Music > Live Reviews

Blancmange/Heaven 17

The Adrian Flux Waterfront

26/11/17

It’s has been twenty three years since I last clasped eyes on Blancmange at the UEA, on their second album Mange Tout tour and I had never seen Heaven 17 play before so I had a real sense excitement tonight as I headed down to King Street on this freezing cold misty evening beside the River Wensum.

Neil Arthur, Blancmange's front man now flies solo following Stephen Luscombe’s departure due to illness after their reformation and the release of their comeback album Blanc Burn in 2011.

As charismatic as ever, Arthur can still deliver as he walks through Blind Vision, Waves, Don’t Tell Me, Feel Me, That’s Love That It Is and of course Living On A Ceiling, with the latter bringing the house down as a mass singalong ensues.

A new album Unfurnished Rooms is out now and the new songs that were aired went down really well. Blancmange always were a people’s band and this evening they certainly did not show any signs of wear and tear. It certainly was a quite brilliant set.

Heaven 17 were always a class band, a real sophisticated cut above the rest in their day, they were synth pioneers back in the early eighties, formed after Martyn Ware was booted out of the band that he had formed back in the late seventies along with Ian Craig Marsh, The Human League.

Ware recalls the story during the evening, explaining that Heaven 17 frontman Glenn Gregory was the Human League’s original choice to be their frontman, before Phil Oakey got the job. Then following the split, Gregory was then recruited to front Heaven 17. Apparently they are all still big mates with the League and not only are we treated to a version of the Human League’s Being Boiled during the encore which Ware co-wrote with Oakey and Craig Marsh, they also do a cover of the League’s Crow And A Baby, which was also co-written by Ware.

Their new album, we are promised, will be completed in the not too distant future, with many songs still in the melting pot - the new material sounds good based on hearing new song Pray. They open up their seventeen song set with (We don’t need this) Fascist Groove Thang, We Live So Fast and We Live So Fast.

Glenn Gregory’s voice remains crisp and intact unlike many of his contemporise from the greaties that flaunt their wares at every available eighties tour, while Martyn Ware’s playing and backing vocals are as crisp and on the money as ever. Gregory informs us that in addition to liking the Murderers pub in Norwich they also have a great fondness for the Waterfront as it was here, where they played their first ever live show some twenty years ago.

Their back catalogue still sounds incredibly impressive as the quite glorious tracks such as Geisha Boys And Temple Girls, Come Live With Me, Let Me Go, Penthouse And Pavement and of course Temptation are all played much to the delight of these insatiable followers. Gregory also does a cover version of David Bowie’s Life On Mars, following on from his recent collaboration on the Tony Visconti Bowie tribute, Holy Holy project and as it reaches the line… “from Ibiza to the Norfolk Broads”, the singalong goes up many, many decibels, with Martyn Ware claiming that an audience has never done that part of the song quite as well anywhere else on the tour. They very clearly enjoyed the moment as much as us Norfolk folk did.

It has been a fabulous gig, an absolute pleasure to have seen them in action this evening and on the basis that this is their first ever sell out tour, hopefully it won’t be too long before we see them back here again, playing to even more people. For anyone turning up tonight, thinking that this was some dodgy eighties reunion tour (I spotted just two women inappropriately dressed and looking rather odd and out of place), they would’ve been disappointed as Heaven 17 have demonstrated this evening that they are still playing to win.