Blancmange will play Bedford Esquires later this month in support of their new album 'Wanderlust'.
Late last year, Blancmange released a new album of songs composed by Neil Arthur, and arranged, co-produced and mixed with Benge at the latter’s Memetune Studios in Cornwall.
This followed their collaborative project Fader, and they also worked together on last year’s Blancmange record Unfurnished Rooms, described by Mojo as ‘detached, wistful, touched by computer-age unease.’
The new album is focused on similar themes but there’s a new energy to the approach – wistfulness turns to anger; dislocation morphs into a powerful desire to be somewhere else, with a sense of someone fighting for forward motion, dreams, family and the joys of life while seeing, as Arthur puts it, ‘the pretence of a normal world being erased.’
This spirit is supported by the music, which is vital, percussive, full of analogue machine-noise and chunky basslines.
Wanderlust was Neil’s second album in 2018, following his collaboration with electronic solo artist Jez Bernholz on Near Future’s debut album Ideal Home in May.
Since Blancmange’s Stephen Luscombe was forced by illness to stop touring or recording after 2011’s Blanc Burn, the band has continued with Arthur at the helm via Semi Detached (darker but still pop-savvy) in 2015 and their first ever instrumental album Nil By Mouth (ambient, new sense of freedom) later in the same year.
Commuter 23 (minimalist, brutalist, raw with moments of hazy Krautrock) arrived in 2016, to be followed by Unfurnished Rooms last autumn which also featured John Grant on the closing track, ‘Don’t Get Me Wrong’.
Continuing its evolution Blancmange has been reaching new audiences of late with the 2017 remix of ‘What’s the Time?’ and a new collaboration between Blancmange and Kincaid, ‘Fat Head’
The Wanderlust tour checks in to Bedford Esquires on April 25.
To book tickets click here
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