IN THE LATE 80s, DEPECHE MODE WERE HUGE STATESIDE. APPEARANCES WOULD CAUSE RIOTS AND THEY COULD EASILY WOW 70,000 PEOPLE IN A SINGLE SITTING. BUT AFTER SIX VARIED AND SUCCESSFUL ALBUMS IN ONE DECADE, HOW COULD THEY POSSIBLY GET ANY HIGHER? WELCOME TO VIOLATOR…

ANDY JONES

Over time, Depeche Mode might well be judged as being as important as The Beatles, or even the electronic Rolling Stones. However, whereas The Stones arguably stopped making great albums mere years into their history, the Mode made many well into theirs… and the best of all is Violator. This was the band’s Revolver, a peak of creativity that introduced their trademark synth tones to the world of rock music. So with six varied albums already released in the 1980s, what were Depeche to do as the decade closed? Why, they’d simply go and record their best album to date.

Violator was recorded in Milan and Denmark and mixed in London by François Kevorkian, who had worked on Kraftwerk’s 1986 album Electric Café. It might sound like a complicated process, but the band had every intention of making it as simple as possible – at least, at the outset…