaim and a rapidly growing fanbase, Mode seemed inherently flawed, hemmed in by their limitations. While other synth-pop bands like Soft Cell, The Human League and Ultravox had major label budgets and carefully controlled imagery, Depeche were cash-strapped teenagers from Basildon on an indie label. They looked like New Romantics, but they weren’t carefully coiffured like Steve Strange or threateningly feminine like Phil Oakey, appearing more like hyperactive fashion students grabbing the first clothes they could afford off the sales rails. On their debut “Top Of The Pops” performance, you get the sense that they’re all trying to suppress grins (Vince Clarke is noticeably failing at points) and there’s a twitchy, antsy energy to them. Gary Numan performing “Are Friends Electric” this isn’t.
Their sound, too, lacked the gloss or technological sophistication of “Tainted Love” or “Don’t You Want Me”. Those songs showed that synthesisers could be used to portray heartbreak and complicated emotions in an eerie, detached and timelessly relatable way – anyone who is in the early throes of a painful break-up can probably relate more to the ominous digital backing of “Tainted Love” than the organic earnestness of one of Abba’s finest ballads (which tend to be the kind of resigned thing you turn to when the dust has almost settled). At this stage in their careers, however, Depeche Mode’s A-sides bubbled, bounced, pinged and ponged for all they were worth, with drum machines punching and snapping in a staccato way in the background.
“Dreaming Of Me” even featured oscillation in its instrumental break, recalling the Theremin experiments of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and Joe Meek in previous decades. While it didn’t sound dated in 1981 to my ears, listening back to it now, recontextualising it against the moment it came out, it feels sonically a year or two behind its time, like a bunch of teens with Electronics magazine subscriptions mending and making do.
Sometimes, though, weaknesses can turn into strengths and limitations, self-imposed or otherwise, can create a sound which becomes a group’s early signature. Depeche Mode were lovable in those days precisely because they were new town dabblers. When Daniel Miller started the Mute label, he created a fictional group called The Silicon Teens to fulfil his as-yet unrealised fantasy of an adolescent pop group playing with affordable modern technology. The idea of kids using keyboards to express themselves fascinated him, but scanning the gig circuit and the demo tape pile for candidates, he found only mature(ish) twenty-somethings ready to fill that role. When Depeche Mode emerged, however, the Silicon Teens concept was retired and he threw himself wholesale into his new, real-life flesh and blood project.
The idea obviously didn’t just appeal to Miller. A bunch of kids lugging synths around on public transport to every promotional appointment was marketable and exciting to a novelty-chasing media as well - the future, after all, was about technology being accessible for us all - and the group had in Vince Clarke a great songwriter, and in Miller an astute producer. Clarke could pen memorable futuristic anthems, while Miller, almost operating in a Joe Meek role to begin with, knew how to make their bugs seem like features and their low budget sound appear punchy and current.
“New Life” is an extremely good example of this. The synths slide in angelically during the intro, only to duet with some dinstinctly Binitone ping-pong sounds. This repeats itself, building up tension, until there’s a low descending synth bass pattern and those “drums” kick in, as metronomically as ever. While they sound undeniably cheap, the reverb packed on to them gives them a pulsing, addictive kick – the first time I heard “New Life” on a Sony Walkman in 1984, it slapped against my ears far harder than many other more current sounds.
Sometimes, though, weaknesses can turn into strengths and limitations, self-imposed or otherwise, can create a sound which becomes a group’s early signature. Depeche Mode were lovable in those days precisely because they were new town dabblers. When Daniel Miller started the Mute label, he created a fictional group called The Silicon Teens to fulfil his as-yet unrealised fantasy of an adolescent pop group playing with affordable modern technology. The idea of kids using keyboards to express themselves fascinated him, but scanning the gig circuit and the demo tape pile for candidates, he found only mature(ish) twenty-somethings ready to fill that role. When Depeche Mode emerged, however, the Silicon Teens concept was retired and he threw himself wholesale into his new, real-life flesh and blood project.
The idea obviously didn’t just appeal to Miller. A bunch of kids lugging synths around on public transport to every promotional appointment was marketable and exciting to a novelty-chasing media as well - the future, after all, was about technology being accessible for us all - and the group had in Vince Clarke a great songwriter, and in Miller an astute producer. Clarke could pen memorable futuristic anthems, while Miller, almost operating in a Joe Meek role to begin with, knew how to make their bugs seem like features and their low budget sound appear punchy and current.
“New Life” is an extremely good example of this. The synths slide in angelically during the intro, only to duet with some dinstinctly Binitone ping-pong sounds. This repeats itself, building up tension, until there’s a low descending synth bass pattern and those “drums” kick in, as metronomically as ever. While they sound undeniably cheap, the reverb packed on to them gives them a pulsing, addictive kick – the first time I heard “New Life” on a Sony Walkman in 1984, it slapped against my ears far harder than many other more current sounds.