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Depeche Mode is a synth pop band founded in 1980 in the town of Basildon, England by:
The band's name (pidgin French for "Fast Fashion", or "Fashion Today/Now/Dispatch" which meant "Fashion News" in common french) was inspired by a French fashion magazine of the same name.
Verbally contracted to Daniel Miller's Mute label, Depeche Mode are one of the most successful of the New Wave/New Romantic bands.
After the release of Speak & Spell, their first album, song-writer Clarke left the band and went on to form Yazoo (Yaz in the US) with Alison Moyet, The Assembly with Feargal Sharkey, Dave Clempson and Eric Radcliffe, and later Erasure with Andy Bell.
Martin Gore took over as the band's primary song-writer, and in 1982 the album A Broken Frame was released. After this, Alan Wilder joined the band as a permanent replacement for Clarke.
In the early 1980s the band's popularity was largely confined to Europe (particularly Germany) and their style was Synth pop. In 1984 Depeche Mode made in-roads into America, which spawned the US-only release of Catching Up With Depeche Mode.
In the intervening years between the mid-80s and 90s, the band's popularity in the US grew to massive proportions. The 101 tour culminated in a final concert at the Pasadena Rose Bowl with a sell-out attendance of 80,000 (the highest in 8 years for the venue). The tour was documented in a film by D.A. Pennebaker, recently released on DVD, which is notable for an element of fan interaction.
Depeche Mode had a great influence on the emergence of the techno and electronica music scenes through the late 80s and 90s. Techno pioneers such as Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson and Juan Atkins regularly quoted Depeche Mode as an influence in their development of proto-techno during the Detroit Techno explosion in the late 80s.
1993's a decade past when compared with the significantly darker tone of this and other albums of this period. Ultimately, though, Songs Of Faith And Devotion has been recognized as artistically among the best records Depeche Mode has produced - with almost all the songwriting done by Martin Gore.
One marked change in the style of music throught the history of this band has been a move away from keyboards and heavily synthpop-influenced sound... indeed, in a CD booklet, Dave Gahan is instead pictured lovingly holding an acoustic guitar - a far cry from the synthpop ideal of 'keyboards with everything'. After the much earlier departure of Vince Clarke, a gradual change away from their roots can hardly have been unexpected.
In June 1995 after the Devotional tour, Alan Wilder left the band citing unsatisfactory internal working conditions, while continuing to work on his personal project Recoil. It has been suggested that a failure of the band to recognize its own brand appeal in releasing previous records may have played some part in his departure, with other factors including the drug addiction issues of Dave Gahan; Martin Gore's admission of "battling his own demons" at this time; and growing tensions between Wilder and Andrew Fletcher. Wilder himself has stated that he contributed a lion's share of work while receiving the least credit on past albums.
2003 saw the release of Dave Gahan's solo album, Paper Monsters, followed by a worldwide tour and a DVD taken from it, titled Live Monsters, Martin Gore continued his solo career with the release of Counterfeit 2, and Andrew Fletcher launched his own label, Toast Hawaii. However, the group insists that Depeche Mode is still together, and plans to release another album soon.
August 2004 group's record company ( Mute ) announced , DVD release of "Devotional" and new remix completion album "Remixes 81-04" that covers some new & unreleased promo mixes of the singles from 1981 to 2004
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