Vince Clarke Announces Debut Solo Album — Songs Of Silence is Set for Release Later This Year

Ivor Novello winning songwriter Vince Clarke is on the cusp of unknown territory. He's releasing a solo album.

The co-founder of synth-pop groups Depeche Mode, Yazoo and Erasure will be releasing Songs of Silence on November 17 via Mute. As startling as this news is, the other compelling factor in this equation is the album is all instrumental. Instrumental in the sense that the only 'instrument' is a Eurorack, a modular synthesizer famed for its infinite sound possibilities.

In addition, Clarke was building each song around one note. Let the murmuring begin.

To that end, Clarke has spoken about the unique creative environment he envisioned for himself. "Nobody in my household is particularly interested in what I get up to in the studio." says Clarke. "Even the cat used to leave after an hour or so of listening to drones."

His decades-long career spent in collaborations, whether in a group or duo, has yielded a potpourri of electronic buzzed grooves, initially with Depeche Mode's 1981 Speak and Spell (his only album with them) onto Yazoo, led by Alison Moyet's powerful, bluesy contralto and presently as one half of Erasure, with singer Andy Bell.

Songs of Silence was recorded in Clarke's New York studio and while the immediate feeling surrounding the first song released "The Lamentations of Jeremiah" is one of chaotic, pulsating, black melancholy — which would fit perfectly in any Game of Thrones episode — the accompanying video is focused on Clarke. Shot in stark black and white and directed by Turkish-born NY-based portrait photographer Ebru Yildiz, Clarke never speaks as the sound of longtime collaborator Reed Hays delivers sawtooth sulfuric bursts of cello over the foreboding Eurotrack swoops and swirls.

Clarke describes the tracks as "having a sense of sadness, of things going bad, things crumbling." And it's hard not to ignore that sentiment. Opening up new vistas and synth landscapes will be another chapter in the growing catalog that won't be defined by Clarke's unlimited vision ahead.

SONGS OF SILENCE tracklist:

Cathedral

White Rabbit

Passage

Imminent

Red Planet

The Lamentations of Jeremiah

Mitosis

Blackleg

Scarper

Last Transmission