Everything Is Connected: The Best Of Blancmange 1979-2024
Overdue retrospective for undervalued electropop misfits
DISMISSED in its heyday as a plastic fad, time has been kind to synthpop. The hits of The Human League and Depeche Mode have become a byword for the ’80s – shorthand for the decade’s embrace of optimism and opulence, gloss and greed. But where does that leave Blancmange?
Formed in the distant London suburb of Harrow in 1979, vocalist Neil Arthur and instrumentalist Stephen Luscombe could comfortably claim to have been among synthpop’s rst wave. They debuted in 1981 with sombre instrumental “Sad Day” on Some Bizzare’s seminal sampler Some Bizzare Album, and went on to share stages with Grace Jones and Depeche Mode, cranking out a string of Top 20 records in the process. Yet for all these credentials, Blancmange have been marginalised in popular reminiscence of the era: too odd to be accepted as a true pop group; too catchy to join the ranks of the avant-garde.
If new two-disc retrospective Everything Is Connected proves one thing, it’s that Blancmange could certainly pen a hit. “Living On The Ceiling” is their most enduring moment – an e ervescent electropop that sees Arthur wigging out like an English David Byrne as Luscombe unleashes some haunting sitar melodies. It feels just an inch away from silliness, but it’s important to point out that Blancmange’s spirit of play came from an experimental place. Before forming
Blancmange, Luscombe spent time alongside the likes of Brian Eno in the Portsmouth Sinfonia, an orchestra that celebrated an amateur approach, and something of that ensemble’s sense of mischief runs throughout Blancmange. While their peers were thumbing Ballard paperbacks and posing moodily against brutalist architecture, Arthur and Luscombe named themselves a«er a dessert, covered Abba (a deadpan take on “The Day Before You Came”) and lmed the video for their soaring, romantic “Waves” on a Cornish trawler that found its way into choppy waters, leaving Arthur throwing up over the side.
Everything Is Connected’s rst disc o ers a diverse selection from Blancmange’s ’80s run, from HI-NRG pop (“Game Above My Head”) to exotic worldbeat (“Vishnu”) to dusty Kra«werkian reveries (“Just Another Spectre”). Perhaps cognisant they had exhausted their possibilities, in 1986 Arthur and Luscombe decided to call it a day. But unexpectedly, 20 years later, Blacmange reformed, and while Luscombe le« the group shortly a few years later following a period of ill health, Arthur has powered on, assisted by a new generation of synthesiser acionados like Hannah Peel and Benge.
It’s this newer music that makes up the collection’s second disc, and happily, it’s rather good. The likes of “Commercial Break” and “I Smashed Your Phone” have a distinctly di erent hue to ’80s Blacmange – all harsh analogue textures, with Arthur adopting a more cynical, worldweary demeanour. Blancmange may not have got their dues – but Everything Is Connected suggests their history is still being written.