Listening to a Spotify playlist that my high school classmates collaborated on recently (and to my surprise, it’s now 377 songs long, whoah!), I rediscovered a bleak ’80s synth masterpiece by Depeche Mode called “Ice Machine.” It sounded vaguely familiar but not so familiar that I knew its lyrics. I never had the Speak and Spell album from which the track originated, so I can’t recall the last time I ever heard it. But the melody and the arrangement was so familiar, like a dream you’ve had before or a deja vu expereience.
Anyway, it inspired me to get on my virtual synths and try to recreate those stark synthesizer sounds using plugins like Cherry Audio’s DCO-106, Korg PolySix, Layers Wave, and built-in synths within my DAW, Reason Studio 11.
The result is this pretty faithful cover version of Ice Machine, which doesn’t really offer anything new to someone who’s familiar with the track, but — just being honest here — was a total blast to recreate, play, and record. And if music can’t be fun, well, no one would do it!
Happy listening.
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