Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Whether alone in a grand ballroom, or through a peep hole as the moon rises overhead and the crowds mill around you in the less than seedy part of Times Square in the early 1990s, a Private View is one that carries a certain privilege, as well as the inevitable connotations that are drawn, the sense of remoteness as the emotions tumble and swirl are there to remind you that a private view is just that, one that can only be shared after the fact, and by doing so you become the presenter of a unique and possibly thrilling experience.
Once more Blancmange, the trail blazers of synth-pop and to whom stand alongside the likes of The Human League, Heaven 17, and Vince Clark in all his pop guises, remind the listener that what was 40 years ago is still absolutely true today, that just because a machine is seemingly at the heart of the performance, it doesn’t mean that a human soul has not been instrumental in achieving the desired effect, and it is this that provides the effect that Blancmange, Neil Arthur alongside returning producer and keyboard player Benge Edwards, and guitarist David Rhodes, have struck and presented towards their ever faithful army of supporters in the new album, Private View.
The album, which heralds a return to London Records for the first time in 40 years, is a stimulating and vocally rousing, even arousing, affair which is so unmistakably Blancmange, but which also has the spirit, the creative audacity to push its way to the front of the listener’s conscious and with absolute respect, stand there and counting out time as the memory of the unrestricted access to the spectacle and prospect of aural titillation becomes overwhelmingly cool and immensely scenic in the way the music weaves its way around the spoken images.
Across songs such Reduced Voltage, Here We Go Go, Everything Is Connected, I Tried To Be You, and the opener What’s Your Name, what becomes obvious is how enlarged the overall sound of the recordings are, and whilst the 80s in particular were the giant tracks of the band’s history, the last decade feels as though it has been building up to this moment, not so much a seismic shift away from the past, but a new dawn of production, and one that is swollen with the anticipation revealed.
A Private View, one that holds the mystery and unveiling in equal measure of emotions, and one to whom Blancmange regale in the chance to divulge of all they have seen.
Ian D. Hall