On February 14th, Depeche Mode took the stage to perform four tracks for the popular French television program, Taratata. This highly-anticipated performance was recorded for later broadcast on March 24th, 2023, which is the same day that the band’s latest album, “Memento Mori,” is set to be released.

While uploads of the performance have been taken down from Reddit and YouTube, there’s no doubt that this event will continue to generate buzz among fans leading up to the broadcast in March. Recordings of the performance are circulating in private chat groups.

The setlist of the TV performance:

1. Ghosts Again
2. Wagging Tongue
3. Precious
4. Personal Jesus

“Memento Mori” is the upcoming fifteenth studio album by Depeche Mode set to be released on 24 March 2023, through Columbia and Mute. The album was produced by James Ford and Marta Salogni. It was preceded by the single “Ghosts Again” and will be the first Depeche Mode studio album to be released after the death of co-founder and keyboardist Andy Fletcher on 26 May 2022.

Although work on the album began prior to Fletcher’s death, Dave Gahan stated in an interview with NME that Fletcher did not record any material for the album. The album will be promoted by a Memento Mori tour.

This is the track list of the album. All tracks are written by Martin L. Gore, except where noted.

1. My Cosmos Is Mine (Martin L. Gore)
2. Wagging Tongue (Martin L. Gore, Dave Gahan)
3. Ghosts Again (Martin L. Gore, Richard Butler)
4. Don’t Say You Love Me (Martin L. Gore, Butler)
5. My Favourite Stranger (Martin L. Gore, Butler)
6. Soul with Me (Martin L. Gore)
7. Caroline’s Monkey (Martin L. Gore, Butler)
8. Before We Drown (Dave Gahan, Peter Gordeno, Christian Eigner)
9. People Are Good (Martin L. Gore)
10. Always You (Martin L. Gore)
11. Never Let Me Go (Martin L. Gore)
12. Speak to Me (Dave Gahan, Marta Salogni, Christian Eigner, James Ford)

Here’s already a live performance in Paris on the program Quotidien with Yann Barthès with “Ghost Again”.

Side-Line also covered Depeche Mode’s ‘Memento Mori’.

About Depeche Mode

Depeche Mode formed in Basildon, Essex, England, in 1980, initially under the name Composition of Sound. The lineup that became Depeche Mode came together that year around Vince Clarke (keyboards, guitars), Andy Fletcher (keyboards, bass) and Martin Gore (guitars, keyboards), with Dave Gahan joining shortly after as lead vocalist. The band adopted the name Depeche Mode at a gig at the Bridge House in Canning Town on 24 September 1980, where Mute Records founder Daniel Miller saw them and signed the group.

Depeche Mode’s debut single, “Dreaming of Me,” was recorded in December 1980 and released on Mute in February 1981, followed that October by the debut album “Speak & Spell.” Vince Clarke left the band that November, going on to form Yazoo and later Erasure; Alan Wilder joined on keyboards in 1982 and became an official member from the 1983 single “Get the Balance Right!” The band’s catalog through the 1980s includes “A Broken Frame” (1982), “Construction Time Again” (1983), “Some Great Reward” (1984), “Black Celebration” (1986) and “Music for the Masses” (1987), the latter turning the band into arena headliners in the US off the back of their Rose Bowl concert, later documented in the film “101.”

“Violator” (1990) and “Songs of Faith and Devotion” (1993) marked the band’s commercial peak, but Wilder departed in June 1995, continuing his own project Recoil, leaving Gahan, Gore and Fletcher as a trio. The band released “Ultra” (1997), “Exciter” (2001), “Playing the Angel” (2005), “Sounds of the Universe” (2009), “Delta Machine” (2013) and “Spirit” (2017) as a three-piece, touring with long-serving live members Christian Eigner (drums, keyboards, since 1997) and Peter Gordeno (keyboards, bass, since 1998). Alongside the band, Gahan released solo albums “Paper Monsters” (2003) and “Hourglass” (2007), and Gore released “Counterfeit²” (2003).

Depeche Mode was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on 7 November 2020. Andy Fletcher died on 26 May 2022, and Gahan and Gore continued as a duo, releasing “Memento Mori” in 2023 with Eigner and Gordeno again on the road. The band has sold more than 100 million records and placed 54 singles on the UK charts. The Taratata performance came during the promotional run for “Memento Mori” (2023), the band’s first album released as a duo.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!

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Black Line is fascinating concept, which was originally set up in 2016 as a continuation of DJM|REX, a project by Douglas J. McCarthy (Nitzer Ebb) and Cyrusrex. It became ‘a diverse collective of musicians, producers, and sound designers, free to come and go as they please. With various production and remix projects in the pipeline, the self-released album “Treason, Sedition And Subversive Activities” offers up the first taste of what’s to come’. Among the artists who contributed to Black Line you’ll find Ken ‘Hiwatt’ Marshall (co-producer & engineer), Zack Meyers (co-producer), Brad Apodaca, Anthony Baldino, Michael ‘prophei’ Dietel, Bon Harris (Nitzer Ebb), Baseck, Jon Bates (Big Black Delta), Paul Barker (Ministry and REVCO), Christian Eigner (Depeche Mode), Mark Walk (Skinny Puppy), Maria Lui and of course singer Douglas J. McCarthy. I’d a chat with Douglas J. McCarthy.

You can download the “Treason, Sedition And Subversive Activities” album right here.

(by Inferno Sound Diaries)

Q: Hi Douglas, Black Line has been introduced as ‘a diverse collective of musicians, producers, and sound designers, free to come and go as they please’. How did this concept saw the daylight and how did it really happened to make it come true?

Douglas: Hello, nice to speak to you. The project started after Cyrusrex and myself were finishing up the third of 3 DJMREX EP’s. We still had some ideas for tracks and Christian Eigner, Depeche Mode’s drummer, was in LA and offered to record some live drums. We went to a studio with a few basic bass line concepts and Christian played a variety of different takes as I wrote lyrics and melodies. It was an excellent days work and got us thinking about working with other friends to explore their take on DJMREX.

It soon expanded into being quite a lot more people including Bon (Nitzer Ebb) and Paul Barker (Revolting Cocks, Ministry etc) and we started working with producer Zack Meyers. We soon realized that this was actually more complicated than DJMREX so decided to give it a new name. Black Line is a typographic legal term, similar to ‘red line’, that means all previous drafts of a document are included. It seemed to fit the process.

Q: I can image it first of all is a damned crazy, but original way to bring ‘friends’ together or at least musicians who respect each other? What does it really mean to you and the others?

Douglas: It was pretty relaxed. Most of us live quite close to each other and Cyrus’ studio where we worked. The main core of the people on the album were myself, Zack and Cyrus. Other people would drop by as they wanted and in the case of Michael who lives in San Francisco or Paul who lives in Portland, we would send tracks we thought they’d enjoy working on. We had a lot of song ideas and sometimes they’d reach an impasse so we’d move on to another idea. There are a couple of songs that made it to the album that started life as a different song or different songs that we’d skim the best ideas from to form a complete song.

In terms of what it means to myself and all those involved, I think it was something we never planned to do so in some ways it was a surprise to be working in this way, at other times it could be frustrating to have so many ideas springing forth and it took quite a bit of discipline, especially from Zack to filter the good from the bad.

Q: What are your personal experiences about friendship and respect between artists? Is it really possible?

Douglas: Hmmm, the old friendship and being artists conundrum! I have had the pleasure of working and collaborating with a variety of artists over the years. Dropping in and out of essentially someone’s project is a lot easier than ‘being in a band’. I think Black Line inadvertently blurred that definition and so poignantly now it is the time to tour the album it has, inevitably, been hard to make the decisions about whom will play live. We did a celebratory show in LA earlier this year where we invited all the players on the album and also Jason Payne from Nitzer Ebb, but we knew moving forward having 9 people on stage would be simply unsustainable. So with the Depeche Mode tour being announced there are unsurprisingly some hurt feelings right now.

On a more general level, I have a good quantity of friends who are fellow artists and there is a very high level of respect and nothing but good will to one another.

Q: Back to Black Line and the album “Treason, Sedition, And Subversive Activities”. Was there a kind of concept or guiding line(s) for the artists to compose their song(s)? How did it happened and who has been responsible for the coordination between all contributors?

Douglas: There was no overview going into the project we just relied on our taste. But inevitably after listening to more tracks there seemed to be clear moods that were necessary for us to convey the whole project. The normal (for me) mixture of sadness, anger and humor. I wrote the majority of the lyrics and melodies but Zack was definitely involved and at times would originate lyrical ideas. Jon Bates (Big Black Delta) also had a role.

Sonically, Cyrus would set a mood for the most part using an extensive array of modular synthesis that would be the basis of a lot of the tracks that eventually made it to the album. I would then bounce off those to begin the lyrical and melodic content. Others would potentially add a level of additional musical mood and Zack would reign it in to be more honed in as a song.

Q: The songs are pretty diversified, but it feels a bit like your vocals are the cement between all of the songs to get the album compact and cohesive. Do you agree on this point and tell us a bit more how it was for you singing on such a diversified composition?

Douglas: We used layers of other people singing… Jon, Zack, even Ken Marshall, but there was never any thought of not having me sing and I agree with you that it creates the sound of an album to have a lead singer. But I would say that wouldn’t I?

I have a diverse taste in musical styles and have never felt inhibited by having to be ‘true’ to one thing or another in terms of lyrical or vocal performance. I react to the actual elements I am dealing with with each track. It is a lot of work and at times I simply didn’t have anything to say for a few days so we’d rework older tracks. Eventually the ideas are forthcoming or not. It’s a creative process that is not something you can turn or off as you wish.

Another point is that we are using quite complicated time signatures that do not necessarily stay the same throughout the song so it was challenging at times.

Q: Can you imagine Black Line playing any kind of charity performance? It would be something unique or am I just dreaming..? It also is another way to ask you about further plans for Black Line? 

Douglas: I better be able to imagine it as we are opening for Depeche Mode! Although I’m pretty certain that doesn’t qualify as a ‘charity performance’. We are planning on adding as many live shows as we can over the coming year.

Courtesy by Inferno Sound Diaries

Inferno Sound Diaries

I have been working for over 30 years with Side-line as the main reviewer. My taste is eclectic, uncoventional and I prefer to look for the pearls, even if the bands are completely unknown, thus staying loyal to the Side-Line philosophy of nurturing new talents.

www.side-line.com

Black Line are opening for Depeche Mode for their forthcoming winter European Global Spirit Tour dates passing through Poland, Belarus, Russia, Finland, Latvia and Lithuania.

Black Line is the collective consisting of cyrusrex, Douglas J McCarthy (Nitzer Ebb), Jon Bates (Big Black Delta) , Anthony Baldino, Bon Harris (Nitzer Ebb), Zack Meyers (Fear Of Ghosts), Brad Apodaca (Fear Of Ghosts), Paul Barker (Ministry), Baseck, Michael Dietel (annodalleb), Ken Marshall (Skinny Puppy), Mark Walk (Skinny Puppy, Ohgr), and Christian Eigner (Depeche Mode).

Listen to “Snap” from the band’s debut album “Treason, Sedition And Subversive Activities”.

Side-Line also covered Depeche Mode’s ‘Mute: A Visual Document’.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!

side-line.com

Genre/Influences: Experimental, EBM, industrial, cinematographic.

Background/Info: Black Line is a crazy, but fascinating concept, which was originally set up in 2016 as a continuation of DJM|REX, a project by Cyrusrex and Douglas J. McCarthy. It became ‘a diverse collective of musicians, producers, and sound designers, free to come and go as they please. With various production and remix projects in the pipeline, ‘Treason, Sedition And Subversive Activities’ offers up the first taste of what’s to come’. Among the artists who contributed to Black Line you’ll find Ken ‘Hiwatt’ Marshall (co-producer & engineer), Zack Meyers (co-producer), Brad Apodaca, Anthony Baldino, Michael ‘prophei’ Dietel, Bon Harris (Nitzer Ebb), Baseck

Jon Bates (Big Black Delta), Paul Barker (Ministry and REVCO), Christian Eigner (Depeche Mode), Mark Walk (Skinny Puppy), Maria Lui and of course singer Douglas J. McCarthy.

Content: It’s not an easy thing to define the sound of Black Line. Because of the numerous artists involved with the composition process the album sounds pretty diversified, but carried by the charismatic and unique vocals of Douglas McCarthy. There however is an intelligent approach in the global writing of the songs.

From EBM-inspired cuts towards more industrial parts to soundtrack inspired (instrumental) cuts, the album really has a lot to offer. The last song is a remix by Venetian Snares.

+ + + : I think it’s really important such kind of project has a ‘main’ singer. Douglas McCarthy not only is a genius vocalist with a unique timbre of voice, but the vocals feel a bit like the cement between all of the songs. Using different singers would have created the impression listening to a compilation.

Sound-wise the songs were accomplished with an artistic taste. Sometimes evasive and even cinematographic-minded and then hard and into a kind of industrial-EBM this album is featuring multiple surprises. The songs were accomplished with great sound treatments and I especially like the icy passages. I prefer some of the harder cuts such as “Snap” and “Losing You”.

– – – : You sometimes get the impression it’s basically a project between friends… just for fun although great and recognized artists. I’m missing a bit cohesion between the harder, industrial & EBM driven tracks and the totally into ambient-like other cuts.

Conclusion: “Treason, Sedition, And Subversive Activities” feels a bit like there’re multiple bands hiding behind Black Line and that’s precisely what it is all about. But at the other side it also is an album featuring several cool tracks.

Best songs: “Snap”, “Losing You”, “Shut It Down”, “Changed – Venetian Snares Mix”.

Rate: (8).

Band: www.facebook.com/BlackLineProject

Inferno Sound Diaries

I have been working for over 30 years with Side-line as the main reviewer. My taste is eclectic, uncoventional and I prefer to look for the pearls, even if the bands are completely unknown, thus staying loyal to the Side-Line philosophy of nurturing new talents.

www.side-line.com

Read the review of ‘Metanoia’.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!

side-line.com

Martyn LeNoble & Christian Eigner will release a cover of David Bowie and Giorgio Moroder’s “Cat People (Putting Out Fire)” featuring Mark Lanegan (The Screaming Trees) and Dave Gahan (Depeche Mode).

The single will be released on Tuesday, August 2nd, 2016 and will only be available as a digital release.

The release comes after years of crossover collaborations in various projects and bands of Martyn LeNoble, Christian Eigner, Mark Lanegan and Dave Gahan. Martyn: “It truly was a labor of love, a farewell and a ‘thank you!’ Everyone’s contribution lifted the track. So long David Bowie.”

The original track (which you can hear below) was the theme song to the lovely 1982 American erotic horror film “Cat People” directed by Paul Schrader and starring Nastassja Kinski and Malcolm McDowell. Giorgio Moroder composed the film’s score, including the theme song which features lyrics and vocals by David Bowie.

Mark Lanegan is known for his solo albums, The Screaming Trees, and his countless collaborations (Queens of the Stone Age, Soulsavers, Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan). Martyn LeNoble from his side recorded and toured with Dave Gahan, Mark Lanegan, Soulsavers, Porno For Pyros, Jane’s Addiction and The Cult. And finally, Christian Eigner plays drums for Depeche Mode, co-produced and co-wrote Dave Gahan’s solo album “Hourglass” and co-wrote the Depeche Mode single “Suffer Well.

Here’s the original:

Side-Line also covered Depeche Mode’s ‘s ’.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!

side-line.com