“We wanted to take a different direction with this album, for the songs to come across in a more direct way and not to be so fussy,” Gahan said in an interview shortly after the recording at Puk Studios in Denmark, where they completed Violator before it was mixed in London. 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.
Violator was recorded in Milan and Denmark and mixed in London by François Kevorkian, who had worked previously on Kraftwerk’s 1986 album Electric Café. So with six varied albums already released in the 80s as the band marched to perfect their sound, with a bigger following than any other in the world right then – what were Depeche to do as the 80s closed? Only go and record their best album to date… This last album did what it said on the tin, introducing the band’s sound to America – which led to a US tour documented in the excellent 101 documentary, and closing with an epic concert at the Rose Bowl stadium in Pasadena in front of 70,000 people. Previous albums had seen the Depeche output mature from its pop sound (on 1981 debut album Speak & Spell and largely on its follow-up A Broken Frame), through the industrial sample-laden Construction Time Again to the darker, more thoughtful trio of Some Great Reward, Black Celebration and Music For The Masses. This was the band’s Revolver, a peak of creativity that introduced their trademark synth tones to the world of rock music. Only whereas The Stones arguably stopped making great albums mere years into their history, the Mode made many well into theirs. The band is fast-approaching four decades in music making and in that time, have spread the word of synth, married it to rock, sold a gazillion albums and singles and become the electronic Rolling Stones. Over time, Depeche Mode might well be judged as being as important as The Beatles. But after six varied and successful albums in one decade, how could they possibly get any higher? Welcome to Violator…
Appearances would cause riots and they could easily wow 70,000 people in a single sitting. In the late 80s, Depeche Mode were huge Stateside.
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