The 500 is a production of Native Creative Podcasts. In this episode, we discuss Depeche Mode's second album "Sounds of the Universe" and compare it to the band's first two albums, "Exciter" and "A Broken Frame."
00:01:50.320And Ben Hillier also produced this album.
00:01:55.420And there was a conscious effort to bring in analog sounds.
00:02:00.980And I think that probably came about along with the kind of 80s revival.
00:02:10.500I mean, there's people who always love the 80s and to dress up like the 80s and et cetera.
00:02:16.000But it was hipper and cooler around that time.
00:02:20.640And so I think, in a way, Depeche Mode was conscious of itself.
00:02:28.340And it was self-consciously trying to re-enter its glory days and not create new music or new sounds like they did with Exciter, to be honest.
00:02:46.620Which maybe isn't the greatest album, but is trying.
00:02:52.280It's going down a different path, let's say.
00:02:54.100And it's also an Obama-era album to the degree that some of the lyrics are a bit...
00:14:02.560It's all very, it, it's all listenable, it's all classic Depeche Mode, but then
00:14:07.440there's nothing, like, there's nothing as kind of edgy and in your face as, say, Master and Servant
00:14:14.340There's nothing as iconic as Enjoy the Silence or People are People or any of that kind of stuff
00:14:23.940And, and, and I think a lot of the times the, the lyrics are, you know, good, but maybe really lacking something
00:14:35.860Lacking just that kind of turn or something you're expecting
00:14:39.940Um, like, Jezebel is an, is an example where, you know, they're, again, they're evoking biblical themes, which is very Martin Gore
00:14:51.000Although, here, the Jezebel is just kind of like a, you know, as they said in 2016 or in the 2017 Women's March, like a nasty woman, you know
00:15:00.500They call you Jezebel whenever we walk in
00:15:03.680You're going straight to hell for wanton acts of sin, they say
00:16:57.100I mean, I would respect this song if Martin Gore was actually talking about owning someone, in fact, because that is a dark, possessive, obsessive thought that's actually interesting.
00:17:15.080And the thought of not owning this sexy girl with a dragon tattoo and borderline personality disorder
00:37:08.000I think the Ben Hillier trilogy, for me, is their low point just overall. I'm not even saying it has everything to do with Ben Hillier. Like I said, I already gave him praise for trying to steer their sound into a synth rock. It's almost like a new genre.
00:37:25.000But yeah, the era in general, I think there were some ones that could have been trashed.
00:38:04.980I mean, if you could only imagine what it would be like to hear a Moog synthesizer in the 60s. I mean, it's something else. And, you know, like, what is it? Wendy Carlos, I believe, who did the music for Kubrick's films.
00:38:21.980She, or I say she, she, he at the time became a woman. So it's now Wendy. And he at the time, she now did these, you know, the first album was hooked on Bach or plugged into Bach or something like that.
00:38:39.980He was using a massive synthesizer and basically going back to the classical music catalog.
00:38:46.980With Kubrick movies, there's this kind of eerie, weird look at it, at, at some music that just once you hear it, it evokes a clockwork orange might even evoke Barry Lyndon to some, the 70s Kubrick kind of thing.
00:39:05.260But there was something just totally alien about it. And they're actually dealing with a sound wave itself and kind of molding it. And you could visualize the sound wave in many cases.
00:39:17.160I'll patch this up here into one of my output modules and try and show you how, with these primitive sounds, we start to get some very musical sounding things.
00:39:26.340First of all, here's a sawtooth wave that's coming out of an oscillator, going into a mixer, coming up into what's called a filter, which is going to remove parts of the sound, either the top or the bottom part, much like bass and treble controls do on your, you know, high fidelity system.
00:39:40.660And by hitting a note on the keyboard now, I'm connected up, so I'll hear that one sound.
00:39:46.260It's a very low sound. It's very bright. If I manually turn this knob, you'll listen to the sound get considerably duller.
00:39:55.340Here, it gets very dull down here. It's very bright here.
00:39:58.880Instead of doing this manually, I can do it automatically with what's called an envelope generator. It generates the envelope, the envelope being this type of motion that I'm...
00:40:07.040It's actually fascinating stuff, and it's stuff we've now forgotten.
00:40:09.660I mean, when I grew up in the... When I was a kid in the 80s, when I was like 10, I just had a synthesizer that was... I don't know, you know, my dad might have purchased for 200 bucks or something, and it just kind of did everything.
00:40:23.000You could play classical music, you could play strings, you could play, you know, poppy rock sounds, like speak and spell sounds, and so on.
00:40:31.400But I think they're going for that, you know, future past tense.
00:40:37.960So they're, you know, they're going for like what space sounded like in the 1960s.
00:40:47.120And I think that's interesting. I'll give them that.
00:40:51.140Now, for corrupt, I think this is written from the... It's written from the perspective of the devil, wouldn't you say?
00:49:37.340There, there, I think there was a, I, there was a joke one time of, I remember talking to someone.
00:49:48.200This is actually, it's funny I thought of this anecdote, because I was, I was living in New York City at the time this album came out, and when I saw them in concert.
00:49:55.640And it wasn't, I think it, was it at MSG?
00:50:02.780But, someone was saying that they saw Billy Idol live, and he just came on stage, and granted, it was fun, a worthwhile concert, but it just wasn't much of anything.
00:50:16.600And, he had, he was sober, and like, not cool, and badass, and sneering, and all this kind of stuff.
00:50:24.000And I was joking, like, that there was this, they would meet backstage, and they would talk to Billy Idol, and they'd be like, you know, Billy, what's going on with you?
00:50:33.620It used to be about the drugs, and, and the whores, and, and the heavy drinking, and now, now you're obsessed with this, this music.
00:50:43.780And, I, I think that's, like, true, actually.
00:50:50.760Like, if you're gonna be a rock star, you gotta be a rock star.
00:50:53.940Yeah, and there's something uninspiring about talking about your, obviously, there's something uninspiring talking about how your genes are fucked up, and you're wrong inherently, but it just sounds like, oh, I've been reading about my alcoholism, and I just, maybe I just have the right genes for this kind of thing.
00:51:18.700I think that played into his writing, I mean, those are two lines on wrong, and, and fragile tension.
00:51:27.340Uh, he, I'm not saying he's going to full, like, HPD, but he's talking about his genes, and his behavior.
00:51:33.320Uh, this, I just was like, did he go to, like, a 12-step program, and think that someone told him there at the 12-step program that he, he's got the genes for this, and that's why he does what he does?
00:51:45.200I don't know, I, I just, uh, didn't really care for it, it was too obvious, too, uh, not inspiring.
00:51:56.580Uh, I might like this better than you, and I wouldn't go down the road you just went to, went down, but, um, maybe it's just because I can remember hearing it live, and it just rocking.
00:52:07.460Yeah, I just wish there was a chorus that wasn't just kind of one note, just singing wrong.