Cold machines, warm blood. Depeche Mode's seventh studio album landed on 19 March 1990, and it is the point where the English band's synth-pop takes on the weight and grain of alternative rock.

The band produced it themselves with Mark Ellis, the studio hand who works as Flood, and they worked across three countries to finish it. They tracked in Milan, carried on in Gjerlev in Denmark, then moved to London, where François Kevorkian mixed the record. That patience shows in the sound. Depeche Mode build the songs in layers, sequenced and sampled, and Kevorkian leaves air around every element instead of stacking them into a wall.

Mute Records put it out internationally, with Sire and Reprise handling the United States. Six albums into a career spent refining electronic pop, the band pull the two halves of their sound together here: the low, minor-key gloom of the songwriting on one side, a wide and patient production on the other.

Good company if you like pop music made out of restraint, dark rooms and machines that sound like they are holding something back.