Private View

Product Information

years and 16 albums later, Blancmange have re-signed to London Records with the captivating and inspired ‘Private View’ , melding futuristic electronics, Neil Arthur’s unmistakable vocal hooks, and songs spanning buoyant and joyful to dark and brooding.

With the backing of London, what an opportunity for people to say – hopefully – that this album is still relevant. But… we did a Greenpeace thing, standing with John Hurt next to an inflatable whale in Hyde Park – as you do – and then went off to do a concert at the Royal Albert Hall.And that made me think about the miner’s strike, and all kinds of other stuff from the late 1970s and early ‘80s. True, but what’s great about Blancmange is that the songs never feel like they’re self-consciously about Big Things. Over 40 years ago Neil Arthur and Stephen Luscombe came together to form Blancmange and released their debut album Happy Families of London Records. Beautiful piano, keyboards and guitar combine to make one of the best melodies Arthur has ever written.

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They did run-throughs for all the camera angles, and I could see somebody in the shadows singing ‘You keep me running round and round, well that’s alright with me…’.

There’s a deft marriage of futuristic electronic sounds, Neil Arthur’s unmistakable vocal hooks, and songs veer from buoyant and joyful to dark and brooding. And the explanation offers a further fascinating insight into the “Everything Is Connected” school of Neil Arthur lyric-writing. I was thinking about the difficulties everyone is going through, and about the people that aren’t here any more. This neat, full circle is also reflected in the album itself, being the perfect crystallisation of four decades of Arthur’s creativity. How Neil Arthur and Stephen Luscombe went from manipulating recordings of 1970s kitchen utensils to celebrating a string of 1980s chart smashes.

The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network. Sadly, Luscombe had to leave the band due to health issues, but Neil Arthur continued on, and in 2022 he has just released Private View, the first Blancmange album on London Records since 1985’s Believe You Me. Continuing FADER partner Benge as producer who worked on the recent BLANCMANGE albums ‘Unfurnished Rooms’, ‘Wanderlust’, ‘Mindset’ and ‘Commercial Break’, ‘Private View’ presents a striking opener in ‘What’s Your Name’; not a cover of the 1981 DEPECHE MODE tune, despite a sparse vibey start, it strums and crashes into action while Arthur uses a manipulated voice treatment to give a sense of other worldly alienation away from the indie rock track that this could easily be.

She was thinking she’d just knock on the stage door, and somebody would say ‘I’ll take all the gear in!Happy showers come and go / Migrating birds have my view / Have a pleasant trip…’ I’m sorry about this, it’s very embarrassing. When not immersed in music, Aaron enjoys spending time with the loves of his life -- his wife Andrea, and daughters Emily and Linda (all of whom have an intense love of music too).