Heaven 17: The Greatest Hits, Live with Orchestra

Orchestral arrangement has long been part of the band’s story. Their records have regularly pushed electronics and strings together, and Martyn Ware’s work as a producer with BEF has often leaned on the same sense of scale and drama.

Heaven 17 emerged from Sheffield’s electronic scene in 1980, formed by Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh after their departure from The Human League, with Glenn Gregory joining as vocalist. The name came from a fictional band in Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange. Their 1981 debut album, Penthouse and Pavement, arrived with the single ‘(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang’.

Their 1983 follow-up, The Luxury Gap, reached No.4 in the UK album chart and went platinum. It produced the band’s best-known songs: ‘Temptation’, a UK No.2 single featuring Carol Kenyon, and ‘Come Live With Me’, which reached the Top 5. ‘Crushed by the Wheels of Industry’ and ‘Let Me Go’ are also among the songs that made them one of the defining British synth acts of the decade. Later singles such as ‘Sunset Now’ and ‘This Is Mine’ continued their run of UK chart hits.

Support comes from China Crisis, the Liverpool band behind the hits ‘Wishful Thinking’, ‘Black Man Ray’ and ‘King in a Catholic Style’.