Prologue

That’s me at eighteen in the first photograph. In the second, I’m outside Twickenham on the Memento Mori tour. I went on to see them in Birmingham as well.

The sunglasses had arrived; the loyalty hasn’t moved an inch.

The first single I bought was Get the Balance Right. Looking at these photographs, I can see how far that first purchase has travelled with me.

I’m sixty now. Forty-two years have passed since that first photograph: people, places, changes, and all the ordinary days a camera never caught. These photographs hold two moments from that journey. The music runs through the years between.

Looking at them together, I’m reminded of how a song can bring an earlier version of yourself close again. You’ve changed. Life has moved on. Then a familiar opening plays, and something in you answers just as it always did.

I struggle to think of another band that has travelled so far creatively while remaining so unmistakably itself. Put Speak & Spell beside Ultra and the distance between them is extraordinary. That willingness to change, to take risks and to let the music grow is a huge part of what has kept me listening all these years.

And, as a fan here in the UK, I’ve often wished we had taken the Basildon boys to our hearts with the same warmth I feel from their audiences across the rest of Europe. Perhaps being so close to where a story begins makes it easier to overlook how remarkable it becomes. I’d love MODE UNKNOWN to be a small expression of that affection from home.

MODE UNKNOWN comes from that place. Its purpose is to turn a lifelong love of this music into a creative experience you can make your own.

I want you to feel this site. To pause at an image. To find a few words that stay with you. To recognise something of your own life in the space between them.

The history of the band gives us a shared starting point. From there, I want to explore what the music opens up: memory, longing, happiness, connection, and the things we sometimes struggle to put into words.

Perhaps an image brings back a particular night. A few words remind you of someone. You find yourself smiling at the person you were when you first heard a song, or recognising how much it still means to you.

That’s why this site is taking an increasingly artistic direction. I’ve always loved the atmosphere and imagination of Anton Corbijn’s work: how a photograph can stay with you long after you’ve looked away. I want to bring that spirit of visual storytelling into something with its own voice.

Think of MODE UNKNOWN as an art book you can wander through. Original images, stories and unexpected details sit alongside moments of stillness. Sometimes there will be very little to read. That space is deliberate: your memories and imagination belong here too.

You don’t have to see what I see in an image. If it brings something alive for you, it has found its purpose.

There is darkness in this music, but also joy, tenderness, humour and a wonderful sense of belonging. I hope you find all of those here.

That eighteen-year-old couldn’t have imagined making this.

I’m glad the sixty-year-old finally is.

Creator of MODE UNKNOWN