From Tupperware to software, Blancmange have taken some funny turns in their journey through the world of Pop. Their new LP promises some novel twists, believe you me...

A difficult task, pinning down Blancmange. The odd couple, tall dark Neil Arthur and the smaller blond Stephen Luscombe, have confounded the critics since the band formed in 1979, by refusing to adopt the po-faced pretentiousness usually associated with an 'arty' background, and continuing to produce music defying normal 'Pop' limitations. Recently tagged 'supremos of the computer generated bedsit brigade' by a hip magazine, Blancmange have outlasted the Bronski Beats and Soft Cells of this world by a combination of luck, skill and a sense of humour.

The third album, Believe You Me, is just out. Blancmange — faintly surprised to be still in a business they had little intention of entering in the first place — are happier with it than they were with their second, Mange Tout, and so they should be. Having made all their mistakes on Mange Tout, they now have a new confidence and a tighter sound, derived partly from a better understanding of studio technique.

Well known for an unorthodox approach to instrumentation — Tupperware boxes and Woolworth's organs forming the basis of the earliest recordings — Blancmange remain relatively unconcerned with the technical aspects of recording.

"It's what your ears tell you — if at the end of the day it sounds airtight, it might as well have been recording on a cardboard box as far as I'm concerned", argues Stephen. "I like the physical side of mixing", Neil contributes; "The things that we've produced ourselves on the album have been physical mixes — they were good fun, although there are obviously advantages with automated SSL desks when you go to 48 track — you can make fine adjustments on the mixing.

"When we go into a studio, we just listen to the speakers, then have a look around to see if the room's comfortable. It's important! If you're going to use a studio for a couple of months, you want to be happy there. Stephen and I would rather just say to the technician 'we want this to sound like Neil's singing in a padded cell, and there's a reverb inside your head' — it's up to them to get the sound, we just write the songs. We're not into discussing the technical side, such-and-such an Eq — we just say 'make it fab, can you put a bit more fab on it' — no, I tell a lie, we do take a lot of care, but it's a bit like talking about how you have a bath. It'a lots of fun doing it at the time, but you don't want to talk about it afterwards, 'I do my left leg first, then me right leg, then I work up me body...' We know how we want it to sound, and that's not to say we didn't experiment in the studio. We love playing with echoes, usually AMS, getting effects on a half-beat and mixing it in with the original — you get some extraordinary effects. But had we gone in with the songs just written in basic form, we might have been limited because we'd have been trying to do too many things.

"Everytime we've done an LP we've taken a different approach", explains Stephen. "This time it was very straightforward because we had done all the preparation in advance. Last time we gave ourselves the space and the time to play about in the studio a bit — to learn really, because for the first LP (Happy Families) we were just shoved in, we didn't know anything about studios, and we just had to watch and learn. The second LP let us have a play around."

"And then we got bored with that", interjects Neil — "but we liked the discipline of doing extensive demos for this LP, getting the best out of our home set-ups."

Believe You Me was demoed using RSD Studiomaster four-track cassette units, and the UMI-2B system. Based on the BBC B microcomputer, this hardware/software system developed by Linton Naiff stores and manipulates MIDI information. With a system each at home, the Blancmanges were able to get the best possible results from their portastudios, and write all the songs without using up expensive studio time.

"It quite changed our approach to demoing. We didn't redo the songs we'd already demoed, but when we started using the UMI's" — Neil pronounced it 'Yoomies' — "it gave us even more range for experimentation before we got into the studio."

"If there wasn't a rhythm unit available we'd use a cardboard box and some Tupperware"

"We'd looked at the Yamaha computer (the QX1)," explains Stephen, "but after years of building up our own little stack of equipment, all different makes, we found that Yamaha-so-called-MIDI doesn't work anything else, and that's stupid. And you have to learn a new language just to change the attack. Then we came across the UMI's."

"We eventually used them on every song in the studio, transferring what we'd done by hand on the early demoes," Stephen adds. "It saves time and leaves time for the more important things like buying a fridge."

"And I didn't have to worry so much about being late," says Neil. "You don't have to be computer literate. I wrote Lorraine's My Nurse sitting in the bath. Normally you'd have to plug the keyboard in, put the tape in the machine, get the rhythm unit going, put a line down then sync it up and put down another — and by the time I'd done all that, I'd have forgotten some of the ideas I had. Now I can just switch on the UMI, link in whatever keyboard is the master control, just play baa-baa bom bom, overdub another line, and it's as quick as that, whack it in and finish having my bath. Then you just separate out the parts, put them on different MIDI channels, and make a song out of it."

"It's a fabulous writing aid" continues Stephen; "you can just start from a sound, and you can hear overtones in it which suggest patterns — you can build a whole song up out of nothing. As long as you know how to press SHIFT, STORE, U.M.I. RETURN, that's all you have to know to use it."

The Blancmanges used Casio CZ1000's and CZ101's with the UMI, and Roland TR707 drum machines on most of the tracks. "We love the 707, and on one of the instrumental tracks we used a TR808. They're coming back in again, though the bass drum is dreadful. If you listen to Soul Train you'll hear them all the time... you can tell it a mile off, there's a nice warmth to it which most drum machines haven't got because they're too real. We've got a 707, an 808 and a 909, and a 737 but the engines fell off."

As usual with Blancmange's music, there's also a considerable element of acoustic percussion and guitar. "I got to play guitar on a couple of songs", claims Neil proudly. "I've got a new guitar, a Fender Stratocaster Elite with on-board power. I only really like ten quid Woolworth's jobs, but Stephen had bought this one for me and disguised it to look like a Winfield Wall of Sound guitar. Then when I was playing it one day he pulled off the cover. It was like something out of Doctor Who — it was suddenly regenerated into a Fender Elite. It's nice — I DI the guitar and layer it to build up Phil Spector effects. I like a very thin sound, layered and layered and layered until it doesn't sound like a guitar, and you can mix it in with the keyboards."

On playing technique, Stephen claims that using the UMI system has improved his musical skills rather than eroded them. "Using the real time facility you have to be that much more accurate, especially when you're correcting things. It also teaches you about chord structures, and enables you to talk in more musical terms, which is a help when you've got more session musicians coming in."

"Using a computer isn't an easy way out. You just have to choose how to express yourself, and the UMI happens to be good for us and the way we work. It's a tool like anything else. It's all irrelevant about being 'proficient' on an instrument; you write the songs, you only have to be proficient enough to play them. I don't want to write anyone else's songs, I don't want to play anyone else's songs! Well, we've done a few," explains Stephen; "we did Abba's, (The Day Before You Came) but going through that song was a real revelation — we had no idea it was so complicated, changing time signatures half way through the song, fabulous chords you've never heard of, and that teaches you a lot. I did Copacabana for a friend of mine, and having to go through that and find out the chords was much easier for using the UMI."

"We just say 'make it fab, can you put a bit more fab on it'."

Blancmange usually work quite separately, Stephen often starting a piece with a sound, Neil with a fragment of lyric or melody. With the UMI's so much a part of this process I suggested that they might install telephone links between the computers and let them get on with the work themselves.

"We have different methods of approach, and that's why we work together so well — not patting ourselves on the back, but there aren't many duos who have been together as long as us, nearly eight years. It's quite an achievement, us being the sort of people we are, arguing and fighting."

Surprisingly, the pair have resisted the general trend towards sampling. "We let Roland do that on the drum machines. Some people just bung Fairlights on for the sake of being modern, and if it doesn't need it there's no point. All we used was JX8P, Casio's, Jupiter 8, a few other keyboards, DX7 only on one song thank God, and a Prophet to do the bass on 22339. The 707, real congas and drums, backing vocalists, Steinberger guitar, Hugh Masakela on flugelhorn. If I was starting again in 1985 and I wanted to make a big flashy Fairlight number", Stephen explains, "that's alright, if it's obviously a Fairlight job. But imitating other things is pointless, especially if you know people who can just come in and play it."

"People have got Blancmange a bit wrong in that respect," interjects Neil, "in that they think of us as an electronic duo. Blancmange has never been an electronic duo, we just use whatever comes to hand. We were privileged to have someone like Hugh Masakela playing on the album, it was incredible to watch and it sounds great — what's the point getting someone into do that on a Fairlight? If there wasn't a rhythm unit available, we'd use a cardboard box and some Tupperware. It's difficult to get the passion out of a Fairlight. Fairlights don't cough like a cellist does, or make the sounds of the keys on a flute."

The JX8P and the Jupiter 8 are the mainstays of Stephen's keyboard setup.

"Using the analogue controls on the JX8P is like having a digital Jupiter 8, more or less; the Jupiter has some lovely sounds too, you get to know it anyway, why should you start to change it if you're with it? I've still got my old Bunny One organ, it's about seven years old. I got it for about £200 in a shop in Kilburn. It's got all those Bossa Nova rhythms, and a great bass sound; it still works, only now it's painted gold with an Eye of Horus on it. We didn't manage to get it on this album, and no clarinet on it either. But Lorraine's My Nurse is fully orchestrated; we gave the data disk to Linton Naiff and he scored it for recorder, cello, violin and flute, and underneath that we put a synthesised deep string sound. I can read and write music a little bit," says Stephen, "and I just write chords down in blocks using the UMI. We could use the UMI live, but it turns out to be a lot less psychologically stressful not to have to rely on the computer live — you never know whether it's going to break down."

"We've always used backing tapes live in conjunction with musicians. We used to use a two-track tape, but this time we'll be using eight-track so when you're playing different places you can remix the sounds accordingly. We don't want to have to worry about a computer on stage — there are more important things, like whether Stephen's got his bottle of vodka under the keyboards, and how much beer they've put by my monitor."

Stephen will be using four stacked keyboards on stage — "we were going to put them in a long line and give him extending arms" — although Blancmange don't intend to exactly reproduce the sounds of the album. "I often change a lot of the sounds live, even do completely new lines on the UMI for the backing tape."

"There are restrictions with using tape — you can't just say 'once again from the top!' — so we've learned to improvise in different ways. Electronic music and tape recorders have gone hand in hand, they're natural partners. I find it odd that people get a bit peculiar when they see synthesisers and tape recorders together. If it's at all possible, we'll have the tape machine on stage with us — we won't be hiding it like certain bands do, then have a boo-boo when they're miming to the tape. Our tape recorder always breaks down, but we just live with it."

Outside the usual run of Blancmange projects, Neil and Stephen have worked with Indian musician Asha Bhosle on the West India Company project, produced music for the Alternative Miss World contest, a piece called Hello Darling for the Taboo Club, film music for Tony White, Mantis Dance Company, and various other projects. The next single off the album is Lose Your Love — "Pronounced Lose Yer Lurv for the American market, and retitled Non Non Non in France because it's easier to remember. We recorded that one twice, first last February, then we decided to do it again and remix it with John Luongo. I imagine it in visual terms, say someone walking across Westminster Bridge."