Reviews originally published in Issue 93 of Electronic Sound magazine, September 2022:

BLANCMANGE
Private View
(London Records)

Earlier this year, Neil Arthur tweeted a picture of his 2022 self sporting the Indian-styled linen jacket he last wore in the 1984 video for ‘The Day Before You Came’. And, to the dismay of those of us whose own bodies have since turned to wobbly dessert, there wasn’t a straining button in sight. But isn’t that the ideal metaphor for this most resilient of synthpop outfits? Times change, fashions shift and – God knows – we all grow old. But, somehow or other, Neil Arthur and Blancmange remain the perfect fit for one another.

Since 2011’s glorious comeback Blanc Burn, there have been fourteen further Blancmange albums of giddying eclecticism. But Private View is perhaps the closest Arthur has come to slipping back into those old hitmaker clothes. Combined with the return to London Records, it’s an album to warm the cockles of anyone raised on powdered food and ‘Don’t Tell Me’.  

Don’t be lured into the nostalgia trap, though. It’s a record very much reflecting the post-pandemic concerns of a man who turned 64 this year. “Boy am I tired, there’s no reason why,” he sighs on ‘Reduced Voltage’, while ‘Everything Is Connected’ is a charming rummage through a lifetime of encroaching domesticity. “Hang the washing out, do the washing up” he grumbles, like a tabard-clad Les Dawson gossiping over the garden fence. “Feel like I’m morphing into something new / Or older…”. But it’s the title track that’s the tearjerker. Beginning with a nod to his mother’s favourite household ornaments (“Beswick horses and the like”) it transforms into an intense plea to his late father. “What might have made you better? What might not have been? Let go, let go…”   

As a grizzled Indiana Jones was once told, “We seem to have reached the age where life stops giving us things and starts taking them away”. To reflect these concerns on an album so fizzing with musical vivacity makes for heartstopping contrasts. And make no mistake, the pristine pop frameworks that Arthur has constructed with regular co-conspirators Benge and David Rhodes feel as fresh as the proverbial daisy. The suit still fits, the buttons are brightly polished, and Blancmange – despite Arthur’s proclamations of world-weariness – sound as vital as ever.   

Album available here:
https://blancmangemusic.bandcamp.com/album/private-view

THE ADVISORY CIRCLE
Full Circle
(Ghost Box)

It’s almost two decades since Cate Brooks became Ghost Box’s first recruit, bringing the austere synths of The Advisory Circle to a party where cheese footballs forever reign supreme. And while her earliest recordings were fuelled by the residual trauma of 1970s Public Information Films, later albums felt more expansive. 2018’s Ways Of Seeing even saw Friendly Fires frontman Ed Macfarlane adding soaring vocals to widescreen synthpop with a tentative toe in the early MTV era.

But here, Brooks has gone back to basics. The synths are starker, the tape hiss darker. ‘Time Immemorial’ is clearly the theme to some long-lost BBC2 science show, ‘Just A Dream’ feels perfect for a hard-hitting documentary about glue-sniffing. And the upbeat melodies of ‘The Architecture’ suggest the heartbreaking optimism of 1980s out-of-town retail parks. It’s an album of double-edged nostalgia for both her own fractured childhood memories and the label’s inaugural experiments, and Brooks’ knack of investing melodic electronica with affectingly raw emotion remains unparalleled.

Album available here:
https://ghostbox.greedbag.com/buy/full-circle-129/

FROGMAN
Frogman
(Castles In Space)

“Out in the fields yesterday, I caught sight of someone. He was in a sort of frogman outfit…”

Were you a 1970s child once terrified by the kind of alarming teatime drama that made you spit fishfingers all over the G Plan coffee table? Dean “I Monster” Honer and Will “Supreme Vagabond Craftsman” Goddard clearly were, and – coaxing a battered EMS Synthi back into life – have teamed up for what they describe as the lost soundtrack to a “dystopian series made for Yorkshire TV in 1978”.

Set in a bleak corner of the Peak District, it’s perhaps our only opportunity to hear a one-time mainstay of Pulp and a former cast member of The Tomorrow People acting together in earnest. And for that reason alone, surely, it must be cherished. Submerged by analogue bleeps and beats, Russell Senior and Richard Speight throw themselves into two narrated suites of glorious post-apocalyptic oddness, originally released in 2018 but here given a welcome spruce-up for vinyl. Think Survivors set in Sheffield, think Z For Zachariah on the outskirts of Hathersage.

Album available here from 2nd December…
https://castlesinspace.bandcamp.com/artists

BADGE ÉPOQUE ENSEMBLE
Clouds Of Joy
(Telephone Explosion)

Take Latin beats, widdly Santana guitars, Stan Getz-inspired sax and the kind of over-enunciated harmonies that have rarely been in fashion since the glory days of the Swingle Singers. You’d make a giddy confection, but it would likely still lack the sheer elan of this fabulous album, helmed by sharp-suited Toronto smoothy Maximilian Turnbull.

Hearing he was to become the father of twins, Turnbull set out to create an album of pure happiness. And blimey, the infectious grooves on this gleeful platter could put a spring in the step of the most resolute miserabilist. ‘Zodiac’ is the lynchpin, a Stevie Wonder homage with James Baley’s swooping vocals flowing seamlessly into Alia O’Brien’s mellifluous flute. The title track could be imperial phase Weather Report, and ‘Don’t Touch A Hair On His Head’ has a whiff of Steely Dan… with keyboardist Edwin de Goeij seemingly an exact DNA clone of the late Walter Becker. “Have you heard joy?” coo those precision-perfect harmonies on the appropriately-titled ‘Joy Flows’. By gum, we have now.

Album available here:
https://badgeepoque.bandcamp.com/album/clouds-of-joy

ALTERED IMAGES
Mascara Streakz
(Cooking Vinyl)

“I wake each morning wide / My face is on the slide…” The opening couplet of the first Altered Images album in 38 years suggests a downbeat Clare Grogan, but fear not – she’s still the People’s Pop Princess, and the crisp production of husband (and ‘80s band member) Stephen Lironi is suitably shiny. For proof, try the glorious ‘Glitter Ball’, a paean to the uplifting power of pop. “The heartbeat of the songs that she hears in the glitter ball of life”? On this album at least, it’s pounding away with invigorating vitality.   

Album available here:
https://alteredimages.tmstor.es/

THE ROWAN AMBER MILL
Through Dark Polished Glass
(Miller Sounds)

The trauma of the English Civil War as viewed through the “scrying glass” of Elizabethan occultist Dr John Dee? Go on, then. Since 2007, Stephen Stannard has been a prolific producer of “woodland folkadelica”, and here he conjures up that difficult eighth album. “The devil found no work for me / Though my idle hands were plain to see,” he sings on ‘The Ballad Of The Witchfinder General’, his voice a sepulchral whisper amid forests of lilting synths. Those hands may not be tirelessly tilling the fields, but this is still a welcome addition to an impressively atmospheric body of work.

Album available here:
https://rowanambermill.bandcamp.com/album/through-dark-polished-glass

MIKE DICKINSON
Four
(Bandcamp)

A mischievous electronic sprite lurking in secluded pockets of Teesside woodland, Dickinson laces his retro-synth nuggets with both puckish humour and vague disquiet. ‘This Isn’t My First Temporal Anomaly’ is delightfully Orb-esque, and ‘Solo’ needs only a glottal Morten Harket vocal to become a Now-friendly 1980s chart banger. But there’s grit, too: ‘Wreckage’ is spookily fractured ambience, and the sinister swirls of ‘One Giant Leap’ suggest a tragic end to the ambitious Middlesbrough space programme. Another charming missive from this self-effacing little genius.

Album available here:
https://mikedickinson.bandcamp.com/album/four

ANDY FOSBERRY
Night Skies
(Spun Out Of Control)

Alien goblins laying siege to a terrified farmhouse? Steven Spielberg’s abandoned sequel to Close Encounters Of The Third Kind was surprisingly dark in tone, and sci-fi nut Fosberry has used leaked script fragments to inspire this splendidly bombastic soundtrack. ‘Watch The Skies’ sets the tone, with the warning bleeps of some godforsaken radar station accompanied by head-pounding beats. And while ‘The Light From The Orchard’ is gently unsettling, the overall mood is outright terror, with the discordant clangs of ‘Faces At The Window’ enough to make Richard Dreyfuss choke on his mashed potato.

Album available here:
https://spunoutofcontrol.bandcamp.com/album/night-skies

Electronic Sound – “the house magazine for plugged in people everywhere” – is published monthly, and available here:
https://electronicsound.co.uk/

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