[CD]

Doublespeak - [CD]

Depeche Mode, Yazoo, Erasure's Vince Clarke, Blancmange's Neil Arthur, and the electronic producer-writer-synth-nerd Benge have joined forces to form the new project Doublespeak. Their self-titled debut album revisits eleven of their favorite songs from the past four decades, each reimagined and renewed in the timeless space of gleaming analog electronica. The DoubleSpeak album is divided between songs from the postpunk netherworld brought blinking into the light (Fad Gadget, The Sound, Young Marble Giants), pop radio monsters ushered back down a dark stairway into the club (ABBA, David Essex, The Carpenters) and buried treasures from the 1990s onwards (The Magnetic Fields, Ed Dowie, Laptop). Collectively, the album amounts to a shadow autobiography of the three collaborators' continuing musical education. DoubleSpeak is the great human songbook, synthesized. Empathic vocals, bold arrangements and glowing analog electronics turn familiar and forgotten songs into a personal, forward-looking electronic statement. Also features songs by Thomas Leer/Robert Rental and John Hartford.