Depeche Mode or Fashion Dispatch to non lingualists have been giving us this fine blend for 25 years now and have very rarely failed to deliver.

Influencing an equal amount of goths, rock bands and techno legends such as Derrick May, Juan Atkins and Jeff Mills along the way, it’s not bad for four geeks from Basildon

The departure of Vince Clarke in 1981 after the Mode refused to record what would become Yazoos ‘Only you’, is in hindsight a godsend. If he’d stayed, Depeche would have sounded like Erasure, the rock influenced darker lyricist, Martin Gore would not have moved into the songwriting role and Alan Wilder would not have come in to take over the music he moulded into the gargantuan electro monster we know and love today, leaving in 1995 some would say that they have never recovered from losing such an integral and massively underrated sculptor of their sound.

To celebrate their 25 years in the hearts of at last count, 73 million over the world, Mute have re-released and lushly repackaged many of their past eleven albums, some are a joy to revisit, others not so but always important and always integral to any music fan growing up in the 80s and 90s and unlike New Order, they have managed to keep their dignity entact and not shoot their legacy to shit.

‘SPEAK & SPELL’ (MUTE - 1981)

Bright-eyed and bushy haired clad in ill advised leather outfits in 1981, their debut ‘Speak & Spell’ is equal parts naive as it is crass when you remember Soft Cell and Human League were around at the time but bizarrely many of the tracks have stood up to the test of time particularly ‘Nodisco’ with its rolling bassline is a direct descendant of house music.

The pumping ‘Photograhic’ is an equally as strong sister to Soft Cells ‘Bedsitter’ but ‘What’s your name’ sounds like it was made with ”my first Casio and with its chorus of ‘Hey you’re such a pretty boy’, Vince should have kept that for when he hooked up with Andy Bell and ‘Just can’t get enough is still as twee and annoying as it ever was. 7/10

BEST TRACK - ‘NODISCO’

‘A BROKEN FRAME’ (MUTE - 1982)

Post-Clarke and pre-Wilder, 1982s ‘A Broken Frame’ suffered from a lack of musical direction and inexperience from newly promoted lyricist Martin Gore. With the sweet sounding ‘See you’ standing out, this set of tunes is a band starting out afresh but doing it too early. The fresh faced efervescance of Speak & Spell are a distant memory. Tracks such as ‘The meaning of love’ sounds like Heaven 17 dregs and ‘Satellite’ and ‘My secret Garden’ are the epitome of this albums tuneless meanderings of a band with no direction.

It’s only on the final track, ‘The sun and the rainfall’ where they find their feet and stop attempting to emulate Clarkes pop and go in a direction much darker than on the rest of the album, a direction which they go on to even darker, delightful depths. 4/10

BEST TRACK - ‘THE SUN AND THE RAINFALL’

‘SOME GREAT REWARD’ (MUTE - 1984)

Fast forward two years and past 1983s ‘Construction Time again’. Alan Wilder is in the fold, they have received their mojo, Martin Gore is a worrying mess of make-up and dresses and a 10 year old Chris Todd is delighted. It’s this period of Depeche’s past that I caught onto wanting more than my Duran and Wham records, the music was ace and the lyrics I didn’t understand, I was too young to know what ‘Master and Servant’ actually meant but because it had whip noises on it, I knew it was rude.

With ‘People are people’, they obtained their first taste of what would become massive success in America and there is even better elsewhere.

The urgency of intro track ‘Something to do’ which incorporated the excellent mixing of Dave Gahan singing the verses and Martin Gore with the choruses is still breathtaking. This is also the first of their albums to include guitars, the music is darker, more intelligent and complex. ‘Blasphemous Rumours’ was and still is a favourite track of mine of all time, I learnt what blasphemous out of it and called everything blasphemous in 1984, listen and learn with Depeche Mode!  8/10

BEST TRACK - ‘LIE TO ME’

‘VIOLATOR’ (MUTE - 1990)

It was with this album that they finally received the recognition they craved and also deserved, seven million people agreed that this was a classic album from start to finish. ‘Personal Jesus’, ‘Enjoy the silence’ and ‘Halo’ are electronic goth classics. With dance music being the flavour of the day, Depeche were in their element and they rose to the occasion with effortless ease, also with Flood and Francois Kervokian at the helm it was impossible to go wrong, Depeche’s finest album and one of the greatest of all time. 10/10

BEST TRACK - ‘WAITING FOR THE NIGHT’

‘SONGS OF FAITH AND DEVOTION’ (MUTE 1993)

Following up a collosus such as ‘Violator’ was never going to be easy and it wasn’t. Constant touring, fractured band relationships, Dave Gahans prodigious drug taking and being supported on tour by Primal Scream turned the Mode into a rock n roll circus and something had to give.

This is their last great album and the fall-out of this album and tour resulted in Gahans suicide attempts and accidental overdoses, they also lost Alan Wilder who was mostly responsible for moulding their sound into the dark spectre it became, they carried on but never recovered.

The dark surroundings resulted in their darkest and rockiest album yet. The electro blues stomp of ‘I feel you’, the deep gosepl on the gorgeous ‘Condemnation’ and the loose jamming of ‘Mercy in you’ being highlights. The claustrophobic feel of the album now sounds reminiscent of early Curve material, especially the awesome ‘Rush’. 7/10

BEST TRACK - ‘CONDEMNATION’

‘THE BEST OF DEPECHE MODE (MUTE 2006)

Mute have already released two comprehensive greatest hits in 1985 and 1998, since 1998 they have only released two albums, 2001s stinker ‘Exciter’ and last years return to form in ‘Playing the angel’ which render this best of redundant.

Choosing 18 tracks from a 45 single career is granted a difficult one but leaving off ‘Barrel of a gun’, one of their absolute finest is stupid. Plus points for adding non-album track ‘Shake the disease’ and the obligatory ‘new’ track for a hits compilation, ‘Martyr’ (recorded for the ‘Playing the angel’ album)has them sounding in good electro health. But the compliation has just been spat out by Mute, they haven’t put any effort in selecting the track listing and it’s packaged just as shodilly. It makes more sense to buy the two previous best of compliations, them two together will probably still be cheaper than this gubbins. Give it the amount of time Mute have….none. 0/10

All the above re-releases are repackaged and include the albums in 5.1 stereo with bonus tracks and each album comes with a short film documenting the time of recording each of them, definitely worth yer hard earned pennies.

Chris Todd

A collective licking of lips were heard when the news that white hot producer Dangermouse was producing this third album of theirs, was it worth it though?

The answer is an emphatic yes (three times if you like). Much more considerable and easier on the ear, Dangermouse has given their music a sheen it much needed and they are all the better for it.

‘Don gon do it’ with its 70s soul guitar licks and G-funk noises makes you beg for the sunny setting it so deserves. The moody title track will have you skipping down the street as if you are in West Side Story (why gangsters danced in the 50s no-one knows, it’s hardly gangsterish, The Zutons tried it earlier this year, The Rapture achieve it emphatically.

WIth regular cowbelling, saxaphone breaks and guitars used as machinery rather than an extention of a guitarists penis, the music is genuinely innovative and exciting, all too rare at the moment.

Highlight is easily ‘First Gear’, an astounding brooding electro beast culminating in a mass of techno beats and gibberish lyrics like "ma ma ma ma ma ma my Mustang Ford". I say gibberish, if Mark E Smith (an obvious influence) was to do it it’d be described as genius.

So Dangermouse’s influence has taken control of this album, so what? Listen to Primal Screams last two albums and see what happened when they took Jagz Kooner and Andrew Weatherall out of the equation.

This is a natural companion to last years Goldfrapp album, ‘Supernature’ and Gorillaz ‘Demon Days’, fans of those two will rejoice at this and with the Summer rapidly subsiding, this album provides enough heat to keep you warm in the winter nights, snuggle up will yer?    8/10

Chris Todd