Heaven 17 - Luxury Electropop

Everybody move to prove the groove

“Once there was a day we were together all the way…”. Ian Marsh, Martin Ware and Adi Newton all together in Future, then Phil Oakey and the Human League, finally Glenn Gregory and Heaven 17: it happens in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, around 1977. Days of punk, revolt and cultural guerrilla warfare, the UK's industrial capital doesn't have much to offer after all, given the worsening crisis in the steel industry, the sole engine of the production chain and the lifeblood of the local community's existence. Destruction, but also sowing, rebirth, avant-garde and experimentation.

Man and machine, man is the machine: Martyn Ware (Sheffield, 19 May 1956) gets hold of one with his first savings as a computer programmer, a Korg 700 with a monophonic keyboard, and starts moving into electronics, in love with Motown, glam rock and even Kraftwerk. Ian Craig Marsh's (Sheffield, 11 November 1956) approach to music, on the other hand, is decidedly less placid: he too grows up amid the leaden grey of steelworks fumes and factory noise, and to chase away the ghosts of that eco-monster he starts hanging around the small theatre company "Meatwhistle". Here he learns to play guitar and strikes up a friendship with a certain Mark Civico, together with whom he founds a kind of art-gang, which tries to draw attention to itself through incendiary, reckless performances bordering on self-harm (on stage they talk about necrophilia and masturbation while pogoing, elbowing each other and making themselves vomit, something halfway between Alice Cooper and Fad Gadget) — not for nothing do they call themselves Music Vomit, a disgusting epithet drawn from a less-than-flattering article about Suicide (as they were branded by the local press).

The experience, however, is short-lived, since Marsh is soon expelled from school as a "subversive" and unwanted element. Civico then calms down and carries on with other former Meatwhistle companions, Paul Bower, Ian Reddington and aspiring photographer Glenn Gregory (they write the rock opera "Vomit Lost In Space" and stage it at the University Drama Studio and Burngreave Church Hall with the help of a few occasional guests, with Martyn Ware himself occasionally on stylophone — at the time he's cutting his teeth with the Underpants).

The gang splits up for good after a nightmare evening at the Bath Arts Festival in 1974, where they're greeted with bottles thrown at them and jeered by a disgusted crowd. The only one who seems to appreciate them is Mary Joan Elliott-Said aka Poly Styrène (leader of X-Ray Spex), who's sitting in the audience and applauds them as the "first real punk band".

At this point percussionist/backing vocalist Ian Reddington leaves to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art: a respectable acting future awaits him, inaugurated in 1986 with the role of Bassett in "Highlander" alongside Christopher Lambert (his résumé also includes plenty of television, theatre and a few anthems for Sheffield Wednesday FC). Gregory carries on in music and keeps busy with 57 (alongside him Jack Hues and Nick Feldman, the backbone of Wang Chung), while Bower carves out a modest share of glory as guitarist for 2.3 Children (later 2.3) and meanwhile supplements his income with journalism (he edits the fanzine Gunrubber together with Adi Newton).

The Future in the Seventies: synthesizers

Once this first apprenticeship phase is over, many of them stay in touch and find ways to reconnect: Marsh, in fact, has sorted himself out and also finds work as a programmer, so he buys a synthesizer and calls back Ware and Adi Newton to play at a mutual friend's twenty-first birthday party, which around these parts marks the age of majority. They introduce themselves as Dead Daughters and perform the theme from the TV series "Doctor Who", along with covers from the first Ramones record. They have great fun with it, and gradually get such a taste for it that they decide to found The Future, a pop band using only electronic instrumentation, which in 1977 is still something hard to conceive by contemporary standards and, indeed, truly "futuristic".

Equipment prices drop and become more affordable for the average consumer; Newton buys a Roland System 100 and a piece of software called CARLOS that converts inputted words into lyrics, turning the artifice into reality, but he can't find any companies willing to fund the idea and leaves the group to attempt something more extreme and esoteric with his own creation Clock Dva (the early releases "White Souls In Black Suits" and "Thirst" are closer to the free-jazz, psychedelia and noise of "Mix-Up" by neighbours Cabaret Voltaire or Throbbing Gristle than to the cyber-punk aesthetic with which, in the years to come, the man amplified of "Advantage" and "Buried Dreams" would make his mark).

The Future interlude dissolves into a handful of demos, later archived on CD some twenty years on in the documentary compilation "The Golden Hour Of The Future" (which in 2002 digs into the roots of the Sheffield sound through early versions of "Being Boiled", "Toyota City", "Circus Of Death" and other historical artefacts sifted through by Richard X).

The Human League: one day all the music will be made like this

Ware and Marsh now think about putting things in order and look more for a vocalist than a third synthesizer to replace Adi, since every label they approach seems sceptical given the lack of a proper frontman; but their first choice, Glenn Gregory, is unfortunately unavailable, being busy with 57, so they settle on the charismatic Phil Oakey, night porter at Thornbury Annex Hospital and an old schoolmate of theirs, who has no experience to speak of beyond a few saxophone ambitions, but who does bring with him a dense network of social connections and the appeal of a seasoned popstar, built on eccentric hair and fashionable clothes.

The two minds produce the brief instrumental "Dancevision" and, right after, "Being Boiled", the baptism of the newborn Human League, who take their name from the video game "Starforce: Alpha Centauri", where the Human League is a frontier of Humanoids fighting in 2415 AD for independence from Planet Earth (the first track can be found on the EP "Holiday '80", the second marks Oakey's entry into the band).

They land a contract thanks to the intervention of former colleague Paul Bower, who introduces them to the record people behind his band 2.3, and so, on the Fast Records label, out come in sequence "Reproduction" (1979) and "Travelogue" (1980), recorded at Monumental Pictures studios: "One day all the music will be made like this", declares the first prophetic line of "The Black Hit Of Space", and it's not far off the mark — both albums are, in their own way, landmark records for the development of the synth-pop movement of which Human League are acknowledged pioneers (even the Undertones namecheck them in "My Perfect Cousin", “His mother bought him a synthesizer/ got the Human League in to advise her/ now he’s making lot of noise/ playing along with the art school boys”).

Despite the band enjoying well-established fame, they don't achieve the commercial success that had been anticipated (the singles from "Travelogue" are outsold in the UK charts by Gary Numan's "Are Friends Electric?", and despite appearances on Top Of The Pops, the album fails to climb higher than number sixteen). Nor are their live shows entirely convincing, given their reliance on technology and tape machines, which makes them static, flat and not very engaging on stage (in NME, John Lydon of Public Image Limited lays into them, branding them "trend hippies", while on the other hand David Bowie watches them open for Siouxsie and the Banshees and declares he's "seen the future").

In short, illustrious but conflicting opinions — not everything is running smoothly, and after a failed outing at Psalter Lane Art College, Oakey suggests to his director friend Adrian Wright that they liven up their shows with projections, films and colour slides. Tension mounts and the internal strains within the group sharpen: manager Bob Last tries to mend the rift, but Marsh and Ware pull out, leaving Oakey and "director of visuals" Wright the burden of the moniker and full freedom to do with it as they see fit, provided they settle the debts accumulated. They'll do so admirably, with the permanent addition of Joanne Catherall and Susan Ann Sulley, attractive cocktail-bar-style singer-dancers: on 3 July 1982 the single "Don't You Want Me" reaches the top of the Billboard Hot 100, paving the way for the second British Invasion of the United States. But that's another story — the story of Human League.

…a change of heart, a change of mind and Heaven fell that night

1980: British Electric Foundation and Heaven 17

The story of Heaven 17, instead, finally begins in 1980, when Glenn Gregory (born 16 May 1958) frees himself from his previous commitments with the 57 and joins Ian Marsh and Martyn Ware, orphaned by Oakey's departure and now keen to experiment with something different — just as catchy and easy on the ear, but structurally more complex and engaged than the high-altitude easy-pop blockbusters "Dare!", "Hysteria" and "Crash" (besides "Don't You Want Me", also "Love Action (I Believe In Love)", "The Sound Of The Crowd", "Human" and "The Lebanon" are about to conquer the charts everywhere).

In the beginning there was the British Electric Foundation (or B.E.F.), "the new partnership that's opening doors all over the world", set up with the aim of lending prestige to a number of musical projects, of which Heaven 17 was meant to be the flagship. Heaven17 is a fictional band that, in Anthony Burgess's cult novel "A Clockwork Orange", tops the charts at number four with the track "Inside"; reality, however, diverges from fiction, and in fact the trio's first single fails to climb higher than number 45. "(We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang" was in fact banned by the BBC on the recommendation of Radio 1 DJ Mike Read, after the monitoring department raised concerns about lyrics that were far too explicit, bluntly denouncing newly-elected President Ronald Reagan (and, indirectly, Thatcher and the British Conservative Party as well).

Have you heard it on the news about this fascist groove thang?

Evil men with racist views spreading all across the land

Democrats are out of power across that great wide ocean

Reagan's president elect, fascist god in motion

Generals tell him what to do…

And then there's even: "Hitler proves that funky stuff, is not for me and you girl, Europe's not a happy land. Brothers, sisters, we don't need this fascist groove thang!". A harsh, violent denunciation that didn't get past the censors, but Glenn navigates it skilfully, handling the drama of the lyrics without ever coming across as pretentious.

Musically, the band picks up where "Reproduction" left off, adapting its martial electronics to the disco-funk dancefloor (slap bass and R&B touches — Gregory is a huge fan of the Jackson 5, and compared to Phil Oakey he has a warmer vocal tone).

The debut album Penthouse And Pavement is released in September 1981, driven by this track and by the other singles "Play To Win" (witty lyrics and whip-cracking groove, anticipating Prince's "Tambourine" from "Around The World In A Day", and finding a conceptual successor in "Opportunities" by the Pet Shop Boys) and "Penthouse And Pavement", an intoxicating title track that prods the listener with a lucid, merciless analysis of the dehumanising effects of the market economy — eight hours a day of rigid conformity to the system in exchange for a meagre survival.

Here comes the daylight, here comes my job

uptown in my penthouse, downtown with the mob

here comes the nighttime, here comes my room

goodbye to the pavement, hello to my soul

Side A's "Pavement Side" package is rounded off by "Soul Warfare", which offers a vision of capitalism as a game of control exercised by the ruling class at the expense of the weakest link, though its insistent bass solos do nothing to dispel the overwhelming sense of spiritual desolation. Side B, the "Penthouse Side", is technically less lofty ("Song With No Name") and closer to what a third Human League album might have sounded like, had Marsh and Ware stayed in the fold — namely lightning-quick melodies ("Let's All Make A Bomb" and the anti-militarist satire "Height Of The Fighting", he-la-huuuuu!) and all-synth arrangements (spartan and minimalist on "Geisha Boys And Temple Girls", à-la Chris&Cosey, while "We're Going To Live For A Long Time" is more layered and playful, with a looping, post-brainwashing choral finale).

But Marsh and Ware have left the group, and together with Gregory they draw up a manifesto that is, if anything, even more radical and ambitious (they retain total artistic control over their work, acting as writers, artists, designers, and even handling the packaging of their releases themselves). "Our contract was very clear," Martyn explains, "every stage of production was an integral part of the band's ethic, from the handshake on the cover (echoing the more famous one on Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here") to the sartorial elegance of the videos and photo shoots. In this we were heavily influenced by Kraftwerk, because what they presented was a global vision of humanity of which music was just one tiny part". Penthouse And Pavement, on the other hand, is anything but a tiny part — it's an essential snapshot of the Eighties, rightfully included in Robert Dimery's annually updated "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die".

Quality music for your Walkman

Also per contract, Glenn Gregory is exempted from the British Electric Foundation, whose almost simultaneous debut Music For Stowaways (released on cassette in March 1981) draws on rudimentary recordings credited to Marsh/Ware alone, made in the period immediately following "Reproduction"-"Travelogue" (the sole exception being "The Optimum Chant", finished together with Gregory on a rudimentary eight-track Ampex). Here too the tracklist is split in two, into "Uptown Side" (the aforementioned "The Optimum Chant", "Uptown Apocalypse", "Wipe The Board Clean" and "Groove Thang") and "Downtown Side" ("Music To Kill Your Parents By", "The Old At Rest", "Rise Of The East" and "Decline Of The West"), and takes its cue from the arrival of the Sony Stowaway Walkman, which in many ways was "a massive revolution, since equipment kept getting smaller and more manageable, so even though we had our own studio we were curious to visit people's houses and record ideas onto those little machines, then rework them in private; that album is a triumvirate of music, art and technology, so to make sure the audio quality suited portable players we decided to mix it using headphones instead of speakers". These are mostly instrumental electronic suites with a strong cinematic atmosphere, ranging from funk-rock to ambient before sinking into icier textures (later that same year an export version was released on LP, retitled "Music To Listening To", with an expanded tracklist but the same format).

"Music Of Quality And Distinction Volume One", on the other hand, comes out in 1982 on Virgin Records and brings in rising artists or ones in need of a comeback — for instance Tina Turner, whose cover of the Temptations classic "Ball Of Confusion" catches the attention of Capitol Records, leading her follow-up "Let's Stay Together" (an Al Green song rearranged by Ware with help from Greg Walsh) to reach number 6 on the UK chart and number 20 in the US. Also featured are Gary Glitter (singing Mark James's "Suspicious Minds"), Sandie Shaw ("Anyone Who Had A Heart" by Bacharach/David), Paul Jones ("There's A Ghost In My House" by Holland-Dozier-Holland), Bernie Nolan ("You Keep Me Hangin' On") and Paula Yates ("These Boots Are Made For Walkin'"). Special guests Glenn Gregory (with "Perfect Day" and "Wichita Lineman") and Billy MacKenzie, frontman of the Associates, who reworks David Bowie's "The Secret Life Of Arabia" with a full LinnDrum treatment, and Roy Orbison's "It's Over", the latter featuring a guest appearance on acoustic guitar by John Foxx, another man who certainly knows his electronics and innovation, and who vouches for the merit of what's going on: "B.E.F. and Heaven 17 are unique, if misunderstood, pioneers, comparable perhaps only to Devo or the Residents: too clever for 'normal' people who don't catch the irony, the fun, the wit. At once a critique and a reincarnation of corporatism, these guys are effectively deconstructing the conventions of the traditional band to throw the doors open to all the musicians they admire most, relaunching the careers of fading stars like Tina Turner, among others. A generous, brilliant idea — it's not easy to find similar initiatives in the world of popular music".

A second volume of "Music Of Quality And Distinction" wouldn't appear until 1991, by which time Heaven 17 were already on their way to something far bigger — and so B.E.F.'s activities were temporarily shelved.

The Luxury Gap: the golden years

The best years of our lives. These are the years straddling 1981 and 1983, the year in which Heaven 17 release The Luxury Gap, their second studio effort and their biggest commercial success.

New wave, by definition, is a wave, and as such it drifts in constant motion; the electronic strand of the British scene never pauses for breath, evolving within the space of a few swells from the mutant moments of Soft Cell to non-stop ecstatic dance, from the Organisation of the former to the junk culture of the latter-day OMD, from a metamatic bearing to the reckless, iridescent make-up of the new wild boys. The Luxury Gap (April 1983) is a formidable compendium of every one of these impulses, the meeting-point of intellect where each piece of the puzzle finally falls into place.

Recorded between Townhouse Studios in London and AIR on Oxford Street under the working title "Ashes And Diamonds", it was preceded about six months earlier (October 1982) by the single "Let Me Go", a delayed-fuse bomb that, inexplicably, struggled on the home market at the time of release, stalling at number 41 (the US release fared considerably better, adding an exclamation mark to the title — "Let Me Go!" — and climbing to number four on the American dance chart, propelled by heavy airplay on alternative stations KROQ-FM Los Angeles and WLIR Long Island). It's one of the earliest hits built around the Roland TB-303, which would later play a crucial role in the development of the acid house movement (Daft Punk used it on "Homework" in the mid-Nineties, as did Fatboy Slim on "Better Living Through Chemistry", to name just a couple). "If you ask me to pick just one Heaven 17 song, I'd say 'Let Me Go', it's definitely my favourite," Gregory would explain, "mainly because when musicians have something in mind, it often changes during the creative process and the finished version ends up quite far from the original idea — you might wake up one day wanting to go back and change it. With 'Let Me Go' there was no need, it came out exactly as we'd imagined it. The melody almost sounds like a film score, and the TB-303 bassline was very innovative for the time. We tried adding a few piano notes in the style of Ultravox's 'Vienna', but it didn't sit right, so Martyn had a flash of inspiration and put in that continuous 'woh-woh' with the Jupiter 8's delay, I added the opening drum hit, and we were thrilled with it. Then there's the spoken-word bit: '...daytime! All I want is nighttime! I don't need no day time! All I want is...' and that 'bop ba da bop bop bop bop ba da bop...'

The result is absolutely devastating: little by little, "Let Me Go" sweeps aside every obstacle to become one of the decade's iconic tracks (81st greatest song of all time in Q101 Chicago's ideal Top 500). By now Heaven 17 are among the coolest acts around, and things go even better with the spirited duet "Temptation", which in May '83 climbs to number 2 in the UK (more than 250,000 copies sold in under a month), second only to Spandau Ballet's "True".

The sound becomes unabashedly more pop at Virgin's request, since beyond the flashes of brilliance on predecessor Penthouse And Pavement, the label expects The Luxury Gap to deliver the commercial comeback it felt was due. "They gave us a blank cheque," Ware recalls, "so when I called them up I asked for a sixty-piece orchestra (conducted by John Wesley Barker) and they granted it right away without batting an eyelid. There was huge optimism around us, we had the best studio, the best engineers and the best producers." "Temptation" was written in Ladbroke Grove, west London, in Gregory's basement; he continues: "I was sitting on the sofa when Martyn came in and said he had this brilliant idea based on 'The Lord's Prayer', with an endless chain of chords climbing like an Escher staircase, and he'd already settled on the title and the line 'Lead us not into temptation' straight from the Lord's Prayer. The lyric is about sex and its tensions — it was the first time we'd tackled that subject, and to do it justice we wanted to set my voice against a more emotive female voice, so we auditioned several singers, including Josie James, Stevie Wonder's backing vocalist who'd already worked with us on 'Penthouse And Pavement', but she was too soft, we were after something grittier." In the end the choice fell on Carol Kenyon, a seasoned soul singer who'd already worked with Chris Rea, Jon & Vangelis and Dexy's Midnight Runners on "Too-Rye-Ay" (later also with Ultravox, Simple Minds, Paul Hardcastle, Julian Cope, Duran Duran, Mike Oldfield and many others). The result is a sparkling slice of Motown soul set to a mechanised rhythm. Also unmissable is the video, set by Steve Barron in a dull-grey room straight out of German Expressionism, staging what looks like an office interview between Gregory and a Kenyon lookalike (due to a pay dispute, Kenyon herself didn't take part in the shoot and was replaced by a model). "Even today we could play it in an old people's home and the pensioners would leap out of their chairs to dance," the trio joke — though it should be noted that, during what's considered the peak moment of their career, they gave no concerts and never performed live, save for the occasional mimed TV appearance for promotional purposes.

Coming back to The Luxury Gap, pretty much the whole album is awash in lavish arrangements, drawing on the horn section of Earth, Wind & Fire's Phenix Horns combined with programmed synthesisers and digital drum machines, jazz piano, rhythm guitar and orchestration, so that every song takes on its own identity thanks to the enviably broad sonic palette. The gap referred to in the title is the one between the new unbridled luxury of the wealthy classes and the harsh reality of ordinary people, ground down by the machinery of industry, as depicted in the opening "Crushed By The Wheels Of Industry", a sardonic look at mass unemployment and another hard-hitting, politically committed j'accuse, if less traumatic than "(We Don't Need This) This Fascist Groove Thang". Emblematic in this respect are the lines: “Work all day or work all night it’s all the same/ Will we ever change?/ It’s vocation or vacation?/ Some are workers some are not, it is time for a party/ Liberation for the nation, now!”. The same theme returns in "Key To The World", a deflating parable of the ordinary man who spends beyond his means (Marsh and Ware, after all, had been treating us to similarly anti-consumerist broadsides since the days of "Reproduction" and "The Dignity Of Labour").

The theatrical sketch "Who Will Stop The Rain?" and "We Live So Fast" ease the tension with a playful but far from frivolous electrofunk (the former is yet another take on the Cold War, the latter a memo for aspiring millionaires), while the fourth single "Come Live With Me" contains some of the same wry pick-up-line oddities beloved of fellow Sheffielders Abc's "Lexicon Of Love" (“Io ho trentasette anni/ tu la metà dei miei/ vengo a prenderti a scuola/ la gioventù che non ho mai visto”). Finally, there's no shortage of more personal moments that stray from the pre-set electro formula, such as the jazzy "Lady Ice And Mister Hex" or the slow, contemplative "The Best Kept Secret" (essentially a mini "Let Me Go", since it borrows a few discarded ideas from that song's sessions, including notes and compositional structure).

The artwork is significant too, depicting a dazzling tropical landscape behind the band members, but look closely (and especially unfold both sides of the sleeve) and you realise it's merely an advertising billboard screening off a grim industrial building site. The album was certified platinum by the British Phonographic Industry and shot to number four on the UK Album Charts (where it stayed in the Top 40 for a full twenty-seven weeks), so great things were now expected of the trio.

You know how men are, we fell to the power

stay with the money ‘til five to midnight’s past

("Five Minutes To Midnight")

How Men Are

How Men Are came out in September 1984 and picks up the thread begun with The Luxury Gap: fast rhythms, rich harmonies and a dazzling orchestral arrangement once again enriched by the Phenix Horns. Worth noting too is the vocal contribution of Afrodiziac, a bluesy little outfit made up of backing singers Naomi Thompson, Carol Wheeler and Claudia Fontaine, especially active in the mid-Eighties (working with Japan, Elvis Costello, Madness, Erasure, Aztec Camera and various others, here providing backing vocals on four tracks). Although most of the songs are built on Fairlight CMI synthesisers and Linn LM1 drum machines, How Men Are marks the start of an ever-growing use of acoustic instruments in Heaven 17's music, which many saw as a kind of "betrayal" or a stalling point (the three singles pulled from it were largely snubbed, and the last, "...(And That's No Lie)", didn't even crack the Top 40).

In truth, this third studio album is the perfect bridge between the first two, still managing to skilfully blend dance, R&B, pop and electronics; it would perhaps have been more appreciated had it come out, chronologically, somewhere between Penthouse And Pavement and The Luxury Gap, of which it's certainly an excellent compromise, starting with the engaging opening trio "Five Minutes To Midnight", "Sunset Now" (b-side "Counterforce") and "This Is Mine" (the latter two being, respectively, the first and second singles; the video for "This Is Mine" shows Gregory and Ware pulling off a bank robbery before ditching the loot by throwing it into a river during a helicopter getaway).

"The Fuse" (with Nick Plytas on piano), "Flamedown" (with a jazzy feel) and the tense "Shame Is On The Rocks" are lively mid-tempo numbers, while "The Skin I'm In" is slower and more reflective (exactly the kind of ballad that would later make the fortunes of Martin Gore or George Michael's "Kissing A Fool"). "Reputation" (“I don’t have a reputation/ falling faster all the time/ help me make a reputation/ I’ll help yours if you’ll help mine”) debunks the fleeting prestige of the career climber and adds lyrical weight (the words on this album are less uncompromising but never banal).

A final mention of merit for the epic "...(And That's No Lie!)", the closing track and arguably one of the trio's finest (and most misunderstood) achievements: a layered introduction building to an apocalyptic climax, its 10:02 minutes an almost unprecedented experiment for this kind of scene, barring the likes of Tangerine Dream or A Certain Ratio's "I'd Like To See You Again".

In November of that same year, Heaven 17 lent their support to the charity single "Do They Know It's Christmas?", raising funds to fight famine in Ethiopia, but unlike the great many colleagues who threw themselves into the project, the following July, 1985, they didn't take the stage at Live Aid, staying true to a thoroughly personal and anti-conformist ethic that kept them from ever performing in public (their first so-called "live" performance would be delayed by a few more months, when they appeared on the British TV show "The Tube", singing over pre-recorded backing tracks).

Groove & Trouble

In July 1986 came Endless, an all-in-all forgettable remix operation that stalled at number 70 on the charts, then in November it was time for the fourth album Pleasure One, which leaned even further into guitar textures, diverting focus away from the synthesizers' exclusivity. The result is a naive, danceable soul-funk blend that still works reasonably well on the dancefloor. Groove, melodies and Gregory's usual impassive voice manage to fill in obvious gaps, with the standout tracks being the opener "Contenders" and the second single "Trouble", which showcases a stunning riff courtesy of Tim Cansfield and earned a fair amount of success in Germany (it broke into the Top 20 and would be the last single of any real resonance).

Also worth hearing are "Red" (an amusing dancey number), "Somebody", "Low Society" and the closing "Free"; for the rest, the ideas are there but come across as dull and not executed at their best (the ballad "Look At Me" and "If I Were You"). "Move Out" closes out, on a muted note, the most black, energetic and least plastic-sounding Heaven 17 record, which unfortunately was doomed to be unfinished from the start (many tracks had originally been written for a French film that was never made) and inexorably condemned to oblivion (among other things, it's the first not to credit B.E.F. in the production credits).

The following Teddy Bear, Duke And Psycho is a box-office flop and doesn't even chart, but there's plenty to find interesting about it nonetheless. Released in 1988 by Virgin (the band's last for the label), it marks a decisive return to electronics. "Our strength is synthetic manipulation," admits Ware in an interview given to International Musician And Recording World magazine. "We've grasped the potential of sampling technology and today we exploit it to the fullest, more than anyone else. We try to use it as a substitute or an enhancement for real instruments rather than as a shortcut or a gimmick."

Compared to their recent lacklustre outings, the trio seem to recover that joie de vivre that made them popular, and the material now sounds more organic, so "Big Square People" and the extra-track "Work" dust off the classic sound and stand as two potential mini-hits à-la The The or Level 42, like the thrilling "Train Of Love In Motion" with its Iggy-esque strut.

"The Ballad Of Go-Go Brown" (the lead single) adds guitar and flirts with country, while the rest sticks to the usual pop-R&B blend in a Power Station vein that along the way loses itself somewhat half-heartedly ("Snake And Two People", "Can You Hear Me", "Responsability" and "Hot Blood"), but it's still worth the price of a compact disc (it's the only format to contain all the tracks — the more attentive will notice that the Lp, cassette and cd each have different tracklists and covers).

In September of that same year they took part in the Sport Aid event organised by Bob Geldof and Ian Anderson in Sheffield, to raise further donations against poverty in Africa, then took a long break from contractual commitments, and in 1991 Ware took the opportunity to put together, on his own, "Music Of Quality And Distinction Volume Two", a new B.E.F. chapter (this time without Marsh too) which, nine years on, once again showcases, following the same formula as its predecessor, figures such as Lalah Hathaway (daughter of American soul star Donna, singing "Family Affair"), Bangla-New Yorker Tashan ("I Want You"), Mavis Staples ("A Song For You") and Chaka Khan ("Someday We'll All Be Free"). Also featured are a couple of British pop stars (Richard Darbyshire of Living In A Box with "Early In The Morning" and Green Gartside of Scritti Politti), alongside the ever-present Billy MacKenzie ("Free") and Tina Turner ("A Change Is Gonna Come"). A welcome newcomer is Terence Trent d'Arby ("It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Bleeding"), whose career launch Ware himself had helped significantly by co-producing his debut "Introducing The Hardline According To Terence Trent d'Arby" in 1987.

Bigger Than America: the Nineties

Starting in the early Nineties, Heaven 17's career hit a sharp slowdown and output became increasingly sparse, so that between 1992 and 1993 a handful of reissues were put out, with mixed fortunes, in an attempt to keep attention alive on the brand ("Temptation", reworked by Brothers In Rhythm, reached an unexpectedly high number four, while the new versions of "(We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang" and "Penthouse And Pavement" passed almost unnoticed, as did the related compilation Higher And Higher – The Best Of Heaven 17, which followed a few months later).

Meanwhile Ware quietly nurtured other individual projects (the most significant of which, behind the scenes, was Erasure's "I Say I Say I Say" in 1994) and conceived intriguing hi-tech installations to bring to life (as we'll see further on) thanks to the astonishing possibilities offered by the new generation of Surround Sound. Glenn Gregory dabbled in house diversions and released the single "Boom The Future" under the pseudonym Ugly, while Marsh wrote soundtracks for film and TV. In any case, fans had to wait until 1996 for a new album of original Heaven 17 material, when Bigger Than America finally broke a silence of about eight years. Released on the minor label Eye Of The Storm, it once again missed the mark (it got a modest response in Germany but quickly dropped off the radar in England).

"We wanted to make a fully electronic album in step with the times and modernise the sound by bringing back the early analogue synths," Martyn states in an interview with The Guardian. The result is a eurodance/acid-tinged blend ("Freak!" and "Dive" invade the Ultraworld of The Orb) with a percussive, primal feel ("Do I Believe" and "Maybe Forever") that at least partly achieves its aim. Among the other tracks, worth praising is the delightful synth-pop of "Another Great Idea", not quite so "great" but still enjoyable, and the title track "Bigger Than America" (which gives "Europe Endless" by Kraftwerk a twenty-year facelift). "Designing Heaven", despite its title, sketches out ambient landscapes that are anything but paradisiacal; better then are the Depeche Mode-like "The Big Ripper" (warding off teen suicide in the United States), "Resurrection Man" and "Electronic Prayer", which push forward at a brisk pace and ramp up the bpm.

Bigger Than America was followed by another hiatus, this time an even longer one, during which almost nothing was heard from the three of them, so much so that the fanbase seemed resigned to the band's breakup. That wasn't the case, but unfortunately every time rumours announced a new album, they were promptly contradicted by events. What is true is that the seventh studio album, Before And After, took a full nine years to arrive, during which there was room for Martyn Ware's usual side projects: first he joined forces with Vince Clarke of Erasure (together they are responsible for two far-sighted sample-heavy albums under the name The Clarke/Ware Experiment, "Pretentious" in 1999 and "Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle" in 2001), then he set to work as a "sonic-muralist" (he created several permanent installations in Ludwigsburg, Germany, at the Tietgenkollegiet in Copenhagen and at Portmeirion in Wales — artistic-auditory experiences aimed at revitalising once-derelict neighbourhoods now turned neo-trendy and fashionable, simulating the sound of an ocean liner, for instance, or the rustling of trees through more or less illusory sensory stimulation).

Gregory, meanwhile, married his second wife and current partner Lindsay, who works at a design agency (he had previously been married to Belgian singer Sarah Osborne of the pop group Allez Allez, but divorced after less than three years); on the professional side, instead, together with musician Keith Lowndes he planted the seeds of Honeyroot, an ambient side project on the Just Music label that would bear fruit in 2005 with "Sound Echo Location" (and later in 2007 with "The Sun Will Come" and in 2010 with "Nobody Loves You The Way I Do & Heavy Drops" — Lowndes, incidentally, had already collaborated with John McGeoch of Pil/Magazine, Martin Fry and Neneh Cherry).

Before and after: the 2000s

In September 2005, as we mentioned, Before And After finally arrived, a seventh album of new material that, after nine years of feverish anticipation, fully lived up to fans' hopes. Over a span of more than two decades the band had consistently stuck to its own formula, marked by imaginative, creative sounds, but with an approach that was never rigid, formal or detached. Indeed, unlike many peers who, like them, got their start at the dawn of new wave, they chose to add a healthy dose of soul, funk and disco capable of making otherwise cold and expressionless robotic arrangements lively and warm.

Before And After is no exception and picks up exactly from these solid foundations, updating the sound, for obvious reasons, to the new millennium through the adoption of modern tricks (the rules and the gear in use change, but not the strategies and modus operandi). In April 2006 the album reached number 6 on the Billboard Magazine Club Play Chart, a niche but still respectable result considering it was distributed by Ninthwave, a small independent label with limited financial resources (the majors had practically all steered clear, reluctant to bet blindly on a miraculous resurrection of the trio, given their prolonged absence from the scene). Several backing tracks had been sketched out years earlier, right after the release of Bigger Than America, when, struck by a burst of over-inspiration, the band had almost simultaneously begun composing new material. Within a few months, however, the follow-up was shelved by mutual agreement with their manager, but not all the sketches were lost, and a couple of decades later, nine of the twelve tracks originally planned were restored, forming the backbone of Before And After.

The tracklist accommodates vintage electronics (“Someone For Real” and “What Would It Take”) and 2.0-style dance rhythms (“Hands Up To Heaven” feat. Keith Lowndes, “The Way It Is” and “Deeper And Deeper”), which seem to satisfy in one fell swoop both the palates of nostalgic eighters – lovely is the cover of the Blue Őyster Cult classic “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” – and the supporters of contemporary groove armadas like Ladytron, Goldfrapp, Miss Kittin or Fischerspooner. The lyrics, obviously, adapt to the mood, abandoning their old insurrectionary ambitions in favor of more subdued romantic-sentimental themes, among which stand out “I’m Gonna Make You Fall In Love With Me”, “Freedom From Love” and the little gem “Into The Blue”, which brushes up against trip-hop territory and closes out what, to this day, remains the last album of new material by Heaven 17.

Wanted: Marsh, Desperately

A shame, because unlike so many aging stars, the three seemed to still have something to say and could hold their own against the new generation, but at the start of 2006 Marsh mysteriously vanishes and disappears without a trace. Glenn admits he doesn't know where Marsh is, and so the band's story comes to an end. “We've tried reaching him several times by email but he doesn't answer, even my wife Lindsay, with whom he had a certain rapport, has tried to contact him but nothing, clearly he doesn't want to know. We're upset but there's nothing we can do about it, he's still a brother to us. Martyn and I have meanwhile started playing together again and we would have loved to involve him… oh well”. Marsh will resurface in 2007, confirming he no longer wants to be part of the group, without going into much explanation, after which he'll go off to study at the University of Brighton, where he currently lives, but at least he'll grant the two bandmates his friendship on Facebook. “Well, it's something”, Martyn chuckles. What remains is the regret over the end of an adventure – that of Heaven 17 – truly thrilling for all its sui generis nature, and as is customary, the usual round of greatest hits compilations now begins. Among the most comprehensive is certainly Sight and Sound, which highlights a curious, previously unreleased “Temptation” sung by an unknown German student the band happened to meet in 1982 (the tape was unearthed at Gregory's mother's house and remastered by Simon Heyworth).

As for videos, on the other hand, the live DVD filmed in November 2005 at the former La Scala cinema in London is worth a look: alongside on stage footage, it also features an entertaining back-and-forth between Ware/Gregory and the fans.

Now reduced to a duo, in 2008 Heaven 17 take part in the Steel City Tour, a sort of musical showcase celebrating the city of Sheffield (joined, not coincidentally, by Abc and Human League), on the occasion of which they promote Naked As Advertised, which reworks a series of old hits (“Geisha Boys And Temple Girls” and “We Live So Fast”) as well as Human League's “Being Boiled” and “Empire State Human” and their friends Associates's “Party Fears Two”. Yet another “Temptation” is here performed by Billie Godfrey, the black vocalist who had made her first TV appearance with the group back in 1983, before becoming a full-fledged member in the mid-'90s.

A Bit of Everything: The Present Day

In 2009 Glenn and Martyn land in Germany for the “Night Of The Proms” series, then in 2010 they record sessions with La Roux for BBC's interactive Red Button channel (they perform them live again at the Glastonbury Festival the following June 26th). On the occasion of their thirtieth anniversary, the band announces a celebratory tour on which they perform the epoch-making Penthouse And Pavement in full: the warm-up show is set at Sheffield's Leadmill, a historic music venue which, by coincidence, is also celebrating its own thirtieth anniversary in 2010. That evening, an hour-long documentary on the making of the album is projected on stage, and by Ware's own admission it turns out to be their most memorable gig (the short film is part of a double DVD released on November 22nd, which collects all the digital videos associated with the performance, each commissioned from a different visual artist).

2013 brings Music Of Quality And Distinction Volume Three, the final chapter of the saga (subtitled “Dark”) which, after a gestation period of almost twenty-two years, also brings the story of the British Electric Foundation to a close. It features a few heavyweights such as Kim Wilde (“Everytime I See You I Go Wild”), Boy George (“I Wanna Be Your Dog”), Andy Bell (“Breathing”), Maxim (“The Day Before You Came”) and Polly Scattergood (“The Look Of Love”), along with several more or less familiar faces from British showbiz (Anglo-Zimbabwean Shingai Shoniwa with “God Only Knows” and David Jay Roach with “The Same Love That Made Me Laugh”).

Meanwhile, multi-instrumentalist Berenice Scott (piano, guitar and trumpet) takes Ian Marsh's place and becomes Heaven 17's third keyboardist in every sense; the resulting line-up makes its debut in 2014 on John Shuttleworth's Music Lounge on BBC Radio 4, reinterpreting some songs by the English songwriter himself. A few weeks later, the three put their name to the compilation “80's Recovered” with a cover of Elton John's “Rocket Man”: it's the prelude to a joint Heaven 17/B.E.F. revival tour stopping in London, Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow and Sheffield (a particularly meaningful date is the one at their hometown's City Hall, where they play for the first time, supported by jazz singer Mari Wilson, Glen Matlock of the Sex Pistols and Peter Hooton of the Farm).

2015 brings “Live At The Jazz Café”, a limited-edition self-produced bootleg by Glenn and Martyn, who two years later (now in 2017) return to work together at London's The House Of Illustrious studios (co-owned by Ware with Erasure's Vince Clarke): a few work in progress fragments of a possible album are released by Bower&Wilkins under the title “Not For Public Broadcast”, which collects all the 7-inch and 12-inch singles put together during that period (“Pray”, “Illumination”, “Captured” and “Unseen”).

May 2018, it's once again time for celebration: this time it's the thirty-fifth anniversary of The Luxury Gap, and to celebrate it properly Heaven 17 decide to go all out, embarking on a mini UK tour alongside former Propaganda members Claudia Brücken and Susanne Freytag. “It was fantastic – Gregory admits – Claudia is a lovely person and we get along on everything, which is why we keep working together. We have a great time, because she's German and doesn't understand a word of what I say, but we share the same tastes, so it's always a real pleasure. Plus 'A Secret Wish' is one of my absolute favorite records, it's truly amazing”. And if he says so, who are we to argue…

Finally, between October and November 2019, they take part as special guests on 25 dates of The Difford And Tilbrook Songbook 2019 Tour, acting as the opening act for Squeeze, of which Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook are the only surviving members.

For now, the story of Heaven 17 ends here, barring any dramatic twists – indeed, “the next record is planned for 2025!”, jokes Martyn Ware, only half in jest. “Glenn and I would love that, but given how things stand right now, it's really unlikely, we both have two lives to juggle outside of Heaven 17. There are three key factors to look at carefully: time, will and money. Let's look at these three separately. Time – when we were young we worked in the studio twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, with nothing to distract us, that was literally our life. Money – back in the Virgin days we basically got a blank check and the best studios in London to record in. Today it's exactly the opposite: we have families and have to take on our responsibilities, plus we no longer have all those perks, nor can we count on any label's support, so it's not possible to shut ourselves away in a studio for three months, we wouldn't make any money and we can't afford it. What remains is the will, and that's always there…”.

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