Stripped

Brexit fever is heating up and this morning I'm celebrating the Basildon-Berlin bilateral with Depeche Mode’s monumental 1985 song Stripped, from the 1986 album Black Celebration. Depeche Mode videos took an evolutionary leap when Anton Corbijn came on board in 1986 to handle the group’s visuals, and yet my favourite DM video remains the apocalyptic Stripped directed by Peter Care near the Hansa studios. If I didn’t know better I might have thought Derek Jarman helmed this one, it shares a similar mood with Jarman’s 1988 film The Last of England. Peter Care has had an eclectic career, he’s directed a number of notable REM videos as well as Public Image Ltd's Rise and Belinda Carlisle's Circle In the Sand (which owes something to the Stripped video), and most interestingly, Care made his debut with the 1983 short film Johnny Yesno which was scored by Cabaret Voltaire, and led to a fruitful association.