Speaking of the Human League (a great group of guys who sold millions of records last century), their new album Credo is currently getting a final polish and re-master before its unveiling early next year. Lead single Night People will be out next month, with a second single to follow before the LP. Being my favourite band I’ve been anxiously waiting nearly ten years for these guys to release something new, so I’m particularly excited about this news. The Night People UK Tour kicks off at the end of November: I have tickets to see them in Edinburgh and can’t wait!
The Story of The Human League is crying out to be told as a movie or book or something: it’s a classic tale of school-day’s friends, break-ups, rebirths and global success that still reverberates around the music world today. The story would start with two teenage girls getting ready for a night out at the Crazy Daisy Nightclub in Sheffield. Little did they know, they’d soon meet a tall man with a strange haircut who’d change both their lives forever with the perfect chat-up line: “Do you want to join my band?”
I put together a Human League playlist on Spotify last year called Human League Unlimited. It features a few singles but mostly some of the best lesser-known album tracks, mixes, and Phil Oakey Guest Appearances. Whether Credo will appear on the likes of Spotify and We7 remains to be seen: the League are ironically (for a band who pioneered the use of technology in music) stubbornly absent from the online world: no website, no Twitter, no Facebook or MySpace. They shunned the internet for years, clinging on to a record label CD unit sale concept while the likes of iTunes and music streaming services rose to dominate the music market. A core fanbase kept the online League light alive with its unofficial fan forum which has at turns been informative, inspiring and insane. An official Human League website finally appeared last month, but for now at least it’s merely a one-page poster for the tour. The League’s record label Wall Of Sound (Royksopp, Reverend and the Makers, Grace Jones) has plenty of releases on Spotify though, so it looks likely their new singles and albums would show up there too.
“Before The Human League, everything else was just tuning up.”
Vince Noir, The Mighty Boosh