Brian Hazard, aka Color Theory, has released "Depeche Mode - A one-man tribute to Depeche Mode", featuring 11 of the lesser known Depeche Mode songs in exciting new versions. Kicking off this tribute is a thoroughly electronic version of "I Want You Now". The brooding atmosphere of the lyrics is matched incredibly well by Hazard's arrangements, and his vocals compliment both music and lyrics very well. It is obvious from the first track that we're not talking about one of those run-of-the-mill European tributes with mostly Swedish and German bands. We're in an all together different league here. The sense of adventurous experiments established with "I Want You Now", are caried into the albums next song, "Sister Of Night". Here Hazard lends a more optimistic and happy take on the song. The playful synths, the bouncy beat and the haunting vocals arrangements is a testament to the ingenuity of Color Theory. And the vocal performance would leave even mr.'s Gore and Gahan impressed... they go to hights they can only dream of hitting. One of the re-freshing things with Color Theory's tribute to Depeche Mode is that the most obvious songpics have been avoided. "It Doesn't Matter" is not a song you often see covered, and certainly never as beautifully as here. The relatively simple arrangements make Brian's vocals stand out, and they are exquisit. The way the song has been arranged, it would fit perfectly on Mode albums like "Exciter" or Gore's own "Counterfeit 2". Nice and simple. When this reviewer first saw the inclusion of "Sweetest Perfection" on this tribute, I first went "ohhhh... how interesting", then "oooooohhh... he shouldn't have gone there". Mind you, that was before popping the disc in the player. "Sweetest Perfection" is hands down my favourite Depeche Mode song ever, and with this in mind, asking me to review a cover might be unfair. But I gotta... and this is quite possible the albums only weak spot. That's not to say Color Theory's version is bad... just that it really never stood much of a chance with this reviewer to begin with. But things will get much better. And in "Here Is The House" we find one of the albums absolute highlights. The song has been given a bit more edge, and it really suits it well. Another unlikely song, "I Am You", is quite possible better than Depeche's original. With fantastic vocoder-esque vocals on a nice bouncy backdrop, this song lifts one of Gore's recent compositions to heights it never reached in the hands of Mark Bell. Truly awesome. "World Full Of Nothing" has been giving the once over. Vocals stay very true to the original, but musically, you have to think "I Want You Now" (live 94) or some of the nice ambient stuff on Erasure's "Erasure" album. This is so cool it gives you the chills. The slight hint of Erasure is carried into "Surrender", which unlike Depeche's slightly jazzy original, is an all out synthfest here. The atmosphere is preserved nicely, but the instrumentation is just completely different. Again a stunning vocal performance from Brian. The 1986 composition "But Not Tonight" is like "Sweetest Perfection" a very hard song to cover, but for completely different reasons. It's hard to do anything really good with this song. It simply not very good to begin with. This version is as good as it gets. The fault lies with Gore though. Perhaps the most surprising version on the album, "One Caress" features a brooding marching beat a la Aphex Twin, and vocals that easily matches, and in some respects surpasses, Depeche Mode's original. A daring move, and Color Theory pulls it off beautifully. Last Depeche Mode song, "Leave In Silence", starts out sounding like something from Underworld's heyday. Atmospheric synthstabs and a frantic beat. Arguably the only club friendly track on the album, it doesn't really fit the atmosphere of this LP, but it's certainly not bad - it's just the odd one out. Last song on the CD is Color Theory's own "Ponytail Girl". This is the song that has often been passed off as an unreleased song from "Exciter" on filesharing networks and bootlegs. More about this in the forthcoming interview with the man behind it all - Brian Hazard. To sum it up, Color Theory elegantly avoids the pitfalls of Depeche Mode tribute making, deliveres more originallity than I've seen in any tribute since "For The Masses", which featured the likes of The Cure and Smashing Pumpkins. Not a bad feat. We give it the thumbs up and warmly recommend that all Mode fans pick this one up.

This album came about, oddly enough, partly through the myriad of DM bootlegs that have been released, and partly through file sharing. Somehow, around the time of the release of Life's Fairytale, a Color Theory song began to be mistaken online for a "lost" Exciter b-side. Even though Brian Hazard went directly to the source of the mislabeling several times, many Depeche Mode fans still seemed to think that "Ponytail Girl" was actually recorded by DM. Later, when Brian was asked to do a Depeche Mode cover for a upcoming tribute album, it occured to him that most tribute albums are very inconsistent - there would be one great cover followed by one that would make you want to destroy your stereo. So, he decided to do a cohesive, one-band (man) tribute... and to include "Ponytail Girl" (in a newly spruced-up version) as a tongue-in-cheek nod to the track's unusual history. I've already said in other places, "Brian Hazard has re-interpreted the songs presented here into works of sheer beauty. Every DM fans owes it to themselves to get this”, as well as, "Even songs I detested in their original form ("Sweetest Perfection") are rendered into a wonderful musical form that I find myself listening to over and over". I still believe that now. In fact, these versions, in my mind, far surpass (in some instances) the original Depeche Mode versions. "Leave In Silence" is transformed from being a somber but delicate mid-tempo track into a great dancefloor packing track, with much beefier basslines and drums. Those who look down on DM's first two albums would be shocked at how good this song sounds. "I Am You" is a track taken from the one DM album I've never owned, Exciter. Given that I've never heard the original version, it's impossible for me to compare this cover to the original. It's a somewhat stark take on the song, not too lush in the instrumentation save for the last minute of the song, and with a electronically altered backing vocal line that accentuates the unaltered vocal line really well. "Sister Of Night", one of my favorite tracks from Ultra, is sped up slightly, but still just as effective under Brian's skillful musicianship. I could go on and on about each track, but to summarize: This is the best tribute ever done for the band Depeche Mode, bar none. Songs such as "Here Is The House" and "One Caress", songs that were hard to imagine anybody but DM performing right, are here rendered so well that I now think of them as Color Theory tracks rather than DM songs. This is a wonderful, wonderful album, and I can't recommend it highly enough. Don't believe me? Check out www.dmtribute.com or www.amazon.com for sound samples... you'll become a believer.

OK, so you've purchased loads of wonderful goodies to give to family members and friends during the holiday season. What about treating yourself to the sounds of three of Orange County's most impressive artists? Color Theory, "Color Theory presents Depeche Mode" (11th Records) - It makes perfect sense for Huntington Beach-based Color Theory to release a full-length disc reinterpreting 11 of Depeche Mode's most under-appreciated songs. Since the release of one-man outfit Color Theory's "Life's Fairytale," singer-songwriter-keyboardist Brian Hazard's original "Ponytail Girl" has been mistaken for a Martin Gore-voiced opus that was left off "Exciter" (both titles were released in May 2001). Rather than simply re-create the luxurious and driving textures on the original Depeche Mode recordings, Hazard has reinvented the songs in vivid ways that will please his own growing legion of fans and those of the electro-pop band he honors. Excellent reworkings of "Sister of Night" and "But Not Tonight" are among the highlights on Color Theory's sixth full-length collection. You might like if you enjoy: Depeche Mode, Moby, Enigma, earlier Color Theory releases. Robert Kinsler Orange County Register