Tag: Stephen Luscombe (Page 1 of 2)

2025 END OF YEAR REVIEW

14 December 2025 /

50 years from KRAFTWERK appearing on the BBC’s ‘Tomorrow’s World’ to perform ‘Autobahn’ and demonstrate the future of music, as Ralf Hütter remarked at the start of the 21st Century, “electro is everywhere” and can now be made on your mobile phone!

And while the KRAFTWERK brand continues to be fronted by the 79 year old Hütter with an extensive UK tour pencilled in next year, 2025 saw the sad passing of Synth Britannia heroes Dave Ball and Stephen Luscombe, while there was also the loss of COVENANT associate Andreas Catjar-Danielsson, NITZER EBB frontman Douglas J McCarthy and Gary Numan’s brother / former live band member John Webb. Outside of the genre, cult film director David Lynch, BLONDIE drummer Clem Burke, veteran diva Marianne Faithfull, The Prince Of Darkness Ozzy Osbourne and Head Beach Boy Brian Wilson were among those who left this mortal coil.

Musically in 2025, Mari Kattman became the alluring gothic club queen she always had the potential to be on her best album yet ‘Year Of The Katt’. She headed a strong feast of feisty releases from Ela Minus, Marie Davidson, Zanias, Jennifer Touch, Charly Haze, Ani Glass, Emmon, Minuit Machine and Compute alongside those by the female fronted DLINA VOLNY, CAUSEWAY, DINA SUMMER, AUSTRA, NNHMN and PARADOX OBSCUR.

Among the new talent making a good impression were Spike, Shears and Hannah Hu who is currently working on her first album with Dean Honer of I MONSTER. Having already released a couple of albums, on the ascendancy was self-styled Californian “retro electro artist” Sophie Grey who was joined by Trevor Horn during her live cover of ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’ while supporting Sting at the London Forum.

On the gentler side of electronics, Patricia Wolf and Loula Yorke came up with their fabulous respective instrumental offerings ‘Hrafnamynd’ and ‘Time Is A Succession Of Such Shapes’. There was also the return of LADYTRON as well as Alison Goldfrapp, Claudia Brücken and Kim Wilde. Going back to glitzy electropop on her new record ‘Mayhem’, Lady Gaga did an impression of Taylor Swift doing YAZOO on one of its highlights ‘How Bad Do U Want Me?’; meanwhile Taylor herself appeared to have turned into Los Angeles trio CANNONS on ‘The Fate Of Ophelia’, the synthy opening song of her 12th album ‘The Life Of A Showgirl’.

Photo by Oliver Blair

Swedish producer Johan Agebjörn proved to have one of the most prolific years in his music career with not only collaborations with R.MISSING on ‘Fakesnow’ and NINA on ‘Hush Hush Baby’ but also a new SALLY SHAPIRO album ‘Ready To Live A Lie’ and a solo long player ‘Southern Forest’; all this while holding down his day job as a psychotherapist! Another releasing two albums in 2025 was Paul Statham although one was a collection of archive recordings for what could have been the intended 1982 debut album by B-MOVIE entitled ‘Lost Treasures’; the other was a second record from his dark country project THE DARK FLOWERS featuring Jim Kerr of SIMPLE MINDS whose most recent single ‘Your Name In Lights’ had been co-written by Statham.

Impressively, SPARKS got ‘MAD!’ and then ‘MADDER!’ while undertaking a huge world tour with Ron Mael still tap dancing at 80 years of age during the drum solo of ‘No1 Song In Heaven’ and Russell Mael able to hit many of those high notes at 77. As ERASURE made a tentative return with a series of special UK fan club shows to celebrate their 40th anniversary, Andy Bell toured his solo album ‘Ten Crowns’ with KNIGHT$ not doing himself any harm being the opening act on the German leg ahead of a new album ‘Supernatural Lover’ out in early 2026.

After a few years of recorded absence, former TANGERINE DREAM members released long awaited albums with Peter Baumann from the classic line-up issuing the esoteric ‘Nightfall’ while Jerome Froese, son of co-founder Edgar, came up with the guitartronica of ‘Sunsets In Stereo’. Playing with the atonal atmospheres of early TANGERINE DREAM in places, the dark cerebral concept of ‘The Ray Bradbury Chronicles’ by Levente was worthy of investigation.

With their keyboard player Christian Berg now something of a modern day Rick Wakeman, KITE established themselves as a major world force with a spectacular show on ice at Stockholm’s Avicii Arena which saw special guest Nina Persson of THE CARDIGANS skating with the Helsinki Rockettes while singing their mighty collaboration ‘Heartless Places’.

Tom Shear released one of his most impressive and on-point albums as ASSEMBLAGE 23 in ‘Null’ while UNIFY SEPARATE didn’t mince their words on their ‘Heavy Meta’ EP. While Tobias Bernstrup kept the dark Italo flame alive with ‘Shadow Dancer’, Berlin continued to remain a force in underground club culture with two of its leading exponents Franz Scala and Kalipo presenting well-received long players that worked on the home hi-fi as well as on dancefloors. On the more poptronica front, Eddie Bengtsson finally stopped trying to “Numanise” his sound and came up with ‘Inget Motstånd’, a record in the more classic PAGE vein.

While synthwave appeared to be dead (as the controversial blog Iron Skullet declared in 2019), the influx of generic darkwave was a major blight on electronic music in 2025. The major label supported Mareux and his second album ‘Nonstop Romance’ had any potential painfully ruined by overused deliberate distortion to make it sound like it was recorded down a drainpipe.

Meanwhile PORCELAIN DANCER seemed to be the Rob Newman parody of Robert Smith as seen on ‘The Mary Whitehouse Experience’ resurrected only several octaves lower; his live performance provoked unintentional laughter from those who arrived early to see KORINE in London!

DEPECHE MODE released 4 songs that were originally deemed not good enough to put on their 2023 album ‘Memento Bori’ to append the live album accompanying their Mexico City concert film ‘M’. But 2025 was notable for a number of figures in the British DM fan community who were coming out with particularly repugnant far right views, seemingly oblivious to the decades of lyrical messages from the two remaining mixed race band members!

But there was hope in the darker side of synth with A THOUSAND MAD THINGS; with his haunted demeanour while navigating young manhood as a tortured outsider, William Barradale’s doomed romantic delivery reminiscent of Billy MacKenzie and Trevor Herion made him undoubtedly the most promising UK act since MIRRORS; his debut 5 song EP ‘Cry & Dance’ was one of 2025’s best bodies of work. This more than made up for ‘Dance Called Memory’, the extremely dull fourth album from NATION OF LANGUAGE which was anything but memorable…

After looking back at 1981, ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK were pleased to be return to the variously compiled podcast ‘Back To NOW’ to discuss the ‘NOW 1982 Yearbook’ with genial host Iain McDermott and Ian Wade, author of ‘1984: The Year Pop Went Queer’. While general music and culture podcasts such as ‘Back To NOW’, ‘Word In Your Ear’, ‘The Rest Is Entertainment’, ‘The Rockonteurs’, ‘SoundPower’ and Miranda Sawyer’s new offering ‘Talk 90s To Me’ were highly engaging listens, specific broadcasts focussed on synth and electronic music were usually weak, suffering from poor hosting and ham-fisted background research. But when a professional presenter was involved, synth-oriented chats could be enlightening as the appearance of John Foxx on ‘The Adam Buxton Podcast’ proved, despite the annoying jingles that accompanied it.

Featuring commentary from PET SHOP BOYS’ Neil Tennant, the BBC’s retrospective look at the collapse of EMI called ‘Music Money & Mayhem’ showed once again that when those who know nothing about music get involved in the music business, it will end in tears. Looking at the story of the history of Beggars Banquet label in its first series and featuring Gary Numan in its opening episode, ‘States Of Independence’ documented how creative enthusiasm from the heart can actually thrive.

So where are the audiences for live electronic music these days? Certainly, if the full houses for Marie Davidson, Geneva Jacuzzi, Loscil and KITE in London’s club-sized venues were anything to go by, the crowds are out there. This was not the case for some other acts on the circuit at new, cult and one-hit wonder level who were struggling to get above half capacity or had downsized considerably since their perceived highest profile. However, new music night Release Me managed to get very good attendances for their evenings in 2025 with the premise that all acts must perform previously unreleased material; this focus on their events being about the music with announced requests to not talk during sets was a fresh and very welcome approach.

Photo by Tom Casey

Elsewhere, the retro business did prosper with reunions, exhibitions, summer hits shows, classic album tours, deluxe reissues of albums that were never that good in the first place and notable records re-released in yet another expanded set for the 5th or 6th time! There were those trying to exploit the fading nostalgia of those heady romantic times, writing memoirs that left out so many important facts omitted that there were grounds for inclusion in the “fiction” section.

Then there were others releasing overlong collections with an average track length of between 6-8 minutes that no-one asked for nor desired… filtering and editing is such an important aspect to producing music so there was no excuse for these veterans! Some even sent out unmastered music files to review outlets, blissfully unaware that the sound quality might actually be mentioned, only to get stupidly angry about it when highlighted due to their own numbskull promotional abilities; it’s a funny old entitled world…

The positive and negative of modern day music consumption is growth CAN happen organically in its own internet powered niche. But with the fragmentation of promotion with social media actually being a choice despite wider protestations, even the AXS newsletter listing the acts soon to be playing the 20,000 capacity O2 arena in London provoked cries of “WHO?”; but that is how it is now and it needs to be accepted. Why should a Boomer or Gen X-er know about the bright young thing headlining Glastonbury?

However, you CAN create your own musical universe today, not listen to radio, create your own playlists and exclude as appropriate. After all, as Nick Rhodes from DURAN DURAN once remarked: “Good taste is exclusive” –  nobody should have to like what you like and neither should what somebody else likes appeal to you… niche interests are fine.

There is no doubt fandom has become more tribal and is now akin to away game support for football teams. But as a result, it has therefore got more toxic, with some fans getting ridiculously angry on socials about old less-than-positive reviews that David Hepworth, Mark Ellen, Ian Cranna, Dave Rimmer, Tom Hibbert or Neil Tennant might have written for Smash Hits 43 YEARS AGO!! “Bet he regrets that…” someone will quip smugly but the reality is, if there is a review that a writer will regret, from the experience of ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK, it will usually be the one that is too gushing with praise!

The gist of Smash Hits during its imperial phase that coincided with Neil Tennant’s tenure as Assistant Editor was it was a magazine which treated “pop” as the most “important” thing in the world while simultaneously highlighting how “ridiculous” it was too, with references to “the dumper”, “summer colds” and the “tongue sarnie”… often dismissed as a “teen mag”, a good number of teenagers could see through the up-itself pretentions of the NME so relished the more amusing and knowing “scribblings” of the Smash Hits team!

The wider public forgets that it might likely have the benefit of 4 decades of hindsight as well as weekly if not daily plays of a record in the first few years of its possession. While it has always been associated with “free speech”, “opinion” or “freedom of expression”, one of the problems with social media is the narcissistic self-seeking of validation as part of the main character syndrome that afflicts many in this modern world…

With tours in 2026 for KRAFTWERK, OMD, PET SHOP BOYS, CHINA CRISIS, HEAVEN 17, THOMPSON TWINS’ Tom Bailey, BLANCMANGE and Midge Ure among many, there is certainly plenty to keep people busy. Just don’t think everyone else will necessarily share in your passion; as time goes on, there will be a lot more of those who won’t have a clue what you are going on about…

U2 once asked “how long must we sing this song?”; so to end a divisive year where evil men with racist views have been casually normalised, the message outlined in 1981 by a trio of philosophers from South Yorkshire must continue to be repeated loud and clear: WE DON’T NEED THIS FASCIST GROOVE THANG! #FuckFarage #FuckReformUK #FuckTommyRobinson #FuckFlagshaggers #FuckTrump

A Time Called Then: ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK’s Oh 2025 Playlist is at https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1xXptdmcHAvXnXni6hjVnA

Text by Chi Ming Lai
14th December 2025

STEPHEN LUSCOMBE 1954 – 2025

14 September 2025 /

BLANCMANGE co-founder Stephen Luscombe has passed away after a long illness; he was 70.

Born in Hillington, Luscombe grew up in Southall, an area of London with a significant population of immigrant heritage from the Indian sub-continent, the music of which would prove to be a significant influence in the sound of BLANCMANGE.

Developing an interest in the violin, Luscombe became a member of the PORTSMOUTH SINFONIA, an orchestral combo who were noted for not actually having had formal training to play their instruments. One of its former members was Brian Eno who invited them to play on the lovely ‘Put A Straw Under Baby’ from his second solo album ‘Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)’.

Taking to keyboards, Luscombe met Lancastrian Neil Arthur at Harrow College where the pair had played in various bands separately. Luscombe had even self-released a solo cassette ‘Do The Plastic Bag’ in 1978. Developing a mutual admiration for each other’s artistic sensibilities including a shared love of KRAFTWERK, they decided to work together.

The first track Luscombe and Arthur wrote was the instrumental ‘Sad Day’ but their debut release as BLANCMANGE was the ‘Irene & Mavis’ EP in April 1980; cramming six tracks onto a 33RPM 7” record and respectively adopting the pseudonyms of Irene ‘Disco’ Sinden and Mavis Secostas, Luscombe and Arthur came to the attention of Futurist DJ Stevo Pearce who included ‘Sad Day’ on his influential ‘Some Bizzare Album’ in January 1981 which also showcased DEPECHE MODE, SOFT CELL, THE THE and B-MOVIE.

Also becoming aware of the duo was Mute supremo Daniel Miller who would invite them to open for DEPECHE MODE and later affectionately refer to BLANCMANGE as “The Maiden Aunts of Techno”. Support slots with JAPAN and Grace Jones would follow with the statuesque songstress inviting the pair after the show to take turns sitting on her knee and to go clubbing.

Signing to London Records which allowed Luscombe to make his first synth purchase, a Roland Jupiter 8, BLANCMANGE hit paydirt with their third single ‘Living On The Ceiling’. With an authentic Eastern flavour provided by Indian musicians Pandit Dinesh on tablas and Deepak Khazauchi on sitar, ‘Living On The Ceiling’ would reach No7 in the UK singles chart in Autumn 1982 and give BLANCMANGE’s impressive debut album ‘Happy Families’ a well-deserved leg up.

A more disco-approach under the auspices of New York producer John Luongo dominated the cleverly titled second album ‘Mange Tout’ but while the first single from it ‘Blind Vision’ would hit the UK Top10, it would be ‘Don’t Tell Me’ again featuring Deepak Khazanchi and Pandit Dinesh that would provide BLANCMANGE with an even bigger hit in March 1984, reaching No8.

BLANCMANGE’s final Top30 hit would come with a cover of ABBA’s ‘The Day Before You Came’ in July 1984; the idea come while Luscombe and Arthur were holidaying in Tenerife with Vince Clarke. Immersing themselves in a cassette of ABBA’s ‘The Singles – The First Ten Years’, all present hit upon the idea of covering the Super Swedes with Clarke following suit in 1986 when ERASURE covered ‘Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!’. But while BLANCMANGE’s take on ‘The Day Before You Came’ largely followed the original arrangement, it was the sound of the Indian sub-continent that Luscombe brought in which provided some spice with Deepak Khazanchi and Pandit Dinesh again contributing.

The third album ‘Believe You Me’ in 1985 saw BLANCMANGE’s fortunes wane with the lead single ‘What’s Your Problem?’ only just denting the Top40; Luscombe and Arthur mutually decided to call it a day to save their friendship after a concert at the Royal Albert Hall 1986. In 1989, Luscombe released the album ‘From New Demons’ under the name THE WEST INDIA COMPANY, a project collaborating with a variety of guest musicians including Pandit Dinesh and Vince Clarke who had been involved as early as 1984 with the first single ‘Ave Maria (Om Ganesha)’ featuring Asha Bhosle who would later be celebrated by CORNERSHOP with the No1 single ‘Brimful Of Asha’.

Continuing to work on film and TV soundtracks, with the back catalogue reissued on CD for the first time in 2008, Stephen Luscombe and Neil Arthur quietly reconvened as BLANCMANGE. Retaining their quirkily poetic eccentricity, the end result ‘Blanc Burn’ was released in March 2011 but with Luscombe having been diagnosed with a spinal aneurysm, he was unable to take part in the subsequent live tour.

When he was able to, Luscombe would attend BLANCMANGE concerts in London, watching Arthur keep the BLANCMANGE name alive from the proximity of the balcony and after the shows, he would often be seen chatting to fans who celebrated him as a stoic keyboardist in the tradition of Ron Mael, Dave Ball, Vince Clarke and Chris Lowe.

Moby has described BLANCMANGE as “probably the most under-rated electronic act of all time” and while Stephen Luscombe leaves behind some great music, his legacy in these now-horribly divisive and racist times is his embracement of multi-culturalism and as a champion of music from the Indian sub-continent.

Text by Chi Ming Lai
14th September 2025

BLANCMANGE Everything Is Connected

7 May 2024 /

Celebrating 45 years of BLANCMANGE, ‘Everything Is Connected’ is a new career-spanning “best of” collection curated by co-founder and front man Neil Arthur covering between 1979 to 2024.

With Neil Arthur being one of the most prolific artists in the UK and BLANCMANGE having now released more albums since 2011 than in their hit heyday, it is appropriate that this compilation is a double and split into two distinct chapters.

The first half gathers tracks from when BLANCMANGE were originally a duo comprising of Arthur and Stephen Luscombe. They self-released their first EP ‘Irene & Mavis’ in 1980 where the duo took on the personas of the pensioners pictured on the artwork. Experimental in nature and very lo-fi, it is appropriate than a Eno-esque instrumental ‘Just Another Spectre’ ends this section.

But starting is Chapter One is their breakthrough ‘Sad Day’; a solemn instrumental with an almost-countrified guitar line and a bassline borrowed from Brian Eno’s ‘The Fat Lady Of Limbourg’, it was far more hook-laden than anything on ‘Irene & Mavis’. Pointing to how BLANCMANGE were developing, it was chosen for inclusion on the now-seminal ‘Some Bizzare Album’ which also showcased other then-unknown acts such as SOFT CELL, THE THE, B-MOVIE and DEPECHE MODE. It was support tours with the latter and JAPAN that led to BLANCMANGE signing to London Records in 1982.

The London Records phase is more than well documented, leading to three albums ‘Happy Families’, ‘Mange Tout’ and ‘Believe You Me’ as well as a string of hit singles. ‘Living On The Ceiling’ and ‘Don’t Tell Me’ brought in exotic Eastern flavours thanks to Luscombe’s love of music from the Indian sub-continent having lived in the London’s Southall.

‘Feel Me’ and ‘Blind Vision’ crossed TALKING HEADS with disco, the former remixed in 12 inch form by American dancefloor specialist John Luongo and the latter produced by him. Famously ‘Waves’ allowed Neil Arthur to indulge in his Scott Walker fantasies complete with string backing and drove Julian Cope round the bend in the process!

Meanwhile having immersed themselves in a cassette of ABBA’s ‘The Singles – The First Ten Years’ that Vince Clarke’s girlfriend had brought along while they were all holidaying in Tenerife, Arthur and Luscombe hit on the idea of covering the penultimate track; achieving a higher UK chart position than the original ABBA single, ‘The Day Before You Came’ is included on ‘Everything Is Connected’ in its superior 7inch single version produced by Peter Collins.

To put things into context, ABBA were considered passé at the time and not treated with the reverence they are today. BLANCMANGE’s take had more of a groove and added some cheeky Northern English melodrama. In some ways, this 1984 can be seen as the seed of the upturn in ABBA’s credibility and Clarke himself was to cover ‘Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!’ with his new project ERASURE in 1985.

Arthur and Luscombe decided to amicably disband BLANCMANGE in 1986 and while both continued in music, it wasn’t until 2011 that a new album they had quietly made together ‘Blanc Burn’ was released; from it ‘Drive Me’ and ‘The Western’ showed the duo had not lost their touch. But almost immediately, Stephen Luscombe had to leave due to health reasons, unable to tour or work. It was mutually agreed that Arthur would continue with BLANCMANGE solo and so began Chapter Two.

The main selling point for fans here is the inclusion of ‘Again, I Wait For The World’, a song written in 1979 by Arthur’s art-school band L360; a vibrant slice of synth punk, it is a worthy addition to the BLANCMANGE tradition. Another treat is the previously unreleased ‘Wish’. The highlight though is 2018’s ‘Distant Storm’, an unusual but brilliant tune with its incessant dance beat, reverberant Moog bassline and dreamy processed vocoder aesthetic presenting an almost spiritual quality.

This solo phase of BLANCMANGE actually began with 2015’s ‘Semi Detached’ album, Neil Arthur’s first new material recorded without Stephen Luscombe and from this technostalgic offering is ‘The Fall’ which actually references Mark E Smith’s cult combo. Coming off 2020’s ‘Mindset’, ‘This Is Bliss’ provides a variety of percolating patterns and a deeper trance bass resonance with a repeated ranting chorus.

In 2022, BLANCMANGE returned home to London Records with 15th long player ‘Private View’ and this occasion is best represented by ‘Reduced Voltage’; echoing CAN in its groovy kosmische precision, although sequencer driven, the guitars get turned up during the second half.

Since the hiatus between 1986 to 2011, Neil Arthur has issued 12 albums as BLANCMANGE, while also undertaking side projects such as NEAR FUTURE, FADER and THE REMAINDER; ‘Everything Is Connected’ provides a chance for those who liked BLANCMANGE’s hits back in the day to catch up with those 21st Century songs, while it also acts as an entry point into the highlights of the back catalogue for younger listeners. That this compilation is able to be a packed double CD is a wonderful achievement.

‘Everything Is Connected’ is released by London Records on 10 May 2024 as a 38 track double CD, 38 track download + 10 track coke bottle green vinyl LP, available from https://blancmange.tmstor.es/products

BLANCMANGE 2024 UK tour with support from THE REMAINDER:

Newcastle-upon-Tyne Wylam Brewery (16 May), Glasgow Saint Luke’s (17 May), Birmingham O2 Institute (18 May), Nottingham Rescue Rooms (23 May), Leeds Brudenell Social Club (24 May), Manchester Academy 2 (25 May), Colchester Arts Centre, (26 May), Bristol Trinity Arts Centre (31 May), London Islington Assembly Hall (1 June), Hove Old Market (2 June), Southampton 1865 (3 June)

http://www.blancmange.co.uk/

https://www.facebook.com/BlancmangeMusic

https://twitter.com/_blancmange_

https://www.instagram.com/neilarthur/

Text by Chi Ming Lai
7th May 2024

BLANCMANGE The Blanc Tapes

3 July 2017 /

Daniel Miller referred to BLANCMANGE affectionately as “the maiden aunts of electronic music”, while Moby considers them “possibly the most under-rated electronic act of all time”.

They came to prominence towards the end of the second generation of Synth Britannia. Their first EP ‘Irene & Mavis’ came out in 1980 before ‘Sad Day’ was chosen by Futurist DJ Stevo for inclusion on his influential ‘Some Bizzare Album’ which also showcased DEPECHE MODE, SOFT CELL, THE THE and B-MOVIE in 1981.

Following support slots with JAPAN and DEPECHE MODE, Neil Arthur and Stephen Luscombe signed to London Records. Releasing their now classic album ‘Happy Families’ in Autumn 1982, it featured their breakthrough hit single ‘Living On The Ceiling’ while ‘I Can’t Explain’ remains one of the most blistering album openers of the era! Fusing the rhythmic dash of TALKING HEADS with the intensity of JOY DIVISION plus the melodic framework of OMD and YAZOO over the top, Arthur and Luscombe won critical admiration and respectable sales for their debut.

On the back of further hit singles in ‘Blind Vision’ and ‘Don’t Tell Me’, the second brilliantly titled long player ‘Mange Tout’ became the duo’s biggest seller in 1984. Having first featured on ‘Living On The Ceiling’, the Indian musicians Pandit Dinesh on tablas and Deepak Khazauchi on sitar were given greater prominence on the album, while another surprise came with their brilliant cover of ABBA’s ‘The Day Before You Came’. This was considered an odd but daring decision at the time. But with ABBA now fully absorbed into mainstream popular culture and the ‘Bollywood’ sound very much part of modern pop, ‘Mange Tout’ could be considered a cultural prophecy…

However, with synthpop now no longer in-vogue, there was a lukewarm reception for the third album ‘Believe You Me’ released in 1985, despite good crossover songs such as ‘Why Don’t They Leave Things Alone?’ and ‘Lorraine’s My Nurse’. This was leading to a blanc burn out and reflected in the electro-funk of ‘22339’ with a proclamation from Arthur that “I feel like I’m losin’ my mind”. Ultimately, it led to Arthur and Luscombe calling it a day in order to protect their friendship following a concert at the Royal Albert Hall in 1986.

Edsel Records release the first three BLANCMANGE albums as expanded 3CD editions which are also compiled as a deluxe 9 disc set entitled ‘The Blanc Tapes’. The bonus discs gather together B-sides, BBC radio sessions, live material and previously unreleased demos and it is these that will be of most interest to BLANCMANGE fans. Meanwhile, the horribly unsympathetic liner notes by Alan Robinson that adorned the 2008 Edsel reissues have now been replaced by commentary from Neil Arthur.

From their first John Peel Session included in the deluxe ‘Happy Families’ extras, ‘I Would’ is dark and menacing while ‘Running Thin’ is toned in resignation; both now actually sound more like BLANCMANGE in the 21st Century than anything from the first three London long players. The original downtempo ‘Sad Day’ is also present while the lost demo ‘Melodic Piece’ is a marvellously elegant instrumental that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on ‘Nil By Mouth’, the voxless BLANCMANGE album issued in 2015. Meanwhile, the organ laden ‘Black Bell’ is an enjoyably creepy lo-fi demo, but ‘Holland’ springs a major surprise with some prominent guitar in the vein of THE CARS!

The ‘Mange Tout’ bonuses include a stark electronic demo entitled ‘How Time Became The Tide’ which is nothing like anything on its parent album, thanks to its science fiction vibe. The claustrophobic and psychedelic ‘If You Want To Be Hip’ is also very different but again, points to how BLANCMANGE are now, rather than then.

The number of unreleased demos from the ‘Believe You Me’ sessions circa 1985 indicates how prolific BLANCMANGE had become. Although they were now considered a mainstream pop act, the moodier, spacey experiments inspired by the earlier days of BLANCMANGE continued with recordings such as ‘A Remedial Course’, another instrumental that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on ‘Nil By Mouth’.

But on the other side of the coin and revealing some of Neil Arthur’s crooner tastes, there’s a fun ‘Switched On Nashville’ styled cover of ‘Gentle On My Mind’, a Grammy Award winning standard previously recorded by Dean Martin and Glen Campbell. The summery ‘Scream Down The House’ gets rescued from B-side obscurity, but the remaining song demos are perhaps not as enticing as the various instrumentals, although Arthur uses some interesting electronic pitch treatments on his voice for ‘Reach Out’.

As for the live material gathered across the three packages, they quite simply document a band getting bigger and bigger as the venues step up from the little BBC Paris Theatre to Hammersmith Palais to Hammersmith Odeon (where “Bowie killed Ziggy”) in the space of less than three and a half years!

Whether you really need seven versions of ‘Blind Vision’ or six of ‘Feel Me’ is debatable, although the Martyn Ware produced demo of the former captures the rather sombre origins of what was to become a dancefloor smash. Whatever your view, they’re all here and nothing compared to the twelve takes of ‘Promised You A Miracle’ that came with the deluxe edition ‘New Gold Dream’ put out by SIMPLE MINDS!

As its predecessors ‘Blanc Burn’, ‘Semi Detached’, Nil By Mouth’ and ‘Commuter 23’ have indicated, the soon-to-be released ‘Unfurnished Rooms’ continues BLANCMANGE’s exploration into the darker themes and colder sounds that signify a return to the art school roots of their original demos unveiled on ‘The Blanc Tapes’. While Stephen Luscombe has been unable to be involved since ‘Blanc Burn’ due to ill health, Neil Arthur continues to fly the flag.

It’s interesting to think that the 21st Century incarnation of BLANCMANGE has now produced more albums than the original one. And that is something to celebrate… a pint of curry anyone?

With thanks to Steve Malins at Random Music Management

‘The Blanc Tapes’ is released by Edsel Records, while ‘Happy Families’, ‘Mange Tout’ and ‘Believe You Me’ are each available as separate 3CD deluxe editions from 4th August 2017. Pre-order via the Official Blancmange Store at https://blancmange.tmstor.es/cart/product.php?id=33045

The new album ‘Unfurnished Rooms’ is released by Blanc Check on 22nd September 2017

BLANCMANGE 2017 live dates include:

Brighton Concorde 2 (5th October), London 229 (6th October), Southend Chinnery’s (19th October), Southampton The 1865 (20th October), Darwen Library (25th October), Newcastle Boiler Shop (26th October), Edinburgh La Belle Angele (27th October), Glasgow Audio (28th October), Bristol The Fleece (2nd November), Nottingham Rescue Rooms (4th November)

BLANCMANGE also play ‘The Tour of Synthetic Delights 2’ with HEAVEN 17, dates include:

Sheffield Foundry (10th November), Liverpool Hangar34 (11th November), Hull Welly (17th November), Manchester Academy 2 (18th November), Coventry Copper Rooms (24th November), Norwich Waterfront (25th November)

http://www.blancmange.co.uk/

https://www.facebook.com/BlancmangeMusic

https://twitter.com/_blancmange_

Text by Chi Ming Lai
3rd July 2017

BLANCMANGE You Keep Me Running Round & Round

18 October 2016 /

‘You Keep Me Running Round & Round’ is an original film by Playworks.tv exploring the life of Irish electronic music enthusiasts during the fledgling days that corresponded with the Synth Britannia revolution across the water. It recently won an Award of Merit from IndieFest, while it has been nominated for the ‘Best Music Documentary’ category at UKMVA 15.

In 1982, BLANCMANGE released their debut album ‘Happy Families’ and thirty years later, it was re-imagined as ‘Happy Families Too’. The documentary centres on the recollections of a number of men (…and yes, they are ALL men 😉 !) from the Dublin electronic scene attending BLANCMANGE’s first ever gig in the Irish capital during the subsequent tour.

It is the story of their journey, waiting three decades to see one of the bands who helped ignite their love of electronic music. The synth heads gathered include personnel from assorted local acts such as EMPIRE STATE HUMAN, PolyDROID, KUBO, THE CASSANDRA COMPLEX and CIRCUIT3. And they are all a passionate bunch who can tell their drum machines from their tape recorders, unlike some so-called electronic music journalists.

Their entertaining monologues are inter-dispersed with excellent live footage of BLANCMANGE from that Dublin gig, with ‘Feel Me’, ‘Blind Vision’, ‘Waves’, ‘Living On The Ceiling’ and ‘I Can’t Explain’ all figuring. The fact that the songs featured are all in full-length form is one of the documentary’s major strengths. This is a relief after all the song butchering and fast editing that has occurred in Channel 4 music programmes aimed at attention deficit inflicted youngsters over the last few years.

In 1982, there was very little electronic music in Ireland. Rock was God with the nation focussed on U2, THIN LIZZY or traditional music. It was a time when there was no YouTube and very few people even had a VHS recorder. So finding an electronic pop record imported from the UK was the Saturday adventure for a discerning synth inclined teenager.

Around this time, BLANCMANGE had just signed to London Records and began recording the songs that would eventually form ‘Happy Families’. While ‘Living On The Ceiling’ was to become the hit that brought BLANCMANGE into many teenagers’ homes, the pivotal track was its predecessor ‘Feel Me’.

On how the song came about, Neil Arthur told ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK: “Stephen Luscombe came round with this cassette and on it was this rhythm which was the backing of ‘Feel Me’. It was a great bassline and we blasted it in the studio through these big speakers and I did this kind of ad-lib vocal. I had this idea that went ‘feel me now – feel the pain – feel the strain’… simple rhyming, repetitive words”.

One key point made in ‘You Keep Me Running Round & Round’ is that synthpop is about synthesizers, and that there is no other music form that has such a broad spectrum of possibilities within one track.

It ultimately has a sensibility that not only encompasses shiny pop but also the avant-garde and is often coupled with dark lyrical matter. “With the line ‘Your hand’s in the pocket – pocket of a friend’, it was just to get people thinking that the song was going one way but then to say ‘what do you feel?’, ‘what do you think?’… for me, it’s just a song to be interpreted or misinterpreted any number of ways” remembered the BLANCMANGE frontman, “It’s like ‘Here comes a love song – there goes a banister’, what could it be? It could be a sexual reference, it could be a reference to relationship intensity. It’s not exactly a very melodic vocal line so the intensity had to build throughout. On reflection, I always thought it was more David Byrne than Ian Curtis, but there was never any intention” 

Using synthesizers was about control as well and not needing a drummer! Arthur recalls: “We didn’t own any of the synths we used for ‘Happy Families’. We hired a Roland Jupiter 8, an ARP sequencer and a Korg MS20 plus a Linn LM-1 Drum Computer which Stephen and I programmed up”.

And it was also about unlimited creativity and unconventional thinking: “The catch on the bassline of ‘Feel Me’ is having that pick-up on the sixteenth beat coming into the one… that was the thing that got me when Stephen came in with that. It was put together with a TR808 initially using the cowbell as the trigger to the synth. That was replicated using the Linn with the bass part being the Jupiter and Korg. David Rhodes’ E-bowed guitar melody is doubled with a keyboard”

But of course, many in the documentary did not have access to this kind of technology at first, but the use of cheaper synths as a starting point allowed for punk’s DIY ethic to be applied. It was the same for BLANCMANGE before they were signed and the approach they had to take for their first release ‘Irene & Mavis’.

“Everything then had been recorded on a Sony cassette machine; we had another cassette machine purely for playback with decent speakers on it” recalled Arthur on those fledgling days, “We would take a line-out and feed it into a mono input and do the other track live at the same time. Or we would overdub by playing in the room and having the backing track playing from the extension. We combined that and a borrowed 4 track machine with varispeed on it”

The one term that keeps reoccurring in ‘You Keep Me Running Round & Round’ is “synthpop”… yes, that’s synthpop, pop songs with synthesizers, NOT “dance” or “electronica”! There is an unashamed embracement of synthpop by all concerned. Now while the Acid House and dance revolution is briefly touched upon towards the end and helped make electronic music credible enough for music hacks to want to write about it, it largely took songs out of the equation. And let’s face it, those club-oriented excursions were generally pointless without the use of substances!

But course, with the return of the synthesizer in an avant pop context, it’s not about harking back to the past, but looking forward to the future. On reworking ‘Feel Me’ for 2013, Neil Arthur said to ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK: “My new version is more stripped down. There’s so many VST plug-ins you can put on top of things. Unless your ideas are good, it’s not worth it. I tried to remember what it was like in that room when I first heard that rhythm Stephen had put together. David came in to play his great guitar on it again. The vocals are my daughter, myself and a vocoder… I wanted to keep it really simple. Hopefully it still works. At least doing ‘Happy Families Too’, I wasn’t going to tear myself apart over the songs… they are written for better or for worse”

In all, ‘You Keep Me Running Round & Round’ is an enjoyable hour of music history, presented in a refreshing, intelligent manner. Indeed it is the antithesis of those ‘I Love The 80s’ type cheesefests that often portray synthpop in the worst way possible, as something to be derided and mocked. In fact, it would make rather good viewing on BBC4.

With thanks to Patti Carbonell, Poppy Seekins  and Tone Davies at Playworks.tv

Additional thanks to Neil Arthur and Peter Fitzpatrick

For further information on ‘You Keep Me Running Round & Round’, please visit www.ditto.tv/ditto-is-running-round-and-round/ or email campfire@playworks.tv

https://www.blancmange.co.uk

https://www.facebook.com/BlancmangeMusic/

http://www.playworks.tv/

Text and Interview by Chi Ming Lai
12th September 2015

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