Depeche Mode songwriter Martin Gore’s new solo album, MG, is scheduled to come out this Tuesday (April 28) on Mute Records. Though Depeche Mode released a new studio album in 2013, Delta Machine, MG marks the first time that Gore has used the MG moniker since VCMG’s 2012 debut album, Ssss.
MG shares much more in common with VCMG, Gore’s project with Vince Clarke. The sixteen-track electronic record is entirely instrumental. It would be easy to pigeonhole the album because of those sixteen wordless tracks, but MG defies that. Each song on the record is a completely different beast from the the other fifteen. “Europa Hymn,” the first single, begins in a trancelike state but gradually builds over its three minute runtime. This comes in stark contrast to the album’s eeriest track, the Angelo Badalamenti-like “Elk.”
Gore began recording MG at his home studio in Santa Barbara, CA following the end of Depeche Mode’s tour in support of Delta Machine. He had been considering an entirely instrumental album since he began writing instrumentals for Depeche Mode in 1981. As Gore himself describes it, the album is the “soundtrack to an emotional and mysterious film of your own design.”
MG is available via Amazon, iTunes, and Mute.