Depeche Mode is a British new wave band from Basildon, Essex County, England. Formed in 1979, the group appears in the mainstream of synthpop and quickly becomes influential and popular on the international scene. His name comes from a French magazine, Dépêche Mode. The group is spotted by the agent of Soft Cell, then directed by Daniel Miller who makes him sign on his label Mute Records in 1981. The group knows its first success in Europe from September of that same year with Just Can not Get Enough and in the United States in 1984-1985 with the single People Are People .
The success of their synthpop with a style very marked by industrial music is constant until 1990 with the album Violator, including the titles Personal Jesus , < span class = "lang-en" lang = "in"> Policy of Truth and especially Enjoy the Silence . The 1990s were marked by drug dependence, overdose, and suicide attempt by lead singer Dave Gahan, who was detoxified only in 1996, and by the departure of Alan Wilder in 1995. The group, which has only three members, continues to release albums ( Ultra in 1997, Excite in 2001, Playing the Angel in 2005, Sounds of the Universe in 2009, Delta Machine in 2013 and Spirit in 2017).
Almost all the songs of the group are composed by Martin L. Gore, except those of the first album (Speak and Spell) which are mainly the work of Vince Clarke, quickly left to found Yazoo then Erasure. Since 2005, the singer Dave Gahan participates in the writing of some pieces. Martin L. Gore works a lot so that Depeche Mode is not only considered a group of "synthesizers", especially using the guitar.
The band ranks fifty times in the UK Singles Chart, and several albums have been ranked number one in the United Kingdom, the United States and other European countries. According to Mute Records, in 2008 the group has 75 million albums sold worldwide> and more than 100 million records including singles>.
