He continues as a creative force to be reckoned with, using his brand to open doors and satisfy while eschewing the more nostalgic tendencies of some of his peers. How Neil Arthur and Stephen Luscombe went from manipulating recordings of 1970s kitchen utensils to celebrating a string of 1980s chart smashes.

Private View’ presents a collection of synthesised art-pop that finds a significant role for guitarist David Rhodes, BLANCMANGE’s very own Carlos Alomar who has regularly applied his talents with Peter Gabriel as well as a live stint with JAPAN. He tries to count the albums – by both Fader and Blancmange – on his fingers, starting from early 2020. Despite it being 45 years since the teenage Neil Arthur left his native Darwen for the moderately bright lights of late 1970s London. This led to a career in radio, writing for various publications, and ultimately a radio show about The Beatles (Beatles Universe), which ran for over four years. Waking up with an idea seeded in 1980, ‘Here We Go Go’ is a song that could have come from the ‘Quartz’ album from FADER but with louder percussion, before it marvellously morphs into the artier drama of OMD for its conclusion.Blancmange has always utilized guitar in its electronic sound, but since Commercial Break, Arthur has not been afraid to bring the guitar front and centre. Not that Benge doesn’t get involved with that, but I usually have the song structure and lyrics in place before I send them to him. Their latest - 'Private View' - is an accumulation of 40 years of musical knowledge to create perhaps their most free flowing to date.

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. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. She borrowed her mum’s Mini Clubman and picked our gear up, dressed to the nines in this beautiful 1950s dress and high heels. The references in that song are about painting a picture, and one of those references is Donald Campbell.

Over 40 years ago Neil Arthur and Stephen Luscombe came together to form Blancmange and released their debut album Happy Families of London Records. It’s a sweaty, sticky afternoon on London’s South Bank, and we’re sitting outside a cafe round the back of the Royal Festival Hall.

How Stephen, faced with spiralling health issues, was unable to join the subsequent tour but gave his blessing for Neil to continue without him. Beautiful piano, keyboards and guitar combine to make one of the best melodies Arthur has ever written. Mindset… then Expanded Mindset… then Nil By Mouth III… then Commercial Break… then Nil By Mouth IV and V, then the Fader album, Quartz… and now Private View. You get this stuff out of your system, but what you don’t want to do is burden everyone else with it.

Blancmange is also reflected in the ongoing influence the music has on younger generations of artists and fans over the years. I’d have people coming up in the pub saying really nice things, and others saying ‘Are you looking at my girlfriend?

From the opening song, “What’s Your Name”, with its mellow keyboards, until the last piano note of the album, Arthur and company utilize sound uniquely. All the sounds and feels you'd want if you love Stephen's previous bands, but with some new twists and ideas keeping it fresh. A couple of weeks prior to our meeting, Neil had tweeted a picture of himself wearing the Indian-style linen tunic he’d first sported 38 years earlier, in the video for ‘The Day Before You Came’ – an Abba cover flavoured with the santoor and tabla of regular collaborators Deepak Khazanchi and Pandit Dinesh. Private View is set for release on London Records almost exactly 40 years to the day since they released their debut, Happy Families. Conceived in the wake of the pandemic, the album looks beyond the trials of the past two years and strives to find answers and, moreover, solutions to the situation we’ve arrived at, with Neil insisting the desire to keep moving forward underpins the set.

Everything Is Connected has an element of exoticism in to its exhortations on domesticity vs nature, and album closer Take Me harks back to the sweet transcendence of I’ve Seen The Word. 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…’. Neil Arthur and Stephen Luscombe started experimenting with tape loops and kitchen utensils, before discovering electronics and developing into one of the definitive chart-topping British electronic pop acts of the 1980s. He’d walked across the stage, tripped over his monitor, and knocked both his keyboards off their stand. We ambled on, Stephen started the cassette player with the backing track, and I was still playing guitar at this point.