Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Love In Itself
2. More Than A Party
3. Pipeline
4. Everything Counts
5. Two Minute Warning
6. Shame
7. Landscape Is Changing
8. Told You So
9. And Then
10. Everything Counts

Disc 2:

1. Teenagers Growing Up Bad Government And Stuff
2. Love In Itself
3. More Than A Party
4. Pipeline
5. Everything Counts
6. Two Minute Warning
7. Shame
8. Landscape Is Changing
9. Told You So
10. And Then
11. Everything Counts
12. Get The Balance Right
13. Great Outdoors
14. Work Hard
15. Fools
16. Get The Balance Right
17. Everything Counts (In Larger Amounts)
18. Love In Itself

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5745 in Music
• Released on: 2007-03-26
• Number of discs: 2
• Format: Hybrid SACD

Customer Reviews

The Start of the Classic DM Period
After Vince left, most people thought DM would simply fade away as synthesisers became old-hat, but in Martin Gore they had another genius pop songwriter who would go in an entirely different direction to Clarke's Yazoo/Assembly/Erasure path. Although newcomer Alan Wilder fancied himself as a songwriter, it's the Martin Gore stuff that really shone the light for DM beyond this.

I spent the summer of this one with this on cassette permanently in my Walkman (see Antiques Roadshow, kids) working on an industrial project in Israel. It took nearly a year to get some of the samples out of my head (that damn ping-pong ball on 'Pipeline' was the worst) and even now the riffs from some of this stuff (Two Minute Warning) remains instantly recognisable.

Looking back, you can see how DM's progression into darkness starts here, with digs at politics (The Landscape Is Changing) and business (Everthing Counts, anyone?) to the front. The lyrics are less miserable than later albums - how can you get darker than an album called Black Celebration? - but the relationship between Construction Time Again and the later murky triumvirate of Violator/Ultra/SOFAD is here to hear.

The funniest part of this to watch the DVD, where these ultra-serious heroes turn out to be quite nerdy and insecure lads from Essex.

It's classic and a fine piece of early sampler-pop looking critically at the Eighties. In places it's amateurish, as they find their feet in the new wave of high-tech recording (how much stereo separation can you have?)and changing personnel and egos, but looking back now it was really cutting-edge. If one band can plot a soundtrack from 1980 to the present day, it's DM. And this is an indispensible part of the story.

really crisps up a treat in 5.1 surround, and great documentary as well!
This album was a benchmark of sorts for them, and moved them further away from the teeny-pop following they had been building up. It's THIS album that really set the precedent for what was to follow, which was the "berlin tripitych" of CONSTRUCTION, REWARD, AND BLACK CELEBRATION, with all three being mixed (the latter two also recorded) at hansa mischraum.

Notable for such a hard edged sound (for the time), and also alan wilder coming into his own with two songs and production work on the album, this is a consistently brilliant album, which doesnt sound as contrived as it should, when considering the use of early sampling technology. This is probably because depeche didnt use the "bung it all in the wash" attitude to sampling, which is gimmicky and has dated many albums form the 80's, but rather as a "colouring pencil" to embellish the songs. In one case, however - PIPELINE- the whole track was built around sampled sounds, and they even pulled it off there! It still sounds superb to this day.

Influential for all the detroit crew - including derrick may, who incidentally is in the documentary on the dvd... I wonder what alan wilder REALLY thought of that? ;-)- this absolutely shines and breathes in dolby 5.1. such clarity and seperation almost make it sound like it was recorded in the last 6 months, as a lot of current pop straddlers go for that "authentic 80's sound", which is effectively depeche and a few others rolled together.

People snipe at some of the songs, like wilder's LANDSCAPE IS CHANGING, but the remastering and remixing has really breathed new life into almost 25 year old material. As before, the documentary is superb and somehow seems longer than the supposed 31 minutes suggested in the pre-release statements.

This is a great addition if your a fan and collecting the lot, but it's EVEN BETTER if you introduce the band with this as a gift to someone; at the time this won them a lot of new fans, and you may just persuade someone nearly 25 years later.

Bespoke...and brilliant.

Reissue of the oddest Mode album
Construction Time Again was the Mode's third album and their first with Alan Wilder as a band member, filling the void left by Vince Clarke a few years earlier. 1982's A Broken Frame could easily have finished the band, fortunately the band's teeny bop audience and the few decent songs Martin Gore composed (`Leave in Silence', `See You') kept the band afloat. The change is found on the non-album single `Get the Balance Right!' which signalled Wilder's arrival and showcased a potent metallic sound - this was the single that has been cited by people like Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson (and in many ways a year-zero for the Mode.

The influence of sampling, evident in a documentary on how sounds were acquired on Star Wars, as well as the work of Holger Czukay (Movies), Cabaret Voltaire (Voice of America), Eno & Byrne (My Life in the Bush of Ghosts) were filtering down to the pop world and to the Mode. Key was what became tagged industrial music, particularly the work of Einsturzende Neubauten and Test Dept - it would make sense for the Mode to relocate to advance this sound to the legendary Hansa studios in West Berlin for the next few albums. Construction...has a meatier sound, the band and co-producers Gareth Jones and Daniel Miller birthed the classic mode sound that would climax with the trilogy Black Celebration, Music for the Masses & Violator.

Construction...distinguishes itself from the rest of the Mode's back catalogue in one key way: the lyrics. The lightweight homoerotic lyrics of much of the early material and the pervy/religious angle of much of Gore's later lyrics aren't here. Instead the lyrics are like Gang of Four for Smash Hits-readers, there was a reason why X Moore (Chris Dean) big-upped them in the NME over this record! Hit single Everything Counts reflects the themes here, its reflection on the rise of the yuppie and corporate materialism would fit the Thatcher-Reagan-era completely and become one of the songs like Heaven 17's Penthouse & Pavement, ABC's How to Be a Millionaire & Pet Shop Boys' Opportunities (Lets Make Lots of Money). The zeitgeist, pop kids, the zeitgeist...

Other themes are apparent - universal revolution (And Then), famine in Africa pre-Band Aid (Shame), nuclear apocalypse (Wilder's fantastic Two Minute Warning), and the environment (Wilder's not so fantastic The Landscape is Changing). Love In Itself has plinky-plonky Clarke-style synths but a very odd lyric that probably has more in common with Gang of Four's Love Like Anthrax - which I'm sure Simon Reynolds picked up on when discussing the `conform to deform' principle in Rip It Up & Start Again.

The harsh metallic sampledelic sound is apparent on More Than a Party, a rapid clatter of metals and beats that would develop towards the more extreme approach of Something To Do the following year. Even more out there is Pipeline, which is a cold Teutonic industrial ballad - Gore taking lead vocals that seem to nod to some Eastern Bloc workforce and the redistribution of wealth. The ominous moans and the metallic assaults take the approach of early Neubauten (see the first volume of Strategies Against Architecture) and turn it into something like a pop song. The bonus disc sees companion piece, Everything Counts-b-side Work Hard cover the same theme in a dance-floor friendly fashion - you could imagine a mass of subservient comrades on a social for the Cominitern singing along to this (& it's not far from folk like Laibach).

There are a few duds - Wilder's aforementioned Landscape is Changing really should have been a b side instead of Work Hard and live favourite Told You So has some truly abysmal lyrics and reminds you Vince Clarke was better at perky synth-pop. Construction...was a transitional record for the Mode, some of the themes would recur on People are People, New Dress, and Something to Do. Construction Time Again remains one of those odd pop records with elements both lyrical and musical that distinguish it - neither avant-garde or pop-stock - one to file alongside ABC's undervalued Beautystab, Heaven 17's Penthouse & Pavement, Spandau Ballet's Journeys to Glory, Propaganda's A Secret Wish (say P-Machinery) & the two DAF albums on Virgin. Hasten to add, this reissue is as perfectly executed as the other Mode albums in the programme...

Politics, pop, metal-bashing...what's not to like?