Vince Clarke – Songs Of Silence

(Mute)

LP / CD / DL

Launched 17 November 2023

Pre Order Right here

Ivor Novello successful songwriter and dwelling legend Vince Clarke releases his debut solo album. Paul Scott-Bates claims it’s a work of basic proportion.

Any follower of ambient and/or atmospheric synth music will undoubtedly name Songs Of Silence a faultless piece of genius, Vince Clarke would in all probability argue that Pink Planet ought to have an additional hemidemisemiquaver (sixty-fourth observe) on the fade out of Pink Planet or that there might be a barely elongated hi-hat on White Rabbit such is the perfection he has produced on this, his first solo providing.

Over forty years since Clarke first emerged on the music scene as a part of the debut Depeche Mode single Dreaming Of Me, he launched ten self-penned (principally) instrumental items that not solely mesmerises with their acute consideration to element but additionally grip the listener with tracks that slide effortlessly between remoteness and complexity.

The albums lead single, The Lamentations Of Jeremiah, noticed composer and buddy Reed Hays play a chilling, generally bloodcurdling cello as the focus to Clarke’s ethereal drone sounds, possibly elevating an eyebrow with the primary providing from his new venture. Certainly, a lot of Songs Of Silence attracts on single key tracks primarily based round one observe every which immediately creates senses of rigidity in tandem with calm.

Album opener, Cathedral units the scene with its moody drone, delicate waves shifting out and in creating an air of pleasure earlier than the sequencer patterned White Rabbit enters the fray. For the primary three and a half minutes, it picks up tempo earlier than a Japanese fashion taiko percussion ensues because the monitor accelerates right into a bounding race in direction of freedom.

Passage options the operatic voice of Caroline Pleasure including to the suspense and the intro to Pink Planet might probably draw affect from Area Odyssey’s Additionally Sprach Zarathrustra, maybe solely Clarke can enlighten us there. Certainly, Songs Of Silence might be a movement image soundtrack such is its presence, variation and depth.

Synth gurgles on Mitosis replicate just like the cells and chromosomes within the scientific course of and Blackleg brings a stunning however completely becoming nineteenth century anti-scab folks tune (Blackleg Miner) to twenty-first century life resonating with modern-day relevance and goosepimply hauntology. Penultimate monitor, Scarper once more builds like a time-lapse movie of a desert constructing to a cityscape earlier than the album closes with Final Transmission, an overture of kinds constructed round drone and monophonic noise with a dramatic climax.

To say Songs Of Silence is a basic of the fashionable age could be no exaggeration. What Vince Clarke has made right here is an album so good and so exact that it’s inconceivable to fault. The tracklisting, the size, the content material is sheer flawlessness. File subsequent to Music For Airports and Darkish Facet Of The Moon with a scattering of Laptop World and it is going to be in good firm.

You possibly can order Songs Of Silence right here.

All phrases by Paul Scott-Bates. Extra of Paul’s writing on Louder Than Warfare may be discovered at his writer’s archive. Paul’s web site is hiapop and you may observe him on Twitter as @hiapop, and on Fb right here.