Shame

One very happy customer

SUPER SELLER A++++++++++++

Oh what a pain, Corruption time again, what is it this time...?"Shame" indeed! This is actually the classic 1983 Depeche Mode album "Construction Time Again", no more, no less.Except all the tracks have been jumbled up in the wrong order.Now, Construction Time Again was DM's third album, made while their style and subject matter was still in flux. Their original key-member, Vince Clark, had left after the first album, leaving the trio of Martin Gore, Andy Fletcher and Dave Gahan to make the second album. But for this album they'd recently picked up a new fourth member, Alan Wilder, the sound-shaping master, and their directionless days were over.The sound is driving synths and sampling, pioneering industrial dance, bleak yet brash, darkly melodic and compelling. The themes concern the nonchalant attitudes of greedy corporate thinkers (tracks 1-4 and 10 on CTA), raping the natural world (tracks 5-9 on CTA). So, as with the music, the lyrics are a little ahead of their time, bringing environmental issues to the fore some years before world-consciousness caught up.Now, even with the themes being sliced and diced, the renumbering of the tracks on Shame would not present too great a problem. However, as anyone who's heard Construction Time Again knows, tracks 1,2,3 and then 5,6 are meant to run into each other with evocative sound links. On Shame, those tracks have been renumbered as 4,3,2 and 10,1, so the ambient sampling-sprees cut off abruptly, only to disconcertingly appear later on.And again, normally I'd say this is not a problem, as you should only have to re-program the track order of Shame, close your eyes, and believe you are listening to Construction Time Again, right? Well, sadly no. The business minds responsible for this vivisection of a musical landmark have, in a fit of neatness, imposed a one second gap on the end of each track. So instead of what ought to have been a smooth transition of correctly ordered tracks flowing together, it all goes silent for a second before continuing, like a badly welded join. Shame.So it's three stars for the item overall, which means five stars for the material and one star for the presentation of it. I can only assume that messing up the track order enables someone to market a great album as something else and cream off a profit. Which is oddly ironic considering the themes of the original album.So, finally, here's the bottom line: if you want to pick up Construction Time Again on the cheap, get Shame. Otherwise, get the real one.