Andy Fletcher's push-button world

Can a 50 year-old guy from an ‘80s band still look passably cool behind a set of turntable decks? The answer is yes, if you’re Andy Fletcher. “Fletch,” as he is known to Depeche Mode fans, occupies a unique place in the world of ‘80s music lore: nobody actually knows what he did, exactly, in Depeche Mode, though he was a founding member and could often be seen standing behind a keyboard and pumping his fist to the audience.

The fist pumping was still in evidence when Mr. Fletcher graced Republiq at Resorts World, Manila last week for a two-hour DJ set that was liberally sprinkled with classic Depeche tracks, much to the crowd’s delight. Republiq is the kind of place that is, quite literally, “chill.” As in the place is always kept at arctic temperatures, and hipsters can be seen donning hoodie sweaters and casual jackets as they crowd around tables laden with Absolut and Chivas Regal. It brings new meaning to the term “meat market.” You can’t exactly see your own breath in Republiq, but you can see icy mists building up in the lower atmosphere of the club, which is the very definition of chill. I asked a helpful attendant how long Mr. Fletcher was expected to spin. “The DJs usually end around 5 a.m.,” she said. I feared hypothermia would kick in before then, but it ultimately didn’t matter; as the bodies crowded around the club decks and started gyrating, body heat was more than ample to overcome any thoughts of frostbite.

Back in the day, Andy Fletcher was the most youthful-looking member of Mode; he seemed immune to the Dorian Gray-like effects that had attached themselves to his more debauched bandmates Martin Gore and Dave Gahan. Those two have had solo tours in recent times, to fill time as the band Depeche Mode weighs recording another album.

At least one enthusiastic fan got up to grind in front of the decks before being escorted away by security.

Nowadays Fletcher looks, well, his age. He has a slight paunch, walks with a cautious stoop, and probably needs the oversized glasses he donned for most of the night. Having his own record label and interest in DJing, Fletch thought it a good time to hit the clubs — he’s played at Creamfields, done sets in Romania, Peru, the Ukraine, Australia and Dubai, and is currently passing through a lot of Asia, including the Philippines.

The inevitable happened as Mr. Fletcher started spinning — or rather, pressing the buttons on his open MacBook, which I understand activates a playlist of songs and which qualifies as “spinning” these days: initially, very few people deigned to dance. (In contrast, his set the previous night at Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands was said to be packed, the crowd wild and crazy.) This has been an odd characteristic of Manila’s dance scene for decades, ever since the first warehouse parties in the mid-‘90s. Manilans tend to be too “cool” to dance, at least in front of friends and crowds. It took years of coaxing to get a dance scene going here. That’s what the Absolut and Chivas Regal on the tables were there for, presumably: to warm people up.

Republiq of chill: The crowd at the Resorts World club slowly begins to realize they’re at a DJ party.

It worked, more or less. It helped that Fletch had a softcase full of Depeche Mode mixes, which he dropped early on to get people’s Eighties DNA recirculating. Watching Mr. Fletcher pump his fist to a warped-and-woofed version of Personal Jesus, raising his arms in mock prayer, or pulling his own hair and throwing his head back in ecstasy with a cheesy grin on his face while Black Celebration kicked the speakers, you couldn’t help thinking he is still like some overgrown kid behind a pile of electronic gear. Yes, “spinning music” is actually a quaint misnomer these days. Instead, Fletch did lots of groovy things with his sound settings, fading the beats and vocals in and out, adding echo and delay and lots of squelchy asides. As my wife Therese put it in her FB post, “Andy Fletcher today does exactly what he did with Depeche Mode — dance, clap, push a few buttons.” We could make out, in the mix, Donna Summer’s I Feel Love, Yaz’s Don’t Go, some Chemical Brothers, and Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit (radically reworked for club consumption), along with Personal Jesus melding into New Order’s Blue Monday at the set’s peak moment. The rest was, to me, unfamiliar, save for all the Depeche tracks that finally got the crowd shaking it like it was 1987 again. By 2 a.m. it was over, Andy Fletcher had left the building, or at least the stage, and most of us would have stuck around for a bit more.

Can a 50-year-old from an ‘80s band look cool behind the DJ decks? When you think about it, Mr. Fletcher’s doing much the same thing he’s been doing all along in Depeche Mode: pushing buttons, pumping his fist, and grinning like he’s having the time of his life.