Released 22 August 1983 Label Sire Records | Length 49:43 Release date 22 August 1983 | |
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Producer Depeche ModeDaniel Miller Genres Synthpop, New wave, Industrial music, Industrial rock Similar Depeche Mode albums, Synthpop albums | ||
Construction Time Again is the third studio album by the English electronic music band Depeche Mode, released on 22 August 1983 by Mute Records. This was the first Depeche Mode album with Alan Wilder as a full band member, who wrote the songs "Two Minute Warning" and "The Landscape Is Changing", as well as the B-side "Fools". The title comes from the second line of the first verse of the track "Pipeline". It was supported by the Construction Time Again Tour.
Contents
The album was recorded at John Foxx's Garden Studios in London, engineered by Gareth Jones (who had also engineered Foxx's 1980 album Metamatic) and mixed at the Hansa Tonstudio in Berlin.
Depeche mode and then
Background and themes
In January 1983, shortly before the release of the "Get the Balance Right!" single, songwriter Martin Gore attended an Einstürzende Neubauten concert, giving him the idea to experiment with the sounds of industrial music in the context of pop.
This album introduced a transition in lyrical content for the group. Construction Time Again would include a bevy of political themes, sparked by the poverty Gore had seen on a then-recent trip he had taken to Thailand.
Critical reception
NME hailed the album, saying that "Everything Counts" "is Mode's best ever single, and undeniably one of their biggest hits. [...] It sold because it combines edgy and poignant melodies held in thrilling tension; a tough, urgent dancebeat; and a gleamingly modern sound with an element of quirkiness to mark it out in the crowd. And the same goes for every other track on the album." Reviewer Matt Snow qualified Alan Wilder's composition "Two Minute Warning", as "a haunting melody whose transition from verse to chorus explodes in one of those breathtakingly uplifting moments." He concluded with this sentence: "Depeche Mode have made a bold and lovely pop record. Simple as that."
Track listing
All songs written and composed by Martin Gore, except where noted.
Personnel
Credits adapted from the liner notes of Construction Time Again.
Songs
1Love - in Itself4:29
2More Than a Party4:45
3Pipeline5:55