DEPECHE MODE - ICE MACHINE (1981)

The beautifully bleak ICE MACHINE was a song recorded by Depeche Mode during the production of the 1981 album Speak & Spell. It was released as a B-side on the ’Dreaming Of Me’ single on 20 February 1981. “‘Ice Machine’ signals that Depeche Mode always had a germ of darkness inside them,“ wrote Mat Smith for Documentary Evidence. “Imagine Metropolis’s dystopian landscape being transferred instead to the Ford plant in Dagenham and then imagine Kraftwerk providing the soundtrack; even that doesn’t come close to this almost industrial piece.“ “There’s a stalking bassline and a fluttering, spiralling background melody that I’m sure Vince Clarke would go on to use again on Yazoo‘s Upstairs At Eric’s; clattering percussive sounds and whining, almost droning synths dominate the foreground.“ “It is the sound of a brutal, grey production line but does seem to stretch out towards some sort of vague euphoria at the very end.“