Erasure’s Vince Clarke, Blancmange’s Neil Arthur and the electronic producer-writer-synth-nerd Benge have joined forces to form the new project Doublespeak. Set to be released on May 29th, their self-titled debut album revisits eleven of their favourite songs from the past four decades, each reimagined and renewed in the timeless space of gleaming analogue electronica.
The ‘Doublespeak’ album is divided between songs from the postpunk netherworld brought blinking into the light (Fad Gadget, The Sound, Young Marble Giants), pop radio monsters ushered back down a dark stairway into the club (ABBA, David Essex, The Carpenters) and buried treasures from the 1990s onwards (The Magnetic Fields, Ed Dowie and Laptop). Collectively, the album amounts to a shadow autobiography of the three collaborators’ continuing musical education.
The trio launch Doublespeak by sharing their take on Fad Gadget’s ‘Back To The Nature’ – a song which was famously just the second Mute Records release in 1979 after founder Daniel Miller’s first single as The Normal. Doublespeak’s version achieves the seemingly unachievable: feeling as if the late Frank Tovey had himself time-travelled to re-record it in 2026. Listen HERE.
The rest of the album is at turns audacious, innovative and thrilling. They translate David Essex’s ‘Rock On’ into something akin to Kraftwerk-meets-Suicide; turn The Carpenters’ ‘Goodbye To Love’ into an analogue torch song; and spin the Cold War paranoia of ABBA’s ‘The Visitors’ into an equally fear-filled digital domain. And the deeper cuts are just as essential, notably a beautiful and humane reading of ‘Richard!’ by Ed Dowie, and a maximalist twist on the sparse hookiness of Thomas Leer and Robert Rental’s ‘Day Breaks, Night Heals’.
The roots of the project date back to the mutual respect shared between Depeche Mode and Blancmange during their early days. Neil Arthur subsequently recorded an unreleased track for Vince Clarke’s latter project The Assembly, but it wasn’t until 2017 when Neil suggested the initial idea for this project – and Vince was excited by the less obvious songs that had been suggested. A kindred spirit, Benge (real name Ben Edwards) also joined the project after he co-produced the previous six Blancmange albums and also collaborated with Neil on their Fader project.
Here are the results of their work, seven years in the making – but in reality, much longer, drawing right the way back to ’70s radio, ’80s indie labels and the 21st century analogue synth revolution.
The album ‘Doublespeak’ is available to pre-order and pre-save from the official store now. Physical formats include black vinyl, CD, limited-edition cassette, and limited-edition green/black deep ripple vinyl. The first 500 orders from the official store will also receive an exclusive signed print.
Additional retailer exclusives include Assai, who feature the green/black deep ripple vinyl with a signed obi strip. Lexer Music stock the green/black deep ripple vinyl with a bonus CD single featuring two original Doublespeak tracks: ‘Sunset’ and ‘Strange Weather’, written and produced by the band and not available anywhere else.
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