Depeche Mode – Black Celebration - Rare 1986 Sire Records OG 1st Press Vinyl LP

$

60

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Black Celebration Studio album by Depeche Mode Released 17 March 1986 Recorded November 1985 – February 1986 Studios

• Westside and Genetic (London)
• Hansa Mischraum (Berlin)

• Synth-pop 
• industrial 
• post-punk

• Depeche Mode 
• Gareth Jones 
• Daniel Miller

1. "Stripped"
   Released: 10 February 1986
2. "A Question of Lust"
   Released: 14 April 1986
3. "A Question of Time"
   Released: 11 August 1986
4. "But Not Tonight"
   Released: 22 October 1986

Black Celebration is the fifth studio album by the English electronic music band Depeche Mode, released on 17 March 1986 by Mute Records in the UK and Sire Records in the US. Recorded in London and West Berlin, it was produced by Depeche Mode, Daniel Miller and Gareth Jones. At the prompting of Miller, the band recorded the album using the "live the album" ethos inspired by the film director Werner Herzog, which led to considerable tension between the band and both Miller and Jones, resulting in neither being involved in the production of subsequent Depeche Mode albums.

The album was promoted by the singles "Stripped", "A Question of Lust", and "A Question of Time". In the US, "But Not Tonight" was released as a single instead of "Stripped". In support of the album, Depeche Mode embarked on the five-month-long Black Celebration Tour across Europe, North America, and Japan, which ran from early to mid-1986.

Black Celebration is considered by critics as the start of a four album series of well-regarded Depeche Mode albums, continuing with Music for the Masses (1987), Violator (1990) and Songs of Faith and Devotion (1993). Three years after its release, Spin ranked it as the 15th-greatest album of all time, and the UK's Radio X in 2011 cited it as one of the most influential albums of the 1980s. Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor later cited Black Celebration as a source of inspiration for his album debut, Pretty Hate Machine (1989).

Background

After touring through July 1985 in support of their previous album Some Great Reward (1984), Depeche Mode released two compilation albums in late 1985, The Singles 81→85 in the UK in October, and Catching Up with Depeche Mode in the US in November. Both albums included two new tracks which were both issued as singles, "Shake the Disease" (single released April 1985) and "It's Called a Heart" (single released September 1985).

On a personal level, singer Dave Gahan married his partner Jo Fox in August, songwriter Martin Gore was still living in West Berlin with his girlfriend Christina Friedrich, and Andy Fletcher and Alan Wilder had moved in with their girlfriends, Grainne Mullen and Jeri Young, respectively, in London. However, after their exhausting year of touring and recording, the band found themselves at odds when they reunited. Tensions within the band and their producer Daniel Miller had already come up during recording sessions earlier that year for "Shake the Disease". Said Gahan, "If we were ever going to split up the band it was at the end of 1985. We were really in a state of turmoil. Constant arguing. Very intense. We weren't really sure where to go [musically] after Some Great Reward, so we decided to slow things down. But it left us with too much time on our hands. So we spent most of our time arguing. Sometimes, it seems incredible that we came out of that period with the band and our sanity intact." The inter-personal conflict within what was normally a tight-knit group led Gore to hide away with a friend at a farm for a week, with Gore later saying "I freaked out. I had to go away for a few days." Ultimately, the band agreed to reconvene in London in November to try to record their new material.

Artwork

Martyn Atkins returned to design the album cover for Black Celebration, as he'd done for all of Depeche Mode's album covers since A Broken Frame (1982). Originally, he had designed a physical miniature building, draped in black banners and inspired by totalitarian imagery, to be photographed for the cover. However, the band was not happy with the original design and so the cover was re-designed to include only a cropped, close-up of the original photograph and they instead emphasized the logos around the image, which the band paid to have embossed on initial pressings of the album. Despite the changes, the album cover still only garnered mixed opinions from the band and label.

On the album's back cover is the phrase "Life in the so-called Space Age", which was a phrase from Gore meant to mean that despite all the advances in technology in the world, "nothing is changed. People are still emotionally numbed by material possession." In keeping with the "black" theme of the album, Black Celebration's first two singles, "Stripped" and "A Question of Lust", both featured black as the dominant color, and only the final single, "A Question of Time" had an "optimistic" white cover.

Title

The title "Black Celebration" was not a reference to Black mass or rituals of the Occult, but rather, it was meant to "[describe] the daily boredom of a dreary life without climaxes or hope for improvement." Said Gore, "Our songs from Black Celebration capture the idea: Make the most of what you have, and find consolation whereever you can." Gahan elaborated, "it's a common thing: at the end of a working day you go out and drown your sorrows no matter how shitty you feel or how bleak your future looks."

Critical reception

Contemporaneous reviews for Black Celebration in the British press were mixed. Panning the album in Melody Maker, Steve Sutherland wrote that Depeche Mode came off as "pussycats desperate to appear perverted as an escape from the superficiality of teen stardom", while in Sounds, Kevin Murphy dismissed its songs as "harmless scenes of banality, with no twists and many happy endings." In a more lenient review for NME, Sean O'Hagan, although finding Gore's lyrics "adolescent" and the record's overall mood "dark yet faintly ridiculous", conceded that "within their own parameters, Depeche Mode create a resonant, if undemonstrative techno-pop tapestry" with "a rich textured sheen that is not without a certain depth." He added, "When the songs address topics other than the composer's state of mind ... Depeche Mode sound like a lot more than just a high tech, low-life melodrama." Writing for Smash Hits, Chris Heath was impressed by the album's "weirder" approach of mixing "dark, mysterious percussive" songs and "sweet, fragile and rather sinister ballads". Betty Page of Record Mirror praised Depeche Mode for their "refusal to follow anything but their own fashion" and "unswerving ability to come up with great, fresh melodies."

Black Celebration has since been reappraised in retrospective reviews. AllMusic critic Ned Raggett considered it a transitional work for Depeche Mode, moving away from their earlier "industrial-pop" sound and towards "a path that in many ways defined their sound to the present: emotionally extreme lyrics matched with amped-up tunes, as much anthemic rock as they are compelling dance, along with stark, low-key ballads." Danny Eccleston from Mojo said that it marked the start of the band's "post-industrial" period with its "richer, velvety soundworld", "insinuating melodies", and "positively Stentorian" vocals by Dave Gahan. Black Celebration was included in Spin's 1989 list of "The 25 Greatest Albums of All Time", at number 15.

According to Rolling Stone journalist Rob Sheffield, Black Celebration was an "instant classic for the band's fans" which was "utterly ignored by everybody else" at the time of its release. In 2019, Classic Pop Magazine said that with Black Celebration, Depeche Mode created "a tech-noir future dystopia" that "glitters in the gloom".

Legacy

Black Celebration marked the end of a run of albums with Miller, Jones and Wilder co-producing, with Wilder saying "it signaled the end of a co-production relationship ... – although, I should add, not a falling out." The album helped the band turn the corner and move away from the teenybopper image they'd acquired in their early years, and became a cult classic, helping to set the template for "doom-laden alternative rock." Fletcher later recognised it as a "classic Depeche Mode fan favourite" among the band's albums in the EPK for their 1998 compilation The Singles 86>98, and said he found that "Black Celebration has got a collection of songs on there that's absolutely fantastic." Gore, also in 1998, said that the album marked a turning point for the band, saying "since the Black Celebration album we've started getting things right." Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails cited Black Celebration and its subsequent tour as an influence, saying that it helped inspire him to write the album Pretty Hate Machine (1989). Said Reznor, "DM was one of our favorite bands and the Black Celebration record took my love for them to a new level." American DJ Shadow cited Black Celebration as an influence, as did Wesley Eisold of rock band Cold Cave.

Track listing

All tracks are written by Martin L. Gore, except where noted. All lead vocals by Dave Gahan, except where noted.

• Gahan
• Gore

• Gahan
• Gore