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Memento Mori by Depeche Mode

27 March 2023 By Avinash Meetoo Leave a Comment

Depeche Mode released its latest album, Memento Mori, on Friday 24 March. During the day, I started listening to the songs on my way to work and I was quite happy. Happier than with some of the previous albums to be honest. Interestingly, I felt that the second half of the album was stronger than the first half but, because I was commuting, I knew I needed to give the album a proper listen before deciding.

The next day, after lunch on Saturday 25 March 2023 at 14:00, Christina, Kyan and I properly listened to Momento Mori from the first song to the last. We got the album on TIDAL (FLAC 48KHz 24bit, MQA 96KHz) and listened on our dream Hi-Fi setup.

During the 50 minutes, I took some notes and rated the songs:

“My Cosmos Is Mine”: Industrial. Lots of reverb. Atmospheric. Good way to start a concept album. 7/10.
“Wagging Tongue”: Organic. Arpeggiated. Simple lyrics. Not too profound. 6/10.
“Ghosts Again”: Anthemic Depeche Mode song. Good singing. Nice bridge. 8/10.
“Don’t Say You Love Me”: A much slower It’s No Good. Orchestral. “I’ll be the punchline of course.” 7/10.
“My Favourite Stranger”. Another anthemic DM song. Recognizable baseline (Fade to grey?). Slow electro. Heavy distortion. 8/10.
“Soul with Me”: Generic DM ballad. Martin Gore singing. Good chorus. 7/10.
“Caroline’s Monkey”: Starts like Dream On. Chorus could be better. Sometimes… and chord. 7/10.
“Before We Drown”: Fantastic song, music and lyrics. Restrained voice. Beautiful electro. Fantastic strings. 9/10.
“People Are Good”: Kraftwerk / DM symbiosis. Crooner-kind of singing. Effective electro. 8/10.
“Always You”: Nice Grahan ballad. Very electronic and organic. Recognizable. Repetitive. 7/10.
“Never Let Me Go”: Dark Depeche Mode. Great music and lyrics. Orchestration good. Guitar distortion. 8/10.
“Speak to Me”: Tranquil outro. Easy way to end the album. Very predictable. 6/10.

Overall, I gave the album 7.5/10. In fact, I like the album very much as it is sounds much more electronic than previous albums (which were too rock-oriented for my own taste). One criticism is that some of the songs use way too much saturation and distortion but this looks like to be fashionable these days. I wonder what would happen if the next album (if made…) was produced by someone like Deadmau5? Will Depeche Mode then have a Violator 2 album? Who knows?

Here are my favourite five songs as reflected in the ratings I gave:

Ghosts Again
My Favourite Stranger
Before We Drown
People Are Good
Never Let Me Go

At some point, I will have to restrict this to the three songs I like most to add to my Top 50 Depeche Mode songs (which will then have 53 songs). Give me a few days to make up my mind.

Adieu Yves

25 March 2023 By Avinash Meetoo 2 Comments

Hier, nous avons eu la triste nouvelle que Yves Bula-Lafont nous a quitté. Il été agé de 64 ans seulement. Yves était le papa de Stéphane, le mari de ma sœur, Cherina.

J’ai rencontré Yves pour la première fois en 2012 à Maurice. Il était venu, avec son épouse Ghislaine, et des membres de la famille et quelques amis pour les fiançailles de Cherina et de Stéphane. Nous nous sommes revus en 2015 lors du mariage à Maurice.

Quelques semaines après, Christina, Anya, Kyan et moi ainsi que mes parents, Jaynarain et Rooma, étions à Castanet-Tolosan en France pour la deuxième partie du mariage. Ce fut un grand moment de découverte et de plaisir pour nous, en grande partie grâce à l’accueil de Ghislaine et de Yves chez eux. Je n’oublirai jamais le mariage ainsi que l’ambiance festive des nombreux apéros que nous avons eu.

Yves et moi sommes devenus amis très rapidement. Nous partagious quelques traits de caractère: toujours jovial, bon fêtard, aimaint le bon whisky et une bonne cigarette (à l’époque).

Nous pensons à vous, Ghislaine, Stéphane et Frédéric, et aussi à tous les autres membres de la famille et les amis de Toulouse.

Adieu Yves. Tu fut quelqu’un de bien.

Enjoy Timeless, the TV show, while you can

19 March 2023 By Avinash Meetoo Leave a Comment

Christina, Kyan and I have just finished watching the last episode of Timeless, a TV show which ran from 2016 to 2018.

Here is the premise as copied from Wikipedia:

When Eastern European-based ex-National Security Agency asset turned terrorist Garcia Flynn and his group of terrorists steal an experimental time machine, Lucy Preston, a history professor, Wyatt Logan, a United States Army Delta Force Master Sergeant and Rufus Carlin, an engineer and programmer, are tasked with capturing Flynn. They soon learn that Flynn plans to rewrite history and that each of them has a connection to his plan as well as the mysterious organisation known as Rittenhouse that funded the machine’s development.

We liked Timeless and we gave the show an overall 7/10.

For me, the best thing about Timeless were the characters which were all really likeable (which is quite rare).

In particular, Abigail Spencer as Lucy Preston was really nice from beginning to end. She’s a university history teacher and remains so throughout the show. She didn’t become a badass and this is true to reality.

I also liked Claudia Doumit as Jiya Marri who was a small character at the beginning but gained in importance and relevance as the show progressed. In some ways, she is a more dramatic character than the others and I didn’t expect that.

But, for me, the best character might be Goran Visnjic as Garcia Flynn who, initially, was perceived as the bad guy but who, in reality, was far from being one. From episode 1 to the finale, every scene he was was intense. He is a good actor.

We watched Timeless on Netflix and today is the last date it is going to be on that platform.