There’s been a riot of reformed, relaunched and rehabilitated 80s synth pop acts recently, ranging from the opportunist (The Human League alert to an awakened market after Phil Oakey’s cameo with Little Boots) to the nostalgic (Heaven 17, reliant on deluxe reissues and package tours) to the sublime (Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark’s cracking comeback album History Of Modern). So what’s this – the ridiculous? No one was begging for the first new material in quarter of a century from Blancmange. The catalyst for Neil Arthur and Stephen Luscombe’s reunion appears to have been the use of one of their handful of hits in an advert. Let’s call it a commercial imperative.

Never as silly as their Granny’s-tea-party name, Blancmange still fail to command a place in the synth pantheon. Top 10 hits like ‘Living On The Ceiling’ and ‘Blind Vision’ were interesting, forthright examples of the art, but not quite on the iconic plane occupied by idiosyncratic smashes from, say, Soft Cell and Depeche Mode. The duo shared more common ground with Yazoo – Luscombe a diminutive, Vince Clarkeish blond boffin, Arthur possessed of a big, strident voice to rival Alison Moyet’s – without ever claiming a similar home in the public’s affections, and drifted apart as they lost relevance, eventually splitting to preserve their friendship.

But quite apart from putting them at a disadvantage, Blancmange’s relative anonymity becomes a blessing. They’re not preaching to an unwavering audience still clamouring for the hits after all these years; they have an opportunity to set their own agenda in a sympathetic climate. And that’s what Blanc Burn attempts. Once you recover from the horrific pun of the title – Arthur comes from Darwen, a Lancashire town near, yes, Blackburn – there’s plenty to appreciate from the revamped sound. The first jarring difference though is Arthur milking his Lancs accent for all it’s worth. Hence we get ‘Bus Stop’ with flat vowels intoning,”I’ll meet you down the Circus / By Woolies bus stop”. It’s invigorating, but it’s set against an early 90s shuffling dance beat, no way to really divorce yourself from outmoded origins. Next is ‘Drive Me’, finding bleeps and synthy horns last discarded by Jesus Jones in 1992. It’s busy and bustly but these are the first two tracks, and there’s not a great deal to justify Blancmange’s return.

Happily things get much better, first up with the rimshot drums bolstering ‘Ultraviolent”s attack on street thug mores, painting their wild dogs as “a weapon, a crutch that they can lean on” and imploring they “take off your graffiti… Is that too much to ask?” These might be the imprecations of an old man, but they come couched in tough beats and firm, ordered chaos. The old Arthur baritone returns on ‘The Western’, sparring with sitars – an echo of ‘Living On The Ceiling’’s Eastern passages – and depth-charge bass, while ‘Radio Therapy’ recalls The Chemical Brothers at their most crisply ambient and ‘Probably Nothing’ keeps pace with Hot Chip in its choppy synths. The comparisons show Blancmange at their most relevant, but they set aside some room for parpy bossa nova on ‘Don’t Forget Your Teeth’ and hamfisted celeb culture-bashing on ‘Starfucker’, just in case they start to sound too sure-footed.

In the end, the album’s a qualified success, its flashes of quality surprising, its mundane fills not so. That there’s more of the former is the most unexpected element of all, but is that enough for one of the more unlikely spins on the nostalgia-go-round? You can fill in the Blancs.