Christmas Island (piece of music)

Christmas Island
Depeche Mode
publication	April 14, 1986
length	4:51 (7 ″ version) 5:37 (12 ″ version) 3:50 (SACD version)
Genre (s)	Dark wave , industrial
Author (s)	Alan Wilder , Martin Gore
text	without (instrumental)
Producer (s)	Depeche Mode
Label	Mute Records
album	Black Celebration

Thematized by Depeche Mode in their 1986 instrumental piece: The Kiritimati Atoll (officially Christmas Island until 1979 ) in the Pacific Ocean, here approaching from the northeast

Christmas Island is a piece of music of the British synth-pop - band Depeche Mode . In terms of style , the piece , published in 1986 , can be assigned to Dark Wave and Industrial . In addition to the normal version with a length of 4:51 minutes, there is a longer extended version with 5:37 minutes, also from 1986, as well as a shorter SACD / DVD version with a length of 3:50 minutes that was only released in 2007 . The composition differs from the vast majority of Depeche Mode songs in several ways . So it's a purely instrumental piece . In addition, it was largely composed by the band member and keyboardist Alan Wilder , who worked with Martin Gore , who otherwise wrote the pieces almost exclusively on his own during this phase. Stylistically and technically it was comparatively experimental, especially due to the intensive use of the relatively new sampling ; so it anticipated later musical developments of the band, but also of Wilder's solo project Recoil .

Christmas Island was the "opener", the opening track, of all of Depeche Mode's live concerts on their large-scale Black Celebration Tour in 1986. It was created together with the songs from the associated studio album Black Celebration , but was not yet released on the original version of the album. Only after a relaunch , a re-release of the album as SACD / DVD, did it appear as a bonus track in 2007 . It was first published on April 14, 1986 on various media in connection with the second single A Question of Lust .

The music title refers to the atoll in the Pacific Ocean , formerly known as Christmas Island or Christmas Island , which has been officially called Kiritimati since 1979 ; also the associated gained island nation of Kiribati , the independence from the United Kingdom.

The connection to the studio album Black Celebration from 1986

Depeche Mode live in front of the large video wall during the title song Black Celebration from the album of the same name (Oberhausen, 2001)

At the turn of 1985/1986 Depeche Mode was working on the fifth studio album, the successor to Some Great Reward from 1984. The new pieces were recorded and mixed between November 1985 and January 1986 at Westside Studios and Genetic Studios in London and the Hansa Mischraum in Berlin , including Christmas Island . On March 17, 1986, the album was released under the title Black Celebration on the British record label Mute Records . In the original version for all markets except the United States , the LP contained eleven pieces of music with a total running time of 41:01 minutes; the experimental instrumental Christmas Island was - as well as several other pieces - not included. It was not among the three bonus tracks on the UK CD version, nor was it as the twelfth song / bonus track on the special LP, CD and cassette tape version for the United States.

The studio album or the individual pieces of music contained on it were all from Depeche Mode, together with Daniel Miller , the founder of Mute Records, and Gareth Jones produced . At Christmas Island, however, Miller and Jones did not work as producers. This suggests that the instrumental piece was finished early but was discarded as part of the album, or was created late towards the end of the album production when its concept was already established.

The versions of Christmas Island and their releases as well as live performances

Martin Gore (1986, aged about 25), founding member of Depeche Mode and one of the co-authors of Christmas Island

An E-mu Emulator II + from 1984: Gore and Wilder used it to create the mostly sampled sounds of Christmas Island both in the studio and on stage

After the first single Stripped had already been released on February 10, 1986 , the second single A Question of Lust was released on April 14, 1986 .

The normal version of Christmas Island with a length of 4:51 minutes appeared

• on April 14, 1986 for all but the United States on Mute Records as the B-side of the normal 7- inch single A Question of Lust ;
• in the same year on Mute Records as the second of five songs on a music cassette together with a remix of A Question of Lust by the music producer Flood and three live songs ; Especially for the Federal Republic of Germany , the same compilation was available from Intercord as a 12-inch maxi single and especially for France in a limited edition from Virgin Records as a single CD .

The Extended Version of Christmas Island was released with a length of 5:37 minutes

• in April 1986 on Mute Records as the second of five songs on a 12-inch maxi single along with the normal and minimal versions of A Question of Lust as well as a live and another instrumental piece; This compilation was available from Intercord as a single CD especially for the Federal Republic of Germany.

In Great Britain the single reached number 28 in the single charts , in the Federal Republic of Germany it was an 8th place in the sales charts .

Five years after its initial release, Mute Records brought both versions of Christmas Island out together on CD as part of the Singles Box Set Compilations in Great Britain in 1991 ; Apart from the fact that the normal version of Christmas Island was inserted in second place before the extended version , this CD corresponded to the British maxi single from Mute Records and the Intercord single CD from 1986.

For the US market, special 7- and 12-inch editions of the song A Question of Lust appeared on the Sire Records label , but the track Christmas Island was dispensed with; there it was only available through imports .

In March 2007 the album Black Celebration was digitally re-edited as SACD / DVD. In addition to the almost one-hour documentary Depeche Mode 1985–86: "The songs aren't good enough, there aren't any singles and it'll never get played on the radio" and three live recordings, the SACD / DVD contains eight additional pieces of music, including the 23rd and last Christmas Island for the first time in a shortened version of 3:50 minutes.

In September 2013, the normal version of Christmas Island appeared on the compilation Formula One - Christmas Edition published by Sony Records .

Even before the first record was released on April 14, 1986, Christmas Island had its public premiere on March 29, 1986 with the beginning of the almost five-month Black Celebration Tour at the Apollo Theater in Oxford, UK . Depeche Mode started all 76 live concerts of the tour in Europe , North America and Japan with the title Christmas Island , followed by the intro tape by Stripped . Only then followed with the title song Black Celebration and A Question of Time pieces, which the frontman Dave Gahan sang.

Depeche Mode took several songs from the album Black Celebration in the program of later tours (in addition to the title track of the same name, Stripped , A Question of Lust and A Question of Time ). After 1986, Depeche Mode no longer took up the instrumental Christmas Island for live performances.

The collaboration between Martin Gore and Alan Wilder

Alan Wilder (2010), Depeche Mode member from 1982-1995 and co-author of Christmas Island

Christmas Island is one of the few Depeche Mode pieces that emerged from a collaboration between several authors.

After Vince Clarke left Depeche Mode in 1981, founding member and keyboardist Martin Gore took over almost exclusively composing and writing the new songs. As the successor to Clarke, the keyboardist Alan Wilder was taken on in 1982 by Depeche Mode. Up until his departure from the band in 1995, Wilder only contributed a few of his own pieces of music that were less significant and sometimes only instrumental, especially in connection with the two studio albums Construction Time Again (1983) and Some Great Reward (1984).

In connection with the album Black Celebration and the tour of the same name, Gore and Wilder worked more closely together on two songs: Christmas Island and - together with producer Daniel Miller - on the track Black Day . The latter is a heavily revised acoustic version of Black Celebration sung by Martin Gore instead of Dave Gahan . Similar to Christmas Island , it did not originally appear on the album Black Celebration , but only in compilations in connection with the first single Stripped and only later as bonus material on the SACD version of the album. On the third studio album Construction Time Again from 1983, Wilder and Gore had already collaborated as authors on two tracks, Work Hard and The Great Outdoors! , also only a single B-side or bonus material to the regular album.

Christmas Island was - together with Black Day  - the last Depeche Mode piece that Alan Wilder is named as (co-) author. On the following albums, Wilder appeared not only playing the keyboard but also as a sound designer, arranger and producer for the band, before these tasks were increasingly taken over by external producers. His dwindling artistic influence within the band was ultimately one of the reasons why Wilder left Depeche Mode in 1995.

On the other hand , the experience that Alan Wilder gained with Christmas Island and other more experimental compositions led to the foundation of the solo project Recoil in 1986. He ran it parallel to Depeche Mode for around nine years before it became his main project. Recoil's EP 1 + 2 appeared in August 1986 , followed by Hydrology in 1988, in which Wilder developed his conceptual ideas of Christmas Island and other pieces.

Details of the piece of music and the title

Christmas Island (1962), Operation Dominic : Palm trees in front of a “mushroom cloud” as part of a US nuclear weapons test

As a pure instrumental without the participation of front man Dave Gahan, Christmas Island is an exception within the Depeche Mode music pieces. However, the band had also previously performed instrumental pieces, such as Big Muff and Any Second Now on the debut album Speak & Spell , Nothing to Fear on the follow-up A Broken Frame or - at least afterwards as bonus material - The Great Outdoors! on the third album Construction Time Again .

The mood of Christmas Island is described several times as being particularly dark, melancholy and "atmospheric". Only a few approaches to this can be found in the previous, more poppy albums Construction Time Again and Some Great Reward , while it became formative and typical of the band for the subsequent albums Music for the Masses , Violator and Songs of Faith and Devotion . She is regularly attributed to the influence of Alan Wilder as a sound developer and arranger.

Wilder and Gore made intensive use of the then innovative keyboard sampler E-mu Emulator II from E-mu Systems in both production and live performances . When it was released in 1984, it was one of the first freely available synthesizers to be produced in large series that enabled digital sampling and 8-track sequencer passages for US $ 8,000  each . Used to store the data Depeche Mode at Christmas Island as well as in the other parts of the factory, drive and one each 5.25-inch diskette ( "floppy disk") per piece of music, which initially have a storage capacity of about 160  kB was available. The 1985 version of the device itself had an internal RAM memory of 1 MB, around twice as much as in the original version .

The piece of music is named "after the island of the same name". Other evidence suggests that the atoll in the Pacific Ocean is meant a British for decades part of Crown Colony was that in 1979 became independent as Kiribati, and not in the Indian Ocean located and Australia is part of Christmas Island .

The piece of music begins with a gently fading in and out, about 20-second passage by a marching band , as is typical for the United States. At least in some concerts of Black Celebration Tour appeared to in rapid succession pictograms on the video wall, one of three jets existing bombers - Season , radioactive decay and nuclear radiation symbolize. With this, Depeche Mode alluded to the nuclear weapon tests on Christmas Island, especially from 1962: As part of Operation Dominic , the USA carried out 25 nuclear weapon tests from April 25 to July 11, 1962 off the coast of the atoll, which was only partially evacuated, or in the nearer sea area; Between May 1957 and September 1958, the British had already carried out nine nuclear weapons tests on and near Christmas Island and temporarily relocated up to 3,000 military personnel to the island.

In the instrumental piece Christmas Island , Gore and Wilder implement the theme with stylistic devices from electronica music : Instead of classic song structures with verses and choruses, they use various motifs and phrases , some of which are connected one behind the other, some on top of each other. The range extends from a continuous low keynote through octave changes to characteristic, frequently repeated melodies over one and two whole bars; flat sounds alternate with sharply accented sounds. In contrast to conventional pop music, there are no harmonic changes. Large passages contain comparatively complex, hard beats of a sampled e-drum set in 4/4 time as well as other percussive elements, especially in the extended version . The conclusion is a complex background noise that can be interpreted as a heavy detonation.

Christmas Island thus corresponds thematically to the title song of the album or the entire album Black Celebration , which is sometimes also seen as a criticism of the development of nuclear weapons and their ongoing threat.

Cover versions

The instrumental piece was several times by other artists since its first publication in 1986 gecovert so

• in August 2006 by the British electro - Duo Northern Child on the compilation Bright Lights, Dark Room - An Electro B-Side Tribute to Depeche Mode ,
• 2010 by the New York electronic musician Louis Guidone on the album Destruction Time Again (2010) ,
• 2011 by the Greek synth-pop project Euroclinic on the compilation A Greek Tribute to Depeche Mode - Around the World and Back ,
• since 2012 several times live from the Berlin Depeche Mode cover band Forced to Mode and
• In 2016 by the Danish Depeche Mode cover project Bicircular, in January 2018 supplemented by the album Black Celebration 2018 .

literature

• Jonathan Miller: Stripped: Depeche Mode. Omnibus Press, London, United Kingdom 2009. ISBN 978-0-85712-026-7 (English).
• Trevor Baker: Depeche Mode - The Early Years 1981-1993. Music Press Books, London, United Kingdom 2013. ISBN 978-1-90619-125-2 (English).
• Juan García Flores: Depeche Mode: Canciones de Fe y Devoción. Lulu.com, 1st edition 2013. ISBN 978-1-291-57366-4 (Spanish).

Web links

• Christmas Island from Depeche Mode on YouTube.com (Sony Music Entertainment) , accessed December 25, 2018.
• The Depeche Mode band biography for 1986 on the web portal depechemodebiographie.de , accessed on December 25, 2018.
• Christmas Island by Depeche Mode on the web portal allmusic.com , accessed on December 20, 2018.
• Publications from Christmas Island in connection with A Question of Lust on the web portal depechemode.se , accessed on December 20, 2018.
• Overview of Christmas Island cover versions with links to the original and several cover versions on the web portal secondhandsongs.com , accessed on December 20, 2018 (English).
• Overview of live performances from Christmas Island by Depeche Mode (and a cover band) on the web portal setlist.fm , accessed on December 20, 2018 (English).
• Information on Christmas Island and other Depeche Mode publications in Switzerland, in particular the chart positions there on the web portal hitparade.ch , accessed on December 20, 2018.
• Short contemporary film documentation: Alan Wilder explains sampling with the E-mu Emulator II using Christmas Island on the web portal YouTube.com , accessed on December 22, 2018 (English with French subtitles).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The Dark Wave playlist from December 23, 2018 on the web portal slicingupeyeballs.com , accessed on December 25, 2018 (English).
2. ↑ Review of Christmas Island on the web portal rateyourmusic.com , accessed on December 25, 2018 (English).
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Juan García Flores: Depeche Mode: Canciones de Fe y Devoción. Lulu.com, 1st edition 2013. ISBN 978-1-291-57366-4 , pp. 63 f. and 71 f. (Spanish).
4. ↑ ^{a b c d e} The Depeche Mode band biography for 1986 on the web portal depechemodebiographie.de , accessed on December 25, 2018.
5. ↑ ^{a b} The Depeche Mode album Black Celebration on the web portal discogs.com , accessed on December 25, 2018 (English).
6. ↑ Information on Christmas Island and other Depeche Mode publications in Switzerland, in particular the chart positions there on the web portal hitparade.ch , accessed on December 20, 2018.
7. ↑ Mute Records Catalog No. 7 Bong 11.
8. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Jonathan Miller: Stripped: Depeche Mode. Omnibus Press, London, United Kingdom 2009. ISBN 978-0-85712-026-7 (English).
9. ↑ Trevor Baker: Depeche Mode - The Early Years 1981-1993. Music Press Books, London, United Kingdom 2013. ISBN 978-1-90619-125-2 (English).
10. ↑ Mute Records Catalog No. C Bong 11.
11. ↑ Intercord catalog no.INT 126.844.
12. ↑ Virgin Catalog No. 30167.
13. ↑ Mute Records Catalog No. 12 Bong 11.
14. ↑ Intercord catalog no.INT 826.841.
15. ↑ Overview of the chart positions of the Depeche Mode singles in the British music charts on the officialcharts.com web portal , accessed on December 25, 2018 (English).
16. ^ The placements of A Question of Lust in the German music charts on the officialcharts.de web portal , accessed on December 25, 2018.
17. ↑ Mute Records Catalog No. CD Bong 11.
18. ↑ Mute Records Catalog No. DMCD 5.
19. ↑ The compilation Formula One - Christmas Edition on the web portal discogs.com , accessed on December 25, 2018.
20. ↑ Overview of live performances from Christmas Island by Depeche Mode (and a cover band) on the web portal setlist.fm , accessed on December 20, 2018 (English).
21. ↑ Overview of Alan Wilder as an author on the web portal secondhandsongs.com , accessed on December 25, 2018 (English).
22. ↑ Short contemporary film documentary: Alan Wilder explains sampling with the E-mu Emulator II using Christmas Island on the web portal YouTube.com , accessed on December 22, 2018 (English with French subtitles).
23. ↑ An exemplary review of the album Black Celebration from 2013 on the web portal dougreviews , accessed on December 25, 2018 (English).
24. ↑ ^{a b c} Overview of Christmas Island cover versions with links to the original and several cover versions on the web portal secondhandsongs.com , accessed on December 20, 2018 (English).
25. ↑ Overview of live performances from Christmas Island by the cover band Forced to Mode on the web portal setlist.fm , accessed on December 25, 2018 (English).
26. ↑ The music video for Christmas Island by Bicircular on the web portal YouTube.com , which graphically takes up the topic of nuclear weapon tests and deployments , accessed on December 25, 2018.
27. ↑ Christmas Island by Bicircular on their album Black Celebration 2018 , accessed on December 25, 2018.