A sombre landmark for Basildon's stadium-rocking techno-pop titans, Memento Mori is the first ever Depeche Mode album without Andrew “Fletch” Fletcher, who died suddenly last year. It is also the first to feature a female co-producer, Marta Salogni, whose previous credits include Björk and M.I.A.
Recording began before Fletch's passing, so it would be fanciful to extrapolate too much from that funereal title. Mode albums typically come in 50 shades of deluxe misery, after all. But this is unquestionably an autumnal, brooding, late-career affair with a deliciously rich, echo-drenched, electro-classical production.
