Vince Clarke - Songs Of Silence (Mute)

Vince Clarke's first ever solo album. Looking forward to hearing the rest of it, out on November 17th.

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As the album title suggests, Songs of Silence is a lyric-less, instrumental album, and is hugely evocative for that. Unlike anything you’ve previously heard from Vince Clarke, as an artisan of dynamic electropop, (Erasure, Depeche Mode, Yazoo), Songs of Silence has about it a more sober ambient electronic beauty, its unique characteristics put it in a category of its own.

For the creation of the record Vince set himself two rules – first that the sounds he himself generated for the album would come solely from Eurorack (a modular synthesizer format introduced in the mid-90s) and secondly that each track would be based around one note, maintaining a single key throughout. The resultant pieces, with the Eurorack sound clay then manipulated on Logic Pro, amount to wordless narratives, in which a sense of synth-generated, cosmic remoteness is often jolted by stark interventions, reminders of the human hand at work amid this machinery.

This album sees Vince Clarke not content to rest on his considerable pop legacy, and instead open up for himself, and for the rest of us, exciting new electronic vistas in which the permutations and possibilities are limitless. Available on heavy weight vinyl and CD.

(Bleep.)

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I'm strangely drawn to this sound even though it's outside my normal comfort zone.

Will definitely be checking in on the album.

Humans are weird

So that cello sound comes actually from a Eurorack and not a real string instrument? 

Weird video, I don't think I will listen to this again 

But I like his keyboard playing in Depeche and Yazoo 

Previews of all tracks are now up at Bleep.

https://bleep.com/release/413005-vince-clarke-songs-of-silence

Out now in full. Exquisite.

Vince Clark! Of Depeche Mode, of Erasure, of Yazoo!

Its interesting how he set himself some restrictions for this album - Each track is "based on a single note that is held throughout the composition" - and he only used the Eurorack synth. I've seen it popping up on a few 'best of 2023' lists. It varies a lot, some of the tracks are more ambient/droney
 

his album from 10 years ago with Martin Gore as VCMG is also worth checking out, kindof hard techno but quality when you really spend time with it

Good stuff, actually. Thanks guys.