Internationally recognised art and literary critic, writer and cultural producer. Published in ELLE, Glamour, Esquire and Cosmopolitan; member of the Union of Writers.
In March 2026 Depeche Mode’s Black Celebration turned forty. For the writer Jordi Gaxiola the date mattered enough to build a book around it. BC, a novel set in Basildon in 1986, takes its chapters from the album’s track list, in the same order, and it is a dark love story rather than a tribute.
Black Celebration, the fifth studio album by Depeche Mode, came out on 17 March 1986 on Mute Records in Britain and on Sire in the United States. The American edition carries “But Not Tonight”, a track the original British release does not have. Gaxiola follows the US order, and the reason is personal: it is the edition owned since the teenage years, the one the author knew.
BC is published independently by In Nebula Lux, in English. It is independent fiction with no link to Depeche Mode and no endorsement from the band. A first book, Sky Blue Skin, was also born from music, in that case the work of Jeff Buckley, so this is not the first time a record has set the shape of a story. We asked six questions about how it worked. The answers below are Gaxiola’s, given in writing, in English.
Why let an album set the order of a book? Partly the anniversary, partly love. Black Celebration has always been one of the author’s favourite Depeche Mode records, and the fortieth year felt important. The track list became the chapter list, which gave the book a first structure. After that the story took over. “I tried to follow an emotional trajectory based on the order of the tracks,” Gaxiola says, and then let the story go where it needed to. It does not follow the lyrics or their meaning.
For a reader who has never heard the album, the hope is simple. They should feel the devotion, the darkness and the vulnerability of the story, and the harshness of a particular time and place: Basildon in the mid-eighties.
What did the track give that a plot outline would not? Gaxiola would rather not describe the chapter that follows “But Not Tonight”, to avoid spoilers. What can be said is what the song offered: it captures obscure and difficult times but from a hopeful point of view, “moving from the dark to a moment of grace”.
Where does the real Basildon end and the invention begin? Gaxiola did extensive research to get a feel for the moment: how young people lived then, where they went, factories closing, few opportunities, and what that did to families. Synth-pop, in this account, was “becoming a refuge for the youth”. The places in the book are real places of the time, and the story follows the actual town as closely as possible. The story and events are invented.
Did the album ever force a scene? Not really. The titles set the mood and pace of the chapters, but Gaxiola never felt pushed in any direction and let the characters “roam free”. Some chapters came almost naturally, as the author pictured them. Others took much more effort, until the direction felt right. Gaxiola is careful to say that the book does not always mimic what a track feels like either.
How do memory and devotion sit together? Gaxiola calls BC a dark love story where youth, hard times, trust, vulnerability and devotion all matter. Memory is not quite the word, though. “Resonance” is closer. The author does not see the themes pulling against each other: because the main characters are young and feel everything intensely, the story can be dark, vulnerable and hopeful at once.
What should readers notice? A fan of Depeche Mode, Gaxiola hopes, will feel the music inside the story and catch the subtle references to the songs hidden in it. A reader who has never heard the album does not need to worry: the book stands on its own, an independent story that takes its mood and atmosphere from a track list. And there is one more wish. Gaxiola would like those readers, once the book is closed, to go and listen to Black Celebration, and find that it adds another layer of meaning.
BC: A novel inspired by Black Celebration by Jordi Gaxiola is available in English from Amazon. The questions were put by Creativity’s UK; the answers were written by Gaxiola, and the quotations are verbatim.
