May 28, 2022 – Midnight Matinee

impressions on music

The dystonic post-or-now-apocalyptic world of Depeche Mode with the doom and attendant gloom. The breezy easy days of their debut Speak and Spell have been supplanted by the twelfth album Ultra with its Flood-NIN-Bowiesque style Tim Simenone helter skelter production (and engineered by Q) - as we all come together (or fall apart with Alan Wilder leaving the band) - staring at the end of the barrel of a gun. David Gahan at the low point.

Depeche Mode
Ultra

Sony 888837708822

With the Denon DVD-3910 now in our possession, the hunt was on for music to feed the beast. What better than the series of Depeche Mode releases on the DVD/CD format? The DVD (which is in PAL format and quite playable on the Denon player) portion is presumably on the DVD-Audio side of things with 5.1 mix in Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround or DTS 5.1 and a PCM Stereo version. The PCM Stereo version is what is selected here (since the RCA audio connections are all that is present on the back of the Vector Research VR-220 receiver which has served us well since Ring Audio days). The DVD also contains three tracks recorded live in London April 1997 and bonus tracks. With the DVD comes a small quirky documentary film about Ultra (the album that almost did not get finished). Depeche Mode. 1995-1998 (Oh Well, that’s the end of the band).

Needless to say but saying it nonetheless, the music sounds just great in stereo.

these random writings are styled as part of the “running-in” period for the KEF Q350 double bass reflex speakers. What a double bass.

random ramblings and reflections of random music

what is the good of a heart if you can’t break it

Pretox
Last Call

The CD from the Hammer City based trio moving to the bigg times is a cut above the rest – very much of a live to the floor mix with a crunchy rockstar stylings of Alex Maich on guitar and swingy Jesse Taynton groove bass that kicks the bottom end, and precision metronomic Ryan Luke drumming. Songs of heartache or broken heart and not going to stay sober reflections. Throwing kerosene on a relationship and waking up on a Sunday morning… we’ll be fine. This is not good-bye.

A solid starter from Pretox and representation of the music that kicks even more to life during their more than lively and bantered stage shows where their fueled at last call personalties shine.

This is part of a process of the “run-in” of the new KEF Q350 to warm up the double bass reflex speakers. Viewpoints of the actual music do not change. The quality of the songs remain the same.