Short Circuit Presents Mute wrapped up last night in London with a Vince Clarke extravaganza, which included a set with Erasure, an appearance by Alison Moyet for what might have been Yazoo’s final performance and a surprise reunion with Feargal Sharkey to play the lone single the duo recorded as The Assembly.

A parade of classic synthpop and electronic artists including Erasure, Yazoo, Nitzer Ebb and four current and former members of Depeche Mode will take the stage in London this weekend to celebrate the hugely influential Mute Records label at the annual Short Circuit Electronic Music Festival.

With his North American tour now underway, former Depeche Mode member Alan Wilder today offered up a free Recoil multimedia EP — ‘Want: The Architect Mixes’ — that fans can download from Mute Records in exchange for a name and e-mail address.

The release of ‘Reconnected Live’ — the 2CD, 20-track document of 2008’s Yazoo/Yaz reunion tour — is still a couple weeks off, but Mute Records has posted this four-song sampler to whet the appetites of fans of the Vince Clarke/Alison Moyet project.

Former bandmates Vince Clarke and Martin Gore — who parted ways professionally nearly 30 years ago when Clarke quit Depeche Mode — are working together again on a ‘techno-ish’ track that could be destined for the forthcoming Erasure album.

Erasure’s Andy Bell talks to Slicing Up Eyeballs about ‘Non-Stop,’ his dancefloor-ready second solo album that, in some ways, is actually Bell’s third, after his record label forced him to scrap a Stephen Hague-produced effort that ‘sounded too much like Erasure.’

In this installment of Milestones, we look at Depeche Mode’s classic ‘Violator,’ released exactly 20 years ago today. The record found the band at its commercial and artistic peak, and even sparked a near-riot in Los Angeles when the band showed up for an autograph session.