Depeche Mode are one of the true stayers on the music scene, their bright mixture of bubble gum pop and glitchy electro serving up such radio friendly classics as Just Can’t Get Enough and Enjoy The Silence. But just don’t call them New Romantic. Interview with Andy Fletcher and Dave Gahan from the band. When you actually look back at stuff like New Life or I Just Can’t Get Enough is it just good nostalgia, or is there any squirming at all? AF: ‘Of course there is! You look at any of the videos from that time … at the end of the day, we were kids, we were 18 or 19 year olds. I know it’s a cliché line, but we did have to grow up in public, but then we stuck at it’. Lets talk about sampling. You went to a tube station in London just to get a particular noise. Did you find that was something that was innovative? AF: ‘We always had this theory at the time that every sound must be different and you must never use the same sound twice, so sampling was great for us. It sounds a bit arty and stuff but it was very exciting doing that, going around hitting things, going to Shoreditch and finding dustbins and skips and hitting skips and recording everything. Gareth Jones at that point was our engineer and he was recording everything in sight. It was very exciting days. We really thought we was making music that really hadn’t been, again, samplers had been used before, but never in a pop sort of a way. It was an exciting period’. The majority of all Depeche Mode’s songs deal with very spiritual or sexual themes. How does that affect Dave since you’re singing the lyrics but not actually writing them? Are there any where you think ‘I can’t sing this’ or do you agree with most of the stuff that Martin writes? DG: ‘My interpretation of what he writes is probably very different. If Martin’s writing about a relationship and about love, that’s something that everybody can experience anyway and everybody experiences, but my experience may be different, so the way I sing it, may be different to the way Martin does it. But the words that he writes inspire me to think what Im doing about where I’m at and the relationship that I’m in, or the relationship with people, with life, the way I feel about the world, the way I feel about I’m treating myself in the world, I take what he has and it inspires me’.
Also by ZOLTON
Maths explains the origin of superhero characters
I love the colours and simple reasoning in this clever series by Scottish illustrator Matt Cowen, which uses basic maths equations to explain how certain pop culture icons came to be. Read more
Star Wars Uncut: a fully crowdsourced version of Episode IV
The project of creative technologist, Casey Pugh, this full length version of the George Lucas masterpiece was created from multiple 15 second segments recreated from the original movie and submitted by thousands of Star Wars fans, which were then spliced together by editor Aaron Valdez to form the final product. Genius, as both a commentary on contemporary pop culture trends (there are references to LEGO, stop motion, memes and the like) and on the power of tapping your audience for quality material.
Filmmaker creates LEGO stop motion to propose to girlfriend
Now, this is one for the ages: back in 2010, Atlanta film-maker Walter Thompson created a jaw-dropping LEGO stop motion to propose to Nealey Dozier, his girlfriend of four years. The video took 22 hours of shooting and some 2,600 pictures to splice together, a small sacrifice to pay for years of happiness together. Right? Right! Oh, and she said yes. Bonus.
YOU'RE SAYING (2)
Zolton said | 14 November, 2006
hey brett, i concede that their music had dark undercurrents, but when it’s broken down to its purest form, there’s some very commercial production touches going on – especially in their hits. songs like ‘shake the disease’ and ‘see you’ and good examples. anyway, i just posted more from the depeche mode interview for you to check out.
HAVE YOUR SAY
Radiographer and artist Jim Wehtje has a knack for creating unusual animal art. His new collection Arranged on Black showcases a variety of intricately placed and overlapping seashells which form fascinating skeletal animal X-ray photographs. Read more
I wish I could remember my dreams more often. I wish the damn things wouldn’t go in one ear and straight out the other. Who plants them and why? And how come the few I recall are like tiny portions of an indie blockbuster, minus the credible acting and the killer plot twists. Sigh. Life is like a dream sometimes. And then you wake up. [illustration by Sam Weber]
Oh man, this is good. If Jamie Lidell was born in any earlier era, he would have soul brother number one plastered all over his birth certificate.
As a child, I took piano exams in over-sized white rooms, on baby grand pianos that felt unfamiliar and echoed strangely as someone across the room observed me in silence. It felt clinical, intimidating and completely devoid of warmth. Last week, I started noticing upright pianos, some painted haphazardly, others respectfully untouched plonked in the most unlikely places throughout Sydney. There was one on the edge of the baby pool at the local swimming pool, with a young girl in a rainbow striped dress tapping out a happy but disjointed melody; another shaded under a tree at the park on the way home. Read more
The Big Picture’s photo essays are some of the best around: insightful, timely and often confronting in the way great photo essays are. Complementing The Big Picture is The Big Caption, a parody site ‘wherein jokes and statements are made using typography’. Sometimes insightful and always snarky, it pairs poignant photography with blunt observations using a thread of hostility. Read more
The incendiary energy of Canadian quartet, Tokyo Police Club is electric. We caught up with keyboardist, Graham Wright. Read more
Chicago artist Ellen Greene makes leather gloves with ‘tattoos’ on them, that is she paints old-school sailor tattoos onto them. They’re pretty cool. Read more
WE'RE POSTING / SOME OF THE BEST
Francoise Nielly’s Yellow series
Parisian visual artist Francoise Nielly brings technicolour to the forefront in her latest series, Yellow. Featuring thick impasto palette knife strokes and trippy neon hues, Nielly captures the vulnerable expressions of her muses to a tee. Read more
Here are a couple awesome pieces by Matt Leines that were recently on display in the Doubting Thomases exhibit at Nudashank gallery in Baltimore. Gives me ideas for Halloween. Read more
Never ever, ever, ever, ever park here
Some friendly advice for the neighbours, who simply don’t get it, or street art? You decide which one it is.
Cookie Boy’s creative cookie designs
I don’t eat cookies, so good thing Cookie Boy’s cookies are little pieces of art too pretty and cute to eat. Read more
Mathematics? Leave me out. Fashematics? Now you’re talking! This gem of a site is a runway equation that adds up to a whole lot of wonderful.
This pendant by Portland designer Stephanie Stimek hangs from an eighteen inch 14 carat gold chain. Made from a Japanese quail egg, the entire shell has been coated in plastic for strength and is available for purchase through the Lost At E Minor store. Read more
If you have a Twitter feed that focuses on cool pop cultural things and you’d like to swap Tweets with Lost At E Minor and other like-minded Twitterers, drop us a note (with Tweet Swap in the title). We have a system in place and we’d like to have you in on it! [illustration by Brad Fitzpatrick]
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bret polok said | 11 November, 2006
WOW..DEPECHE MODE DOING BUBBLE GUM POP??…I COULDNT PUT THE TWO TOGETHER,AND I WAS THERE IN THE DAY(80′S)…A FEW EARLY RADIO SONGS MAYBE WHEN THEY STARTED OUT..TO ME DEPECHE MODE ALWAYS WROTE FAIRLY SOMBRE DARK LANDSCAPES…THEY WENT THRU THE JUNKIE STAGE-AND I DONT THINK THAT PRODUCES BUBBLEGUM POP..BUT MOST OF DEPECHE MODES BODY OF WORK BEYOND THE LATE 80′S WAS FAIRLY HEAVYWEIGHT STUFF,INCLUDING THEIR VIDEOS+THEMES..CURIOUSLY THE GUITARIST SEEMS TO HAVE A REAL CONNECTION TO THE HISTORY OF BLUES+COUNTRY AND THEIR OFFSHOOTS(WHEN YOU MENTION GLITCHY ELECTRO)…AN ALBUM IVE TRIED TO FIND IS A DAVE GAHAN SOLO ALBUM OF HANK WILLIAMS SONGS!!? ANYONE WHOS SERIOUS ABOUT AND LOVES THEIR MUSIC ACROSS THE BOARD,WOULD HAVE TO ACKNOWLEDGE HANK WILLIAMS INFLUENCE ON MUSIC OR COUNTRY AT LEAST.