With Blancmange, Neil Arthur produced a trio of classic 80s albums – Happy Families, Mange Tout and Believe You Me – but then spent most of the next two decades out of the world of pop, writing music for film and TV. Since resurrecting Blancmange in 2008, he’s made up for lost time, pretty much trebling the group’s output and working with a string of collaborators on other projects, including Fader with the producer Benge for their debut album First Light, and Near Future with Jez Bernholz for the Ideal Home LP.

With that number of releases and projects under his belt, you’d think that this 62-year old might be thinking about slowing down, but it’s quite the opposite.

First, there’s the new Blancmange album, Mindset, released last month, and that will then be followed by a bewildering number of other collaborations, including one of the most exciting that any fan of 80s electronic music could wish for – more on that later.

The new Blancmange LP is largely inspired by what we have become as a society, with fake news, truths, half-truths and social media all being major contributors to Neil’s songs. It was 56 conceived and produced before the coronavirus pandemic, which will no doubt inspire future work but is hopefully not holding back Arthur’s current projects. “Well, at least we’ve now got time to get them finished,” he laughs wryly.

This type of dark humour is typical of Arthur and a key feature of this interview. In previous chats with Classic Pop, he’s reminded us of some of the dreadful luck Blancmange had back in the 80s, but that he can always take a smile away from any situation, and maybe the odd song – light from dark. So you get the sense that whatever situation he finds himself in, Arthur will be creative with it.

“ON THE SONG DIAGRAM, I'M LOOKING FOR NOTIONS OF TRUTH. I'M LOOKING INTO YOUR EYES TO SEE IF YOU ARE BEING REALLY HONEST WITH ME - AND IF I'M BEING HONEST WITH YOU.”

Twisted lyrics, catchy melodies, dark themes… Which is just as well considering where and when this interview takes place – on Skype rather than over a pleasant pub lunch as planned, and just as the world is starting to go crazy. But before we get too carried away with current events, let’s step back to the time that inspired the new Blancmange album.

Happier times? Hardly…

MINDSET & MATCH “Whether I consciously had a concept, I’m not sure really,” says Arthur when asked about the theme behind Mindset.