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Don’t Tell<\/strong>\u00a0<\/em>Me<\/strong><\/em> and\u00a0Living On The Ceiling<\/strong><\/em> both reached the Top Ten and their first two albums\u00a0Happy Families<\/strong><\/em> and the punning\u00a0Mange Tout<\/strong><\/em> went gold in the UK.<\/p>\n They went their separate ways in 1986, but Arthur reunited with songwriting partner\u00a0Stephen Luscombe<\/strong> for a comeback album\u00a0Blanc Burn<\/strong><\/em> in 2011.<\/p>\n Illness forced Luscombe to retire from recording soon after, but Arthur has never looked back, releasing three new Blancmange studio albums \u00a0– \u00a0Semi Detached<\/strong><\/em>, the instrumental\u00a0Nil By Mouth\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>and\u00a0Commuter 23 <\/strong> –\u00a0<\/em>in two years between 2015 and 2016.<\/p>\n Now he’s back with a fourth,\u00a0Unfurnished Rooms<\/strong>, <\/em>which like its predecessors is released on his own label\u00a0Blanc Check Records<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n As he heads out to tour the album, Arthur tells Matt Catchpole<\/strong>, about the joy or writing songs on his own terms and collaborating with producer\/percussionist\u00a0Ben Edwards<\/strong> alias Benge<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Unassuming and friendly, Neil Arthur is not a man given to taking himself too seriously.<\/p>\n Much of our conversation was spent listening to him cackling down the phone line, laughing at some crack he’d made at his own expense.<\/p>\n Where he does get serious, however, is when he talks about the work, describing at length the rigorous editing process he goes through to pare a song down to its simplest possible essence.<\/p>\n Something which might sound easy in theory, but in practice is rather more difficult to achieve.<\/p>\n Arthur talks about the songs on new album Unfurnished Rooms <\/em><\/strong>as though they were children about to be packed off to boarding school, explaining how he\u2019s had to \u201clearn to let them go and stand up for themselves”.<\/p>\n Outlining his songwriting process, he explains he keeps notebooks, jotting down ideas for lyrics, overheard conversations, even stories inspired by people he’s met at gigs.<\/p>\n “Sometimes it seems to come out in a stream of consciousness,” he says of his lyric writing. “There\u2019s always some give and take in moving something from a piece of poetry or prose into the structure of a song. What I tend to do is take out, I have too much and I strip it down.”<\/p>\n Taking the song Old<\/strong> Friends<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0<\/strong>from the new LP as an example, he thoughtfully explains his approach.<\/p>\n “I couldn\u2019t sleep and I was standing watching the sun at daybreak, so I wrote exactly what I was looking at. I had the chords in my head, so I got this thing ‘Roof tiles dry after a heavy night of rain<\/em>‘. That gives me a rhythm path, so I\u2019ve already got the kind of structure and I know what I want to get to.<\/p>\n “I\u2019ve got the idea of the chorus building and building to a kind of epic and I know I\u2019m going to say Old Friends before that chorus part comes. Then I heard on social media about some outrage over an incident with a whippet and I just thought I\u2019ve gotta have that! So I wove that into the other parts of the lyrics that were already written. It\u2019s almost like cutting bits up and assembling a story sometimes.”<\/p>\n Like many songwriters, Arthur is reluctant to give away too much about the meaning of his work, preferring to let listeners decipher it for themselves.<\/p>\n “If you explain everything, it\u2019s like picking up a book and finding that the first page is actually the last page – there’s nothing to discover,” he says. “So the ambiguity is intentional.”<\/p>\n Working with Benge, he says, was “a logical progression” after the pair got on well together during the making of the album F<\/strong>irst<\/em> Light<\/strong><\/em>, which they recorded under the name\u00a0Fader<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Arthur speaks admiringly of the “Aladdin’s Cave” of vintage synths and electronic equipment that Benge has assembled at\u00a0Memetune studios in Cornwall<\/p>\n He explains that Benge helped to replace the VST (virtual studio technology) instruments on the album with genuine analogue versions enhancing the warmth of the sound, before adding his own layers of percussion.<\/p>\n Benge’s contacts also led to a meeting with\u00a0John Grant<\/strong>, a massive Blancmange fan, who also plays on the album.<\/p>\n “John had mentioned that he liked a bit of Blancmange,” laughs Arthur. “He ended up asking me a few questions to which I struggled to find the answers. I think he knew a bit more about us than I did!<\/p>\n “He agreed to play piano on two songs, but not only that, when he went into the studio he did some backing vocals as well, which was absolutely brilliant, because he’s got a fantastic voice. It was an absolute pleasure to have him contribute.”<\/p>\n Time and again thoughout the interview, Arthur returns to the idea of stripping a song both sonically and lyrically down to its simplest structure.<\/p>\n It was something he and Luscombe discussed when they first met and formed the band in the late 1970s.<\/p>\n “We started talking about tape loops – we used to go and see a lot of experimental groups like This Heat <\/strong>and\u00a0Pere Ubu<\/strong>. I became a huge fan – still am – of\u00a0The Young Marble Giants<\/strong> – it was very simple in a way, but simple is very difficult to achieve.”<\/p>\n Amazingly for a group so well known as a synth duo, Arthur said Blancmange never actually owned their own synths until their second LP.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/essentiallypop.com\/epop\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/maxresdefault.jpg?resize=640%2C360&ssl=1\")
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