No laptops live, thanks

“Last weekend I did my first Blancmange show in two years in Belgium,” Neil explains, clearly excited to be back ‘out there’ after the enforced Covid break. “We had to jump through hoops but we did it; there were three of us playing to 4,500 people. There was a power cut and it rained on stage but we still got through it and it was amazing!”

And that gig will hopefully be the first of many, as Neil is preparing for a full Blancmange tour as we speak, although he will be wrestling with an on-stage Akaibased hardware rig, he says. ‘Why not just go down the laptop route?’ we helpfully (we think) suggest…

“I don’t want to do that anymore. We had always used laptops for the bass part and the drums, but with Oogoo Maia, being a fantastic player, I thought we’d do this [non laptop route]. So we’re using two MPC Lives and Roland drum pads triggering from one so we have live drums too. I just wanted to get away from the laptop. I think most people are also a bit fed up with seeing laptops on stage so I wanted to do something a bit different.”