Electronic Sound May 2015 (Regular Edition)

MARTIN GORE MG MUTE The Depeche Mode man delivers a solo instrumental album from his Santa Barbara home studio Instrumental music isn’t exactly a new thing for Depeche Mode’s Martin Gore. For a start, there’s the small matter of ‘Ssss’, his 2012 collaboration with Vince Clarke that reunited the two school friends and Mode founders after almost 30 years. Beyond that, instrumental interludes have been a feature of Mode albums going right back to their 1981 debut. One of the two Gore tracks that appeared on the mostly Clarke-penned ‘Speak & Spell’ was his instrumental ‘Big Muff’, with other tracks also making appearances as either B-sides or short connecting pieces on other albums. ‘Big Muff’ or ‘Oberkorn’ this isn’t. Neither is it a techno album, which seemed an obvious area of interest given Gore’s minimalist stylings with Clarke, his DJ sets, and the music he chooses to have played before Depeche Mode’s stadium shows. The closest that ‘MG’ gets to techno is the dark buzz of ‘Brink’, a more maximalist take on the type of track that appeared on ‘Ssss’. Though some among his main band’s Black Swarm of hardcore fans will inevitably be disappointed that this isn’t a third volume in Gore’s sporadic ‘Counterfeit’ series of covers albums, the parallel with his vocal work is there in what is a generally sensitive, brooding collection of 16 tracks. On the epic ‘Elk’ and ‘Europa Hymn’, you can almost imagine the tortured themes of religious introspection, disappointm

Electronic Sound May 2015 (Regular Edition) | Page 19