Creativity Quote by Martin Gore

It is, on its face, the tamest kind of claim: yes, a new Depeche Mode project nods to old Depeche Mode. But coming from Martin Gore, the band’s chief architect of mood and melody, the line works as a strategic reassurance aimed at a fandom that treats “eras” like doctrinal schisms. Depeche Mode listeners don’t just have preferences; they have liturgies: the icy minimalism, the cathedral synths, the leather-and-devotion noir. Saying there are “definite reference points” is a way of promising continuity without pledging repetition.

The phrasing is doing a lot of quiet work. “Reference points” is museum language, not karaoke language. Gore isn’t claiming the new songs are retro, or that the band is stuck in amber; he’s suggesting a map where the past is navigational, not tyrannical. “Definite” signals deliberateness: these are intentional callbacks, not accidents of habit or age. It implies craft, an artist choosing his lineage rather than being consumed by it.

Context matters. For legacy acts, every release is shadowboxed against the classic run, and every experiment gets graded as betrayal or redemption. Gore’s line pre-empts that binary by reframing nostalgia as texture. The subtext is practical, almost political: we know what you came for, we still speak that language, but we’re not surrendering the present. It’s a promise of familiarity with an escape hatch built in.