Blancmange –
Wanderlust (Blanc Check Records)
I’ve always liked Blancmange – Neil Arthur and Stephen Luscombe -
their early ‘80s records were both intelligent and dancefloor friendly, and if
you liked that sort of thing, they were a band you liked a lot. They called it
a day first time round after the release of Believe You Me in 1985, an album
that Allmusic would have you believe is the pick of their long players (it’s
not, but it’s a super record all the same). Their reformation came some 25
years later with the release of Blanc Burn in 2011, and new albums have
followed regularly since, though Stephen Luscombe called it a day after 2014’s
Happy Families, Too… for health reasons.
For the last couple of albums, Arthur’s main collaborator has been
producer Benge, and Wanderlust continues Arthur’s drift into darker themes and
sounds. It’s a fascinating evolution, and produces contemporary music that is
both mesmerizing and easy to live with, which is a cause for some celebration.
Wanderlust begins with the spacey ‘Distant Storm’. Synthetic bass
pulses and Arthur delivers a vocal that somehow hovers over the backbeat like a
ghostly essence. It’s terribly effective. “In Your Room’ continues the sense of
otherworldliness and partially thanks to a hook that digs deep under the skin,
brings to mind Depeche Mode at their sinister peak. They end with the title
track, a futuristic dreamscape that merges Black Mirror, early Gary Numan and
Arthur’s own demons to an ecstatic, gothic, rhythmic conclusion.
Rollo