Vince Clarke’s role as a founding member of Depeche Mode (and writer of hit single “Just Can’t Get Enough”) would be enough to put him alongside the likes of Kraftwerk, Pete Townshend, Frank Zappa, Peter Gabriel, Devo and other synth pioneers of the 70s and early 80s, but that’s only the beginning of his vast and varied oeuvre.
Though Clarke split with Depeche Mode after their debut album, Speak and Spell, he continued to push the sounds of synth forward with Andy Bell in Erasure, Alison Moyet in Yazoo, and ex-Depeche Mode engineer Eric Radcliffe in The Assembly. Nowadays, Clarke has left the UK for — what Motherboard cleverly described as — “the unsynthesized woods of Maine,” constructing a so-called Temple of Synth, dubbed simply: The Cabin.
Check out Motherboard’s tour of this jaw-dropping (for synth freaks like myself anyway) collection of music gear porn above.