Black Celebration is the fifth studio album by English electronic music band Depeche Mode, released on 17 March 1986 by Mute Records. The album's co-producer Daniel Miller devised "a plan to capture the essence of the dark works" that Martin Gore created because Martin Gore had no intention of compromising the mood that his demos had set. Miller and Gareth Jones produced the album to be more like an environment rather than a collection of songs. Their production created "a tech-noir future dystopia" that "glitters of gloom".[3]
Black Celebration reached number four on the UK Albums Chart, and has been cited as one of the most influential albums of the 1980s.[4] To promote the album, the band embarked on the Black Celebration Tour. Three years after its release, Spin ranked it at number 15 on its "25 Greatest Albums of All Time" list.[5]
The album was promoted by the single "Stripped" released 10 February, and was followed by "A Question of Lust", released 14 April, "A Question of Time" released 11 August. Instead of "Stripped", "But Not Tonight" was released as a single in the US, due to its more commercial appeal, on 22 October.
Background
The band wanted to change their working routine yet again to make sure that things would not lead to boredom or lack of production. Daniel Miller stated: "I was a bit frustrated because I couldn't get the guys to think about working in different ways." He admired the working methods of the German film director Werner Herzog, which meant that the band had "lived the album", meaning they attended the studio every day and worked endlessly on the songs and production. Miller felt that he wanted "a kind of intensity", as he had felt that production was slowing down since their debut Speak & Spell, which had snappy recording and production, with the exception of Construction Time Again, which he claims was due to there being "so many new things going on".[6]
With regard to the recording processes and song formation, samples were yet again at the forefront of the sound. Gareth Jones stated that they would always use their own samples and tried to avoid using samples from other sources. For example, the opening title track initially was to have samples of Winston Churchill saying "A brief period of rejoicing" because they enjoyed "that idea of a brief moment of rejoicing." However, instead of sampling Churchill saying it, they had Miller say the quote instead.[7] He said that, though they admired hip hop, they had no desire to sample in the same fashion. "We didn't want to collage other people's work and drop it into Martin's songs. We used samplers to grab real sounds from the real world to make sure our samples were original." On the song "Fly on the Windscreen", Jones recalled: "You can hear a rather young sounding Daniel again saying 'over and done with.' The breath sample noise at the start is interesting too."[8] On Alan Wilder's Shunt website, in the Q&A section, he stated that these "breath samples" were in fact Miller saying "'Horse' repeatedly very fast."[9]
Contemporaneous reviews for Black Celebration in the British press were mixed. Melody Maker's Steve Sutherland lambasted the album and wrote that Depeche Mode came off as "pussycats desperate to appear perverted as an escape from the superficiality of teen stardom"[20] and Sounds published a similarly scathing review,[21] while criticizing chief songwriter Martin Gore's "adolescent fragments of despair",
Sean O'Hagan of NME nonetheless praised Black Celebration's "perfectly constructed jigsaw melodies" and concluded, "When the songs address topics other than the composer's state of mind – as on the evocative exploration of loneliness that is 'World Full of Nothing' – Depeche Mode sound like a lot more than just a high tech, low-life melodrama."[22] Betty Page of Record Mirror felt that the band should be admired for their "refusal to follow anything but their own fashion" and "unswerving ability to come up with great, fresh melodies."[16]
Black Celebration has since been reappraised in retrospective reviews. In 2007, Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone referred to the album as an "instant classic for the band's fans" that at the time of its release had seemingly been "utterly ignored by everybody else."[17] Bandmate Andy Fletcher recognised that it was a "classic Depeche Mode fan favourite" among their albums in The Singles 86>98 Electronic Press Kit, saying "a collection of songs on there that's absolutely fantastic."[23]
Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails cited Black Celebration, and its subsequent tour, as an influence and said it helped inspire him to write the album Pretty Hate Machine, saying "DM was one of our favorite bands and the Black Celebration record took my love for them to a new level."[24]
Tour
The tour began with a European leg, starting in Oxford, England in late March 1986 and finishing in Rüsselsheim, West Germany in late May. A North American jaunt followed in early June, commencing in Boston and culminating mid-July in Irvine, California. Shortly after the North American leg, the group headed to Japan to play three dates.
In early August, the group began a second run of European shows, starting in Fréjus, France. The group performed four additional dates in France, as well as two shows in Italy, before wrapping up the tour in Copenhagen.[25]
Book of Love joined the tour as the opening act on 29 April in Hanover, West Germany, and continued for the rest of the first European leg and throughout all tour dates of the North American leg (ending on 15 July).[26]
Re-release
In 2007, Black Celebration was re-released with a bonus DVD. It was released on 20 March 2007 in the United States, on 26 March in the United Kingdom and on 2 April in the rest of Europe, as a part of the third wave of reissues (along with Construction Time Again). The first CD was remastered and (except in the United States) released as a CD/SACD hybrid. The bonus DVD includes the album's B-sides in addition to the singles and B-sides for "Shake the Disease" and "It's Called a Heart", two singles released in the interim between Some Great Reward and Black Celebration. The reissue also includes several live versions of some of the songs from Black Celebration. The album is released as originally intended and ends with "New Dress" (not "Black Day" or "But Not Tonight").
As with the other reissues, the accompanying DVD includes a documentary film. The film's title, The Songs Aren't Good Enough, There Aren't Any Singles and It'll Never Get Played on the Radio, is a quote from the film in which Martin Gore paraphrases Daniel Miller's reaction to the album's early demos. The documentary includes much detail about the making of the album, its singles and the ensuing tour. Other highlights include the band meeting the Cure and behind-the-scenes footage of several of the music videos.
The remastered album was released on vinyl on 2 April 2007 in Europe and on 11 September 2007 in the United States.
Track listing
All tracks are written by Martin L. Gore, except where noted. All lead vocals by Dave Gahan, except where noted.
"Depeche Mode: 1985–86: (The Songs Aren't Good Enough, There Aren't Any Singles and It'll Never Get Played on the Radio)" (written and produced by Roland Brown; directed by Ross Hallard and Phil Michael Lane)
57:40
Black Celebration (DTS 5.1, Dolby Digital 5.1 and PCM Stereo)
No.
Title
Length
1.
"Black Celebration"
4:55
2.
"Fly on the Windscreen – Final"
5:18
3.
"A Question of Lust"
4:20
4.
"Sometimes"
1:53
5.
"It Doesn't Matter Two"
2:50
6.
"A Question of Time"
4:10
7.
"Stripped"
4:16
8.
"Here Is the House"
4:15
9.
"World Full of Nothing"
2:50
10.
"Dressed in Black"
2:32
11.
"New Dress"
3:42
Live in Birmingham, April 1986 (DTS 5.1, Dolby Digital 5.1 and PCM Stereo)
* Sales figures based on certification alone. ^ Shipments figures based on certification alone.
References
^Zaleski, Annie (26 February 2015). "Where to start with '80s U.K. synth-pop". The A.V. Club. Retrieved 24 January 2019. A late-night record alternating between brittle ballads and industrial-sounding synth-pop—a poignant tug of war between man and machine.
^"Classifiche". Musica e dischi (in Italian). Retrieved 1 June 2022. Select "Album" in the "Tipo" field, type "Black Celebration" in the "Titolo" field and press "cerca".
