WORDS: Henry Summers

Last night was Bournemouth’s chance to experience the long awaited Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD) well into their 40th anniversary tour-and they didn’t disappoint!

After a decent warm-up set from support MIG-15 featuring OMDs lead Andy McCluskey’s son on bass, OMD-Andy McCluskey, Paul Humphreys, Martin Cooper and Stuart Kershaw graced the stage-they started their set with a chilled out ‘Stanlow’-but if you think that marked the pace for what lay ahead-think again.

‘Have you all got some space for dancing’ announced McCluskey to which the band broke into their second track ‘Isotype’-certainly his prompt seemed to work -the whole tightly packed house was up on its feet from that moment and that’s where they stayed for the rest of the evening-the atmosphere from then on can only be described as electric-it wasn’t just the band that were demonstrating that time can only improve things-the techno light show that accompanied their set was truly remarkable, as was McCluskey’s energetic stage bopping-it really was all a joy to watch!

After performing their classic Joan of Arc (Maid of Orleans) he noted 'I’m still dancing to that song at 60’- joined by all of the audience!

The quartet then came to the front of the stage in-line-a nod to their German cousins Kraftwerk no doubt and performed ‘Almost’ the B-side to their first ever single ‘Electricity’ McCluskey telling the crowd ‘This is the song that inspired Vince Clark to learn the synthesiser and form Depeche Mode’.

More classic hits followed-by the time Enola Gay was performed the atmosphere in the house was bordering on euphoric.

A three-song encore saw the band bow-out performing their debut single ‘Electricity’ from 1979.

“Electronic music is our language” the band stated recently – I think it’s still our language too!