Architecture & Morality and Dazzle Ships are great albums.

Depeche Mode - started out crap, got much better
OMD - started out great, got much crapper

I like those albums, too, Stephen, but as the lone DM fan on this board, I have to make my vote count. :P

Ciao, folks.

Rex,

Say it ain't so! Although a Depeche Mode poll is certainly a fitting venue for Rexian swan-song.

Looking forward to your comeback tour. Remember, I'm expecting a new avatar! :)

Yes Rex, it has been a while since you last updated your avatar. Where are you going to change it, not saying you should actually as all your avatars are well picked out and are always good.

I've not voted

DM - interesting young men who went bad....
OMD - one good song? Could never handle the singers wacky dancing

Neither of them feature in my record collection......

OMD started great, but then it all went horribly wrong after 'Dazzleships' (a brilliant album, their AYAMW - self indulgent, don't give a fuck about commercial expectations or acceptability).

Never liked DM

OMD, cause I have three or four of their albums, and just a few DM singles. Never seen OMD live, so maybe that's a bonus for me (never seen the Mode either, mind).

Not the only one! DM are one of the most underrated bands around, great live as well.

Yes, but Dazzle Ships? Also highly creative and in no way a redundant or lesser representation of something the band had already done. Not at all like AYAMW.

I will always agree with and respect the fact that AYAMW is self indulgent and somewhat of a fuck-off, but that doesn't make it *good*. Whereas I think Dazzle Ships, though cloying at times, is a remarkable achievement.

This one is a clear DM. Not a fan or anything, but super quality, and really surprising (I find) they got so popular. The OMD stuff never got me.

Ye gods, tough call this one as I liked them both.

Architecture & Morality remains one of my top 5 albums of all time, but I think OMD's stuff fizzled out too soon. Junk Culture onwards was just too darned poppy....

DM have consistently produced good albums (heck, even Speak & Spell and especially A Broken Frame if you take them in the context of when they were released - The Sun and The Rain still brings the neck hairs up for me, 23 years on...), so they get the thumbs up.

I sort of knew two of Depeche Mode through a mutual friend and as a result went to quite a few of their early gigs in and around Basildon but never actually owned any of their recorded material so I voted for them. The only OMD I had was Electricity.

Stood next to Andy McCluskey at a Fall gig in Liverpool (80? 81?) and I'm convinced Smith stared him out...constantly. Or maybe he was staring me out :unsure:

Dazzle Ships: beautiful LP. Some other good ones, too. Nobody mention Sugar Tax, that's all I ask. Whoops.

OMD: Fine, but don;t move me. I probably like Violator the best, oddly enough. But, don;t some of them come from Basildon? Oh, OK, I like them then :P

Yes, Depeche Mode where originally from Basildon.

Essex music luminaries

blur - colchester
prodigy - braintree
nitzer ebb - chelmsford
byrd - ?died somewhere in Essex?
my life story - southend
dr. feelgood - "
Billy Bragg - Somewher around the A13, isn't it?
Alison Moyet - Did I imagine this?

I'm sure there are loads more, anyone...?

Fair points Rex. My comments were more towards attitude than subjective opinion on the quality.
It's worth noting that, at the time, 'Dazzleships' was seen as somewhat slap-dash and lazily made as 3-4 of the songs were just samples and sound effects and another 4 (I think) were re-hashes of old, previously unreleased material ('Radio Waves', 'Of all the Things We've Made' , 'Romance of the Telescope' and 'Silent Running')

No, she used to hang around with my mates girlfriend. This was at about the time she teamed up with Vince Clarke to form Yazoo.

Ah Rex my good man, back with the new avatar I see. Good on you!

I know what you meant, that's why I still kind of agreed with you! :)

I'd forgotten that Dazzle Ships included all that "previously unfinished" material, but I don't necessarily equate something's quality with how long it took to produce it. I hope it didn't seem like I was trying to say something like that.

I would think a common criticism of Dazzle Ships would be that it primarily just updates ideas that Kraftwerk introduced on Radioactivity and Computer World. The difference, in my mind, being that OMD were more about making electronic noise warm and melodic - human - whereas Kraftwerk were trying to be anonymous and robotic.

Interestingly, Dazzle Ships has a long history of languishing in cut-out bins over here in the US and their greatest hits CD, while it contains *3* tracks from Architecture & Morality, has nothing from Dazzle Ships, whereas the same disc in the UK has both "Genetic Engineering" and "Telegraph." So it really does seem to be some sort of slap-dash failure on this side of the world.

I publicly thanked you somewhere for giving me the idea to take a brief rest-and-rethink.

Yeah, stepping back and getting perspective once in a while is always a good thing. Maybe we're all getting a little pissy just because it's February.

As cool as your new avatar is, though, I have no idea who it is. First guess, admittedly wrong, would be Nina Hagen....

Not even close. For starters, it's not a woman.

:o

Marty Feldman?

It reminds me (admittedly wrong also, I am sure) of something from Fritz Lang's Metropolis.

Come across, REX!

depeche mode... no contest.

edit: a little more on DM. I first got into them my freshman year of high school, after inheriting an old cd copy of Music for the Masses. I was instantly hooked. They're a band that's only gotten better with age ((songs of faith and devotion, ultra, and exciter are all AMAZING)), and I'm looking forward to their newest effort, due sometime this year.

As for their earlier stuff, it's just like the early Beatles. Some great songs, but nothing show-stopping. Some Great Reward is the first album that you can notice a shift in songwriting to a more darker, harder edge. Black Celebration ---on are all pretty flawless.

And to whoever gave credit to a Broken Frame, I LOVE some of that album. Shouldn't Have Done that creeps me out. and I love it.

REX has never really come across with an answer to this poll, has he now?

He mentions being a DM fan, but never says he is not a fan of OMD. I'm curious.

Go back and read my comments again. B)

Oh, FINE!!!

Like I said, it must be February. :P

:lol:

Actually, I think it's the fact that Mercury is in retrograde. There will be no clear communication.

No, wait. That's bullshit. Fuck me.