Endless

Notes

Dave Gahan told MixMag magazine in 2007:

"[T]here's a song on Hourglass called 'Endless', which is on a similar tip [as 'Enjoy The Silence']. 'Enjoy...' was in my mind a lot when I was writing the lyrics to that. It's about being still and just being OK with that with nothing going on. I don't know about you but for me, [enjoy in silence] is a difficult thing to do."

In a long promo interview in September 2007, Dave Gahan was asked about every song off 'Hourglass' including this one:

"It's one of my favourites on the album, that song was actually one of the first things that Christian and I put together. I think the vocal melody and lyric is very strong, to me it's very visual all of it — all these themes are similar. It's a theme about trying to be still, and to be aware of what's going on around me and not have the need to steer it in any particular direction and to kind of be a worker among workers, rather than to be some kind of like have this feeling that I have to control a situation, so, it's a song about being still. And it took a while actually to record that song. We recorded it many different ways and it, it just wasn't working, and it wasn't working with some of the other songs on the album that were taking these sort of, starting to develop these atmospheres, it stuck out all the time it was not working. So, it wasn't right till the end that we were all agreed that it should definitely be on the album, and that came from, I think Christian and Andrew went out one night, they went to some club and they heard this beat that was reversed um the beat was. The bass drum was in a completely different place to where we'd put it and it jarred against the vocal melody in a, in an odd way, more like a heart beat. So we decide, Andrew decided to pursue that idea then I said, why don't you just turn everything round, like reverse everything that was there at the moment, you know — the bass line and stuff like that so it had this kind of like sort of sucking, breathing feel about it all the time, and it just, it just worked, it just all came together. In fact Daniel Miller came to the studio, when he first heard that song it just washed over him, he didn't get it, or it didn't do anything for him in one of the first kind of arrangements we had of it, but now it's his favourite I believe, you know, he was telling me. You know the way we finally sort of recorded it was kind of an accident, seems like a lot of the really good ideas that happen in the studio seem to happen like that when you, just when you know how something's supposed to sound, you know and you get there and it's disappointing, sometimes you're lucky enough to stumble across a mistake almost and it gives it a different life."

He also said in the press release for 'Hourglass':

"It's about trying to believe there's something at the end of the tunnel that will somehow solve all the problems; it's that illusion. We recorded 'Endless' in five different ways. We went a really hard way with it, and that just didn't work. Then Andrew and Christian went out and ended up at some club and the DJ did this thing where he reversed the beat; and they came back all excited about it. So we let Christian go at it and he came up with this very off beat. I think that even in a pop format, if you push yourself and allow the experimentation, the song can go in so many different ways; it's very hypnotic, but it's also a pop song."

And he told the NME:

"My little studio is on one of the busiest streets in the city so you get the flavour of New York all day and all night long. On the track called 'Endless', you can hear the street in the background. At one point you'll hear the 'woop' of a cop car. But we just left it."

Dates with available recordings of Endless

There are currently 2 recordings of Endless available.

• 2007-10-2x Interface, Spinner.com, AOL Studios, New York, NY, USA/Source 1
• 2007-10-2x Interface, Spinner.com, AOL Studios, New York, NY, USA/Source 2

Dates where Endless was performed

Endless has been performed 5 times.

• 2007-10-23 Apple Store, SoHo, NYC, NY, USA
• 2007-10-25 Avatar Studios, NYC, NY, USA
• 2007-10-2x Interface, Spinner.com, AOL Studios, New York, NY, USA
• 2007-10-2x Interface, Spinner.com, AOL Studios, New York, NY, USA/Source 1
• 2007-10-2x Interface, Spinner.com, AOL Studios, New York, NY, USA/Source 2