Depeche Mode frontman Dave Gahan has spoken about the band's new album 'Sounds Of The Universe', saying he enjoyed the recording sessions and also revealed they were influenced by R&B.

The record will be released on April 20 as the follow-on to 2005's 'Playing The Angel'. Gahan tells BBC 6 Music's Steve Lamacq: "It was a joy to work together. It's rare that you'll find me saying that."

"You know, usually, it could be quite a struggle and different things happened during different albums but this one; it's like we showed up to work, we had a great team, Ben Hillier produced the album. Everybody seemed to just have fun doing it."

"There's definitely R 'n' B flavours that have come into this rhythmically." Gahan explained, "It trawls along in that way but I would say it's more of a rant than a rap."

"This is as close as it gets, but sometimes a lot of that rhythmical flavour comes into it. We use a lot of those blues-based or R 'n' B-based rhythms."

Dave also went on to say Depeche Mode had looked back to using synths in their music again. "I hear it, there's a simplicity of it and there's something about the warmth that you get in analogue synthesisers, it's unpredictable and will never do the same thing twice."

Depeche Mode have also been covered by girl group The Saturdays for the official Comic Relief single. 'Just Can't Get Enough' was released this week.

Not surprised. brilliant.