Depeche Mode

Allie X didn’t like how the music industry works. So she decided to do something else

“I take my power back,” says the Oakville native, whose new album Girl With No Face is almost entirely self-produced. by Nick Krewen Special to the Star With Girl With No Face, Allie Hughes — known to the music world as Allie X — is taking back the reins. Not that the Oakville native was necessarily relinquishing a lot of control with her previous two albums of immaculate pop perfection…

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Canadian musicians remember record producer Steve Albini as ‘an extremely generous and kind soul whose work did unmeasurable good’

Albini, who died Tuesday, engineered seminal albums by Nirvana, the Pixies and P.J. Harvey, but he also loved working with Canadian bands.  by Nick Krewen Special to the Star Thirty years later, Toronto’s Don Pyle still sounds shocked that legendary producer and engineer Steve Albini told a music magazine he’d rather work with Pyle’s Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet than British synth superstars Depeche Mode. The year was 1993 and Albini…


Depeche Mode’s death-tinged Memento Mori isn’t about the passing of Andrew Fletcher, Martin Gore says.

The Depeche Mode songwriter talks about the loss of Fletcher, hit song “Ghosts Again” and how it felt to turn 60 By Nick Krewen Special to the Star If the Depeche Mode video for their current hit song “Ghosts Again” offers  you a sense of déjà vu, you’re not alone. Directed by noted photographer and director Anton Corbijn,  the music video reflects the theme of the British electronic outfit’s 15th album Memento…


Toronto’s transit of venues (or, weep not for the bop)

Veteran rock writer Nick Krewen takes a tour through defunct Toronto concert venue history – from the ’60s in Yorkville, to the subsequent decades when the action was mostly around Yonge St., to the rise and apparent decline of Queen St. W.  Nick Krewen and Garnet Fraser Published on Sun Jan 03 2010 On Queen St. W., the concert scene is changing, and it’s leaving some fretful. Hard-rock hangout the Big…