English electronic band Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark (OMD) are teasing their first Australian tour in almost 40 years, with a tour announcement set to arrive soon. According to setlist.fm, OMD last toured Australia in January 1987.
OMD first hinted at the upcoming news on Monday (22 April), writing on social media, “Australia, we’re finally coming back for the first time in nearly 4 decades! Sign up [below] to be notified of full tour dates and access an early bird pre-sale. Announcement coming very soon.”
They added in another post yesterday, “We will finally be coming back to Australia and New Zealand, after nearly 4 decades!
“We’ll be announcing them separately, with the Australia announcement coming first. Sign up here to be the first to hear about the Australian dates”.
According to the link OMD shared on both posts, the tour will be presented by tour promoters Destroy All Lines. You can sign up for the mailing list here ahead of the official tour announcement.
“In their original ’80s pomp, Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark had a human warmth and lightness of touch that seems to be missing from many of their synth-pop contemporary combos,” The Music’s Ross Clelland declared in a review of the band’s 2013 album, English Electric.
Clelland continued, “This is most likely because they had an actual band line-up, a knowledge of the machines they were using, songs that went outside the usual man/machine themes, and that slight catch in Andy McCluskey‘s voice.
“It all fitted together correctly. English Electric is the second album from the reformed ‘classic’ line-up of the band, and it sounds like they’ve got it right.”
Ten years later, in 2023, OMD released their 14th album, Bauhaus Staircase.
The album was released six years after 2017’s The Punishment Of Luxury, after McCluskey “rediscovered the creative power of total bloody boredom” during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown in the UK. Bauhaus Staircase, OMD’s fourth album since their 2006 reformation, saw OMD inspired (or horrified) by world politics of the 2010s and 2020s.
The current line-up of OMD consists of founding members and principal songwriters Andy McCluskey (vocalist, bass guitar) and Paul Humphreys (keyboards, vocals), keyboardist and saxophonist Martin Cooper, and drummer Stuart Kershaw.
