Black Celebration

After touring through July 1985 in support of their previous album Some Great Reward (1984), Depeche Mode released two compilation albums in late 1985, The Singles 81→85 in the UK in October, and Catching Up with Depeche Mode in the US in November. Both albums included two new tracks which were both issued as singles, "Shake the Disease" (single released April 1985) and "It's Called a Heart" (single released September 1985). On a personal level, singer Dave Gahan married his partner Jo Fox, songwriter Martin Gore was still living in West Berlin with his girlfriend Christina Friedrich, and Andy Fletcher and Alan Wilder had moved in with their girlfriends, Grainne Mullen and Jeri Young, respectively, in London. However, after their exhausting year of touring and recording, the band found themselves at odds when they reunited. Tensions within the band and their producer Daniel Miller had already come up during recording sessions earlier that year for "Shake the Disease". Said Gahan, "If we were ever going to split up the band it was at the end of 1985. We were really in a state of turmoil. Constant arguing. Very intense. We weren't really sure where to go [musically] after Some Great Reward, so we decided to slow things down. But it left us with too much time on our hands. So we spent most of our time arguing. Sometimes, it seems incredible that we came out of that period with the band and our sanity intact." The inter-personal conflict within what was normally a tight-knit group led Gore to hide away with a friend at a farm for a week, with Gore later saying "I freaked out. I had to go away for a few days." Ultimately, the band agreed to reconvene in London in November to try to record their new material. ==Recording==

Production Depeche Mode entered Westside Studios{{efn|Just as Depeche Mode had recorded at Hansa Studios in part because David Bowie had a few years earlier, by coincidence Bowie had just finished sessions of his own at Westside Studios a few months earlier, where he recorded tracks such as "Absolute Beginners" After a week-long standoff, Miller and the label relented, allowing the band to "make the record you want to make." This stand-off preceded a tense 120 days in the studio, with the band and producers working 14 hours a day to complete the album, with few days off. Years later, Miller remembered that the Black Celebration sessions "turned in a nightmare ... There was definitely tension in the studio" as a result of the "live the album" ethos of recording. where they had recorded and mixed parts of their previous two albums. In partially explaining the move back to Berlin, singer Dave Gahan said the reason was "the atmosphere. There are no distractions [here at Hansa] like in London. I can't work in England anymore." Adding further tensions in the studio, Jones and Miller fretted over the album's final mix, taking three weeks to mix the album over and over, before the band finally staged an intervention to force a final mix. Andy Fletcher said that "We had a real mission to prove to people that electronic music was a valid type of music," noting that Depeche Mode often incorporated guitar into their songs, but typically subverted its sound to make it unrecognizable. Wilder said that with Black Celebration, the band was likely "alienating some of the teen market but gaining more respect [among the press]." or rituals of the Occult, but rather, it was meant to "[describe] the daily boredom of a dreary life without climaxes or hope for improvement." Said Gore, "Our songs from Black Celebration capture the idea: Make the most of what you have, and find consolation whereever you can." Gahan elaborated, "it's a common thing: at the end of a working day you go out and drown your sorrows no matter how shitty you feel or how bleak your future looks." ==Release and promotion==

, pictured in July 1986, while on tour in the US in support of Black Celebration|alt=A young light-skinned man with blond hair and light makeup, pictured in near profile, wearing a black leather jacket over a black leather fetish fashion harness, signing autographs while seated at a yellow table. "Stripped", the first single released from the album, was made available on 10 February 1986 in non-US territories. Black Celebration was released a month later on 17 March, 1986 by Mute Records in the UK, Sire Records in the US, and Intercord Records in Germany. In the UK, the LP was given catalogue number STUMM26, and in Germany, INT 146.818. In Sweden, the Scandinavian Music Club included Black Celebration in a box set with the band's previous albums where the band's name was mis-spelled several times as "Best of Depech Mode" (catalogue number 15 6505). A promotional single for "Breathing in Fumes" was released in the UK (catalogue number RR12BONG10) and distributed exclusively to clubs to play on the dance floor. Despite Mute's concerns about the songs and the album, Black Celebration became Depeche Mode's best-selling album to date. A month after the album's release, on 14 April 1986, the album's second single, "A Question of Lust" was issued, followed by "A Question of Time" on 11 August. Also in August 1986, Wilder released 1 + 2 under the name Recoil, a collection of sampled Depeche Mode sounds that he originally didn't intend to make public until Miller persuaded him to turn the project into an album. Said Wilder, it was "an experiment, an improvisation that I had recorded in my home studio using really simple equipment." In September 1986, the movie Modern Girls was released, which included Depeche Mode's song "But Not Tonight" on its soundtrack. "But Not Tonight" was released as a US-only single on 22 October 1986, as US label Sire Records had decided to release it instead of "Stripped" in that region. Black Celebration was remastered and re-released on CD and vinyl in 2007. Tour The band continued to use backing tapes on tour, a trade-off the band chose to make because although it led to some inflexibility, it made the band sound good live. Wilder defended the decision to use backing tapes, saying "We do put on a good live performance. We're one of the most exciting bands around. First, we always get a good sound, because everything always goes into the PA system. Second, we have a lot of vocal harmonies, which make a very big vocal sound. And third, we take a lot of trouble over the stage set and a good light show." The set was designed to hide much of the band's equipment and allow for Gahan's dancing. Wilder elaborated that "the flooring is designed for Dave [Gahan] to be able to dance around without flipping over – we had problems with that on previous tours." The Black Celebration Tour began with a UK leg, starting in Oxford, England in late March 1986 and finishing a month later in London. The set list was modified early in the leg, when lacklustre crowd reactions to "Here is the House" led it to be dropped in favor of "New Dress". A European leg continued from April through May, followed by a North American and Japanese leg in June and July that concluded with three shows in Japan. ==Critical reception==

Contemporaneous reviews for Black Celebration in the British press were mixed. Panning the album in Melody Maker, Steve Sutherland wrote that Depeche Mode came off as "pussycats desperate to appear perverted as an escape from the superficiality of teen stardom", while in Sounds, Kevin Murphy dismissed its songs as "harmless scenes of banality, with no twists and many happy endings." Writing for Smash Hits, Chris Heath was impressed by the album's "weirder" approach of mixing "dark, mysterious percussive" songs and "sweet, fragile and rather sinister ballads". Betty Page of Record Mirror praised Depeche Mode for their "refusal to follow anything but their own fashion" and "unswerving ability to come up with great, fresh melodies." Black Celebration has since been reappraised in retrospective reviews. AllMusic critic Ned Raggett considered it a transitional work for Depeche Mode, moving away from their earlier "industrial-pop" sound and towards "a path that in many ways defined their sound to the present: emotionally extreme lyrics matched with amped-up tunes, as much anthemic rock as they are compelling dance, along with stark, low-key ballads." Danny Eccleston from Mojo said that it marked the start of the band's "post-industrial" period with its "richer, velvety soundworld", "insinuating melodies", and "positively Stentorian" vocals by Dave Gahan. Black Celebration was included in Spins 1989 list of "The 25 Greatest Albums of All Time", at number 15. According to Rolling Stone journalist Rob Sheffield, Black Celebration was an "instant classic for the band's fans" which was "utterly ignored by everybody else" at the time of its release. In 2019, Classic Pop Magazine said that with Black Celebration, Depeche Mode created "a tech-noir future dystopia" that "glitters in the gloom". ==Legacy==

Black Celebration marked the end of a run of albums with Miller, Jones and Wilder co-producing, with Wilder saying "it signaled the end of a co-production relationship ... – although, I should add, not a falling out." The album helped the band turn the corner and move away from the teenybopper image they'd acquired in their early years, and became a cult classic, helping to set the template for "doom-laden alternative rock." Fletcher later recognised it as a "classic Depeche Mode fan favourite" among the band's albums in the EPK for their 1998 compilation The Singles 86>98, and said he found that "Black Celebration has got a collection of songs on there that's absolutely fantastic." Gore, also in 1998, said that the album marked a turning point for the band, saying "since the Black Celebration album we've started getting things right." Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails cited Black Celebration and its subsequent tour as an influence, saying that it helped inspire him to write the album Pretty Hate Machine (1989). Said Reznor, "DM was one of our favorite bands and the Black Celebration record took my love for them to a new level." ==Track listing==

2007 Collectors Edition CD + DVD ==Personnel==

Depeche Mode • Alan Wilder • Andrew Fletcher • David Gahan • Martin Gore Technical • Depeche Mode – production • Gareth Jones – production • Daniel Miller – production • Richard Sullivan – engineering assistance • Peter Schmidt – engineering assistance • Tim Young – mastering • Dave Allen – recording on "Fly on the Windscreen – Final" • Phil Tennant – recording assistance on "Fly on the Windscreen – Final" Artwork • Martyn Atkins – design • David A. Jones – design • Mark Higenbottam – design • Brian Griffin – photography • Stuart Graham – photography assistance ==Charts==

Weekly charts Year-end charts ==Certifications==