Do we all agree that Vince Clarke is probably the icon when it comes to synth pop. You likely know the story - cofounder of Depeche Mode, two incredible albums with Alison Moyet as Yazoo, detours with the Assembly and VCMG, bunch of remixes and probably most notably, the other half to Andy Bell for nearly 40 years now in Erasure.
Songs of Silence is a 2023 solo album (as far as I know, solo debut)by Vince Clarke with Clarke paying all the instruments. It is a Covid album of you want to call it that - recorded during that period with the pandemic a major influence explicit in the sound.
It’s not a dance record or synth pop in the terms you most recognize that term.
It is an ambient work for lack of a better description and it is very good.
No doubt Clarke is a bit of a musical genius, and the album being practically wordless makes it a normally tough sell for me. But like some recent solo works by other synth trailblazers - Martin Rev, Chris Carter, even JG Thirlwell- it is not a throwaway. (Like every other review, I can’t help but add the quote from Clarke that it was even a bit too drone-y for his cat, who departed the sessions)
Blackleg is a particularly strong moment. The Guardian describes it as so: an emotional hinge to this largely wordless album, setting a scab-bashing miners’ song from 19th-century Northumberland to a pitch-dark chasm of drones. “Take yer tools and yer duds as well, and hoy them down to the pit of hell,” sings our uncredited union man, “down you go, and fare ye well, you dirty blackleg miner.”
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