Vince Clarke, who recently released his first solo album, Songs of Silence, began his music career in late 70s Essex with the formation what would become Depeche Mode, with schoolmate Andrew Fletcher, later joined by Martin Gore and then Dave Gahan. Since that time, the Ivor Novello Award-winning artist has established himself as one of British pop’s most important songwriters. After leaving Depeche Mode in the early 80s, his work has encompassed pop and rarely been far from the charts. A nearly 40-year-old partnership with Andy Bell as Erasure has resulted in eighteen studio albums, with their most recent album, The Neon going to #4 in the UK Official Albums Chart, the band’s highest charting album in over 25 years. His duo with Alison Moyet, Yazoo, recorded two albums, toured the UK and Europe and achieved worldwide success in just 18 months and after they disbanded in 1983, Clarke began to work with producer Eric Radcliffe as The Assembly, who were joined by Feargal Sharkey for one single release that year. And somehow, in between all these successes, he’s found time to collaborate with Martyn Ware of Heaven 17 on The Clarke & Ware Experiment, Martin Gore for their Ssss album under the name VCMG , and Paul Hartnoll of Orbital as well as remix generations of artists, host a weekly radio programme (The Synthesizer Show) and start his own record label, Very Records.