There's barriers that need to be closed down, places where the train of history no longer stops by. The division between techno and rock music, so trendy a couple years ago, has been demolished by Depeche Mode, the English band that has succeeded in uniting the best of both worlds in a sensible and distinctive sound. Their show had high doses of mystery for a crowd that had been waiting for them for a long time. Last Friday night sealed the deal with them.
Babasonicos and Juana La Loca opened for a small amount of people. While 17.000 people attended, a bigger amount was expected.
Only the real Depeche Mode-holics were present, an audience mostly composed of teenagers and women. Precisely, they were the ones who howled when 5 minutes after 10 pm passed, the slim figure of singer Dave Gahan took the stage.
For an hour and a half, Depeche Mode casted some sort of spell that only dispeled when the stage lights went on.
All eyes were on the stage as if they were under the influence of collective hypnosis. Rush, the first song they played, introduced the surprise with keyboardist Alan Wilder banging on a drum, and Martin Gore, keyboardist and genius behind the band, dabbling on electric guitar.
Only Daryl Bamonte -last minute replacement for Andy Fletcher, who didn't participate in the South American leg of the tour- remained loyal to the technological profile that initially characterized the group. But everything changes, just like Gahan, that abandoned his introspective manners, becoming a straightforward frontman that uses gestures to stablish physical communication.
Behind the four Depeche members, a big screen depicted images subtly related to the songs, and it synchronized with the lighting, creating a visual trance that would only break when the band pulled out an older hit, and people cheered and jumped around. In that sense, Behind the wheel, Everything counts and Never let me down again, displaced the superb songs of their latest record, that was listened to in a never seen before silence and concentration at a concert. Condemnation was the segway to present a choir of two women, that tinted the song made in authentic communion with blues.
That's the key between Depeche Mode's bond with their audience: the complete acceptance of their own distinct sound, that mixes genres in apparent contradiction and dissolves them into a techno cauldron, without losing some of rock's importance. I feel you and Personal Jesus were the successful closers of the show, the best exponents of their rocker sensibility, though they keep the machines' emphasis. Rock's always dreamed of that moment in which technology could be as expressive as the human voice, and Depeche Mode made it come true, while linking their personal bond with religion. Undoubtedly a weird marriage, in which both parties are happy, both the artists and the crowd, those who after four encore songs, began to dream of meeting again.
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annaxmalina
titsay
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theartofmadeline
