Mellow beatmasters Soulsavers team up with Depeche Mode’s Dave Gahan for their fourth long-player, The Light The Dead See. The duo of Rich Machin and Ian Glover has been featuring complementary vocalists on its last few albums. The contributors have ranged from Mark Lanegan and Spiritualized’s Jason Pierce to Faith No More’s Mike Patton and Butthole Surfers’ Gibby Hanes. This most recent collaboration with Gahan hits the jackpot. Soulsavers max out their soundtrack expertise to create an emotive bed of music over which Gahan lays bare his soul. There is something about the earthbound instrumentation billowing and crashing around Gahan’s overly familiar voice that is bringing out all the skeletons in his closet. He hails in a choir to back him on “Longest Day” and calls on a higher power on “Presence Of God” while dramatic washes sweep him away on “Take Me Back Home.” It starts sounding like the same song on repeat towards the last third of The Light The Dead Sea, but that may be due to Gahan lamenting about similar topics. Nevertheless, the coupling, or rather, tripling, is made in heaven—or it is hell?

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