The Comsat Angels make music for my heart, filling me with moments of pure joy under a veil of sadness - at times stark - often uncompromising. They trade in a wonderland of greyness - a hinterland of Soul, tingling with emotion - concise and never overstated, temporing aggression with a true passion that gives their songs a jangling harmonic edge.

The Comsat Angels come from Sheffield - a city of steel, football and cricket - a City of urban decay that like so many others channels its youth into queues of dereliction - their only escape to become football or pop stars. There are also those who chose a  musical route away from convention and boredom that panders little to the desires of faceless ones gargantuan appetite for instant and disposable stars, one such group of individuals are The Comsat Angels.

"When we started the group we were very idealistic, I suppose we still are, but we've learnt a few things.... This period could be regarded as stage two of the group's career. Stage one started in January 1979 and ended in November 1982 - it's the part where we put what we've learnt into use. What have we learned? Well.... That extremes are only part of the story and that in order to be understood you must use language that everybody understands (not only words) however what you say is a different matter. We've learnt to reserve the right to do exactly what we want, all rights reserved, you read it here, in black-and-white!" 

As you can see they hold strong almost stubborn views that quite likely hindered rather than aided their progress from the young raw group of Waiting For A Miracle, their debut album, to the finely honed modern stance of Land their most recent album offering. 

To say in all that time that they had written many a classic song would be no understatement - from the early Eye Of The Lens, Total War and Independence Day through the mid period Dark Parade, It’s History and (Do The) Empty House right up to the current Alicia, A World Away and Mr Memory, the Comsat's have grown in stature and ambitiousness dabbling recently with more commercial, even funk influences - sleazy but still as dark. While this progress has been going on they have lost none of the panache and haunting power of their earlier days, even so they did go back and re-record Independence Day for the Land album.

"We were never very happy with the first version and when Mike Howlett, the producer on Land, suggested doing it again we thought it might make a good 'b' side or something. However it turned out so well that we decided to put it on the album. We were concerned that people might think that we didn't have enough new songs but that was obviously not the case. You'd be surprised how many people thought Land was our first album and who hadn't heard the song before anyway."

As you will have noticed the band are now using producer Mike Howlett of OMD, China Crisis and A Flock of Seagulls fame, a sign, at least to me, that now they are with Jive they have been under a little pressure to make their material more accessible.